Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations.

And that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the wood.

They were not mistaken, for there was, in a sense, a real, not

metaphorical connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air,

and later corn, and later still, bread, really was in them. We, of course, who live on a standardized

international diet, you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scottish oatmeal, of course, who live on a standardized international diet, you may have had Canadian

flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges and Australian wine today, are really

artificial beings and have no connection, save in sentiment, with any place on Earth.

We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours. This is Pites

with Jack, season 8, episode 33, Narnia Month. Narnia and the Fields of Arball. After hours

with Dr. Matthew Dickerson.

Welcome friends to Pints with Jack.

This season we've read chapter by chapter through Perilandra.

Explore Jack's bookshelf and spent a month in Narnia.

But this Narnia month is coming to a close today, and we're going to be talking about a subject which was actually requested

by members of our Slack channel, namely the relationship between the inklings and ecology.

And this is why I opened up with that quotation from one of Lewis's letters to his friend,

Arthur Greaves.

Today I'm joined by a guest whose name appeared literally everywhere whenever I started

looking into this subject, Dr. Matthew Dickerson.

Dr. Matthew Dickerson is Professor at Midbury College in Vermont, where he is a member

of the Computer Science Department, an affiliate of the Environmental Studies Program, and

...