In his book The Old Ways, Robert McFarlane talks of ancient chalk roads and of sea lanes. Any path or trail is worthy of his inspection, and what he sees when he looks is informed not just by poetry but by history.

I’ll be writing quite a lot about this book, I know. For now, here’s McFarlane riffing on the etymology of writing and walking:

Our verb ‘to write’ at one point in its history referred specifically to track-making: the Old English writan meant ‘to incise runic letters in stone’; thus one would ‘write’ a line by drawing a sharp point over and into a surface — by harrowing a track.

 As the pen rises from the page between words, so the walker’s feet rise and fall between paces, and as the deer continues to run as it bounds from the earth, and the dolphin continues to swim even as it leaps again and again from the sea, so writing and wayfaring are continuous activities, a running stitch, a persistence of the same seam or stream.

Running stitch: that’s one I won’t forget.