This one was not as lyrical, scholarly, or tight-knit as the other Macfarlane's books I have read. ( )

astonishing use of language to describe places that are wild and far from home - and just to mix it up - places that are intertwined with our daily lives - I give you Holloways
historical record includes description of suppression of Catholic worship - cf w fictional account A Most Contagious Game by Catherine Aird - learned more from reading these two books than in all my history classes
to buy: look for first paperback ed for high quality paper - would like to have for index and bibliography ( )

Really enjoyable & well-written account of how the wild is all around us http://www.susanhatedliterature.net/2018/04/the-wild-places/ ( )

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane Ostensibly about his endeavour to find the wild places that still exist in the UK staring from Scotland and kind of working his way down to end up in Essex where I think the BBC made a TV program about him wandering through Essex discovering wonders of wildlife hidden in plain sight throughout the industrial wastelands.
 
Anyway, he is in Essex on the trail of J.A. Baker who wrote The Peregrine, one of my all time favourite non-fiction books. It is interesting to note that like J.A. Baker he seems to exist in world devoid of all the trivialities that consume ours.
 
He did mention working (just once) and having a daughter (about 3 times) but outside of that he seems to exist only on this metaphysical journey where he is ping-ponging around the UK, hooking up with other men and disappearing into crags, gullies, downs, moors, mountains, islands, lochs and god know where else for periods of time.
 
He certainly never seemed to have to be anywhere else. That's why I found the irony of him doing a TV program kinda surreal because he appears to live in a world that doesn't have one. I don't have a TV but I certainly live in this world. Was I jealous I wondered?
 
Definitely impressed, to say the least.Also based on the premise that "to wander is to wonder" and the link between roving and reflection being described in many books each of which he quotes. A landscape walked and history filled in as you go.
 
Much off it sad, especially when he deals with (just one part) of the highland clearances. Do they teach that stuff in schools? I loved and struggled with this book at the same time. This is the second of his books that I have read and I warmed to him on this one. At the end of every chapter I wanted to get in my car and drive to these places and I would have, had it not been for the 19,000 Kms between him and me and the fact that I have a job to go to, but all the same.....Another of his themes was about how close all this is to what we call reality and what he calls roads and housing estates. How all this stuff is simply still there if you are willing to get out of the car and walk for a bit. Incredibly true it appears.This is one book that I wished was on my Kindle instead of the mass of paper that it was.
 
Why so? Well there were so many words that I didn't recognise and on the Kindle you simply point to the word and the definition pops up at the top or bottom of the screen.
 
Not just old fashioned arcane words but beautiful poetic descriptive words. Lots of them. I used the Kindle's dictionary instead realising that it has been a while since I came across so many hitherto unknown words.
 
He may have been writing about Essex but he certainly never went to school there, that's for sure. ( )

In The Wild Places, Robert MacFarlane sets out to find if there are any such environments left within the British Isles. The book begins contemplatively, with the author journeying to one of his favourite local places, a beech wood outside the city of Cambridge where he lives, climbing a tree as is his wont, so he can sit and observe, and be part of, this sylvan idyll.



This sets the tone wonderfully. From the very first sentence, you realise that you are in for a special experience; the quality of MacFarlane’s prose is quietly spectacular, largely understated but with the rhythms of good poetry and this, combined with his eye for detail and a mind that connects the landscape and the animals and our inhabitation along with more personal experiences, make the book extraordinary.



Over fifteen chapters MacFarlane travels across Britain, and to Ireland, to experience the places he considers most “wild” and natural, initially using as a guide the travels of the legendary Irish King Sweeney, who was made to wander the wild places as a beast following an act of betrayal.



From the island of Ynys Enlii, off the Lleyn Peninsula, where Wales reaches it most Western point toward Ireland, on to Scotland - to Coriusk on Skye, Rannoch Moor, Coille Dubh ( The Black Wood ), Strathnaver and Ben Klibreck, Cape Wrath and Ben Hope before crossing the Irish Sea to the desolation of the Burren. MacFarlane finds even more poetry in these places than their evocative names suggest - along with the rest of his journey, to the high ridges of the Lakeland fells, the Kentish Holloways, the storm-lashed beaches of Norfolk, Essex saltmarshes and, finally, my own back yard, the moors above Hope Valley in the High Peak. His writing conjures the landscape like nobody I’ve read, the individual feel and sense and rhythm of each place, drawing the reader to it - even when, as in attempting to spend the night on the frozen Ben Hope in Northern Scotland, for the first time he feels how truly hostile a place can be and is genuinely afraid.



Each section of travelogue is also woven through with skeins of history - both of the regions, and more personal history. This becomes more pointed when MacFarlane’s friend Roger, with whom he has discussed many of his trips, have shared ideas and thoughts like the oldest of friends, who has accompanied him on several excursions, falls suddenly ill.



The final trip to the Peak District brings the book full circle, as he is shown where to find snow hares by John, who had piloted the boat out to Ynys Enlii, and then a final coda where MacFarlane returns once more to the beech wood. He may have found that there is, perhaps, no true wilderness in the British Isles, in that there is no land that has not been shaped by humanity and our works, but that the wild is still there to be appreciated and respected, should we wish to look for it, that we need to protect it for our own health and benefit, but it the wild places will be there long after we have gone.




5/5, and an instant addition to the Favourites shelf
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