"Almost Alice"

On Lost Words and the Language of the Wild

I recently came across The Lost Words, a book so beautiful it felt like a spell. It swung open a door in my mind that had long been ajar—the idea that the disappearance of nature is mirrored, perhaps even preceded, by the disappearance of the words we once used to describe it.

Newt. Raven. Bramble.

Each name a small prayer, a key to recognition. And when those keys are lost, the locks rust shut. The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane (author) and Jackie Morris (illustrator) features nature terms removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary—culled in favor of buzzwords like “chatroom” and “cut and paste.” In their place: silence. Or worse, corporate syntax.

Each word in the book is paired with a poem and an illustration—little eulogies for what should still be alive. Together, they form an archaeology of understanding. Because when we stop naming the world around us, we stop seeing it. And when we stop seeing it, we stop saving it.

While leading marine biology programs across Long Island, I was often met with wide-eyed wonder—and a worrying lack of vocabulary. Kids (and adults) could name seaweed and hermit crabs, but few knew about our native seahorse (Hippocampus erectus) or the underwater meadows of eelgrass (Zostera marina) that shelter it. Fewer still understood the filtration power of oysters or the ancient story of the horseshoe crab, which has blue blood vital in saving human lives and predates dinosaurs.

This isn’t a lack of interest. It’s a failure of education—and a cultural devaluation of the natural world. We’ve become so estranged from nature that our language reflects the rift. And without shared vocabulary, how do we have a shared conversation about the ecosystems that keep us alive? It’s not just a scientific loss; it’s a spiritual one.

I spent this summer solstice in the Scottish Highlands, where the sun rose around 3 a.m. and didn’t really set. The days stretched like a yawn. There, people have many words for rain—not just “wet” or “dreary,” but smirr, dreich, mizzle, ploutering. In Norway, there are dozens of words for snow. The more intimately you live with something, the more words you need to describe it. Language blooms where attention is paid. But what happens when the attention disappears?

We’ve flattened our vocabulary like we’ve flattened our landscapes. “Natural” has become a checkbox on a snack wrapper. “Eco-friendly” gets tossed onto shampoo bottles like glitter. “Sustainable” is used so indiscriminately it now means nothing—or everything—which is to say, nothing again. And then there’s the new darling: “regenerative.”

“Regenerative” is the new “sustainable.” It sounds good, feels important, and appears on everything from granola bars to jeans. Ask someone to define it, and you’ll likely get a vague response.

True regeneration is active. It refers to systems that not only do no harm, but actively heal. In ecological terms, regeneration means renewal and recovery—often beginning with the soil microbiome, the living foundation of healthy ecosystems. But in the hands of marketers, “regenerative” is fast becoming another layer of green-tinted fog: a feel-good word that’s hard to define, easy to sell, and rarely questioned. Like “sustainable” before it, it risks becoming a placeholder for progress while masking the status quo.

The more we use words we don’t understand, the less we understand the world.

I’ve recently been on a Tim Burton kick and rewatched his version of Alice in Wonderland. In it, Alice returns to Wonderland older, reluctant, and unsure. When asked if the rabbit brought the right Alice, the caterpillar Absolem examines her and says, with amused detachment, “Not hardly.” As she stumbles through challenges and memories, she encounters Absolem once again, who nods approvingly: “Almost Alice.”

At the film’s end, Alice confronts the Jabberwocky. To me, the Jabberwocky represents an extension of the Red Queen’s reign—an authoritarian regime shaped around fear and greed. She slays the dragon—not just with a sword, but with belief. She has become Alice, at last.

That transformation is our task, too. To become almost Alice again. To return to the child-self who crouched in dirt, talked to flowers, asked strange questions. To rewild our tongues and our time. To get a little lost, and in doing so, reconnect with something deeper than Google Maps can show.

Many Indigenous languages—Potawatomi, Lenape, Lakota—do not separate people from nature. The grammar itself assigns life to rivers and rocks. A tree isn’t a thing. It’s a being. In Potawatomi, you might say "our maple" instead of "the maple." Language reflects relationship, not ownership.

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes that English is a language of objects, while Native languages are often languages of relationships. In English, a tree can be cut. Monetized. Replaced. In Potawatomi, a tree is a teacher. A relative. A being with rights—and a name.

The erasure of ecological language doesn’t just soften our poetry—it reshapes our politics. In a world where language builds value, what we name is what we notice. What we notice is what we protect.

We are living through a time of cascading ecological crises, yet many politicians and policymakers shaping decisions about land, water, and food cannot name five key species in their district. They talk about “natural resources” in the abstract, as though nature were a warehouse rather than a web. Trees are carbon credits. Soil is yield per acre. Water is leverage. We fight over what we fail to understand.

Modern economics—built on the illusion of perpetual growth—has long prioritized scarcity. We assign the highest value to what’s most limited. In doing so, we turn nature into a product line. Land is privatized. Seeds are patented. Water is rationed and sold. Even sunlight is now subject to zoning.

Those who speak the language of the land—Indigenous stewards, smallholder farmers, local ecologists, community activists—are often ignored, displaced, or deliberately silenced. Meanwhile, those furthest from the soil hold the power to regulate and monetize it. It doesn’t have to be this way.

We can shift our systems by shifting what we value—and what we name. If we begin to speak of abundance where it truly exists—in biodiversity, in reciprocity, in renewal—we create new pathways. We can build an economy not of scarcity, but of stewardship. An economy that rewards restoration, not extraction. That understands the long-term wealth of a living river, a thriving pollinator corridor, a child who knows the name of a single, fluttering moth.

We can bring back the language of the living world—not to archive it, but to animate it. To wield it as a tool of remembrance and resistance.

The good news? Language can regenerate, too.

We don’t need to know everything, we just need to start noticing. Start naming. Let curiosity be the compost. Learn the names of five plants on your block. Learn of the ancient cultures and land stewards who share history with the place you call home. Be at peace with the next spider you see; perhaps relocate it gently, if needed. Say “regenerative,” then ask: Of what? For whom? How?

Language is not fixed—it grows like a mycelial web, drawing strength from what lies beneath. We can look back to move forward, rediscovering older ways of naming that honored relationship over ownership, pattern over profit. We can shape new words that don’t dominate nature, but invite it in—that give rivers their verbs back, that allow trees to be subjects, not scenery.

Allow yourself to be bored long enough to wonder. To wander. To reclaim the tender curiosity of a child and know that it will not hinder you, nor is it “silly” or “soft.” In fact, it may be the most courageous act available to us in a time starved for thoughtful attention, neighborly affection, and creative connection.

To embody the language of the earth is to reclaim a part of ourselves. Maybe, just maybe, that’s how we slay the Jabberwocky—not with bravado, but with devotion. Not with mastery, but with speech that’s alive—spoken in chorus with the world around us.