The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane

I had discovered books by Robert Macfarlane (“Macfarlane”) quite by accident. I had attended a panel on travel writing in a Literature Festival and as part of the discussion, William Dalrymple (“Dalrymple”), one of my favorite authors, described  Macfarlane ’s writing as “Prose that he (i.e. Dalrymple) can only dream of writing”. It took me a while but I picked up  Macfarlane’s first book, Mountains of the Mind, and finally understood what  Dalrymple  meant by his statement. It was a beautiful prose combined with adventures, mountains and stories to create a sublime read.  Macfarlane’s “The Wild Places” was my second book and I loved it even more than his first one.

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane

“Wild Places” is a travelogue combined with a memoir covering a range of topics across geography, geology, ecology, history and literature. In this book, Macfarlane describes his adventures to remote places in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland as he looks for the remaining “wild places” and explores relationships and interconnections between these places and humans. There are fifteen essays in the book and each essay covers one landscape through Macfarlane’s journey and personal experiences in that landscape. His journeys take him from Beechwood near his house in Cambridge to Ynys Enlli (Island), Coruisk (Valley), Rannoch Moor (Moor), Black Wood (Forest),  Strathnaver (River Mouth), Cape Wrath (Cape), Ben Hope (Summit), Burren (Grave), Lake District (Ridge), Dorset (Holloways),Orford Ness (Storm beach), Essex Coast (Saltmarsh) and Peak District (Tor).

I loved this book and  Macfarlane’s writing style and prose. I literally read this book word-by-word, picked up a dictionary many times and savored each sentence.  Macfarlane’s descriptions are beautiful, evocative, thoughtful and informative. I loved traveling via this book in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland through these unique narratives and experiences and learnt so much along the way. I had never heard of a Holloway and definitely want to visit one now. I discovered that rocks, ferns, wood make good souvenirs. I learnt to look for nature even in smaller places such as under the rocks or in cracks. I have now figured so many newer ways of exploring places. And lastly, there are references to many books and authors that I hope to read too someday especially Waterlogs by Roger Deakins.

Though, I don’t think I will be able to do some of the things he has done such as sleep in these remote places especially in the cold, so I just loved the journey he takes the reader though his book and I imagined each of these as my own travels. Overall this book is a definite must read for everyone who loves nature, adventure and travelogues.

Macfarlane writes – “I also decided that, as I travelled, I would draw up a map to set against the road atlas. A prose map that would seek to make some of the remaining wild places of the archipelago visible again, or that would record them before they vanished for good. This would be a map, I hoped, that would not connect up cities, towns, hotels and airports. Instead, it would link headlands, cliffs, beaches, mountain-tops, tors, forests, river-mouths and waterfalls. This book is that map.”

And reading this book has inspired me to probably someday create my own unique map. 🙂