mesa, bicarbonate, trellis, lichen, face-plant, Wellington boots, pudding, seltzer

 trellised walk

“Poetry makes nothing happen,” W. H. Auden once said, and yet there I was, clawing my way through the wet and lichen-encrusted tangle on a Scottish hillside, with limbs of bracken swatting me in the face and my Wellington boots failing to get a foothold, worried that I was about to face-plant into a pudding of aromatic Hebridean ooze, because of 24 lines of verse.




The climb was worth it. The top of the mesa felt like a sanctuary. Long grass covered the ground; above my head, the branches of trees were twined together like a trellis. I sat down. The rolling landscape of Luing was laid out below. Here it was — the “intimate exile,” the “secret candidacy” that Mr. Paterson had written about.



Want to improve your tennis game? Try a little Alka-Seltzer
Los Angeles Times
A little Alka-Seltzer might do the trick, Taiwanese researchers reported Tuesday. Drinking some bicarbonate of soda before a match could improve performance ...


seltzer

soda water

face-plant
: a sudden face-first fall

lichen[li・chen]

• レベル：社会人必須
• 発音記号[láikən]
• 
  

[名][U]

1 《植物》地衣（類）.

2 《病理学》苔癬(たいせん).

━━[動](他)…を地衣（のようなもの）でおおう.

［ラテン語←ギリシャ語leichn］

li・chen・ous

[形]地衣の.

trellis

[名]1 格子（組み）.2 [U][C]（つる植物をはわせる）つる棚, 格子垣；格子造りのあずま屋.3 格子状の配列.━━[動](他)1 〈戸・窓などに〉格子をつける.2 …を格子（垣）で囲む；...

mesa[me・sa]

• 発音記号[méisə]
• 
  

[名]メサ：頂上が平らで周囲に急な崖(がけ)をもつ地形；米国南西部・メキシコの乾燥地域に多い.

［スペイン語でtableの意］


bicarbonate

[名][U]《化学》

1 炭酸水素塩, 重炭酸塩.

2 重炭酸ナトリウム(bicarbonate of soda). ▼ふくらし粉などに用いる.