In the Gaelic poem “Hallaig,” by Sorley MacLean, a man is forced to

leave his favorite grove of trees for America during the land
clearances of the nineteenth century. This poem, worshiped by so
many in Scotland, speaks directly to the national soul in its tragedy,
sentiment and land-love. “I’m finding it difficult not to cry when I
think about it, and I’m English,” an ecologist named Peter Higgins
told me. The landscape here, as in Finland, is a unifying force, rooted
in the bones of people who grew up with it. It’s also rooted in the
Gaelic language itself. There’s the word weet, to rain slightly, and
williwaw, a sudden, violent squall, and wewire, to flit about as foliage
does in wind, and that’s just the W’s. How perfect is this: crizzle, “the