The Wild Places

by robert-macfarlane

Hardcover, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

914.10486

Publication

GRANTA BOOKS (2007), 352 pages

Description

Explores the changing ideas of the wild in Great Britain and Ireland, from the cliffs of Cape Wrath and the storm-beaches of Norfolk to the saltmarshes and estuaries of Essex and the moors of Rannoch and the Pennines.

Media reviews

The Independent

It is in the end a deeply stirring book, in being able to find the vivid wild in places that are so trammelled with our sterile banks of knowledge about them. In using the body to step beyond the ironic into an immediacy of a tangible, audible, testable world. In reversing what Macfarlane calls

"the retreat from the real". Wildness becomes not some fragmentary thing surviving in scraps and fragments which have to be fenced around with a busy protectiveness. It is much much more than that.

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Guardian

Macfarlane also feels on the outside of things. This is partly because wildness in early 21st-century Britain is a hard thing to find - pushed to the margins (or so he begins by thinking), where it has not been entirely vanquished by pollution and modern farming and population growth. Then there

are the difficulties created by the shortcomings of language to express what he feels, and the problems of containing a proper emotional response to a landscape within a more analytic appreciation of its qualities. "I could not explain what it really looked like," he says early in the book, when visiting an island cave, "certainly not what I was doing there, among the red and purple basalts." Later, the same note returns: "Open spaces bring to the mind something which is difficult to express"; "we find it hard to make language grip landscapes that are close-toned".

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User reviews

LibraryThing member Ken-Me-Old-Mate

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.

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LibraryThing member johnwbeha

As I finished this excellent book, I had one overwhelming feeling, envy!
I envied the author for going to places I can only dream of now that I am growing old. I evidence him for his ability to explore these wonderful places so completely, man ability that would always have been beyond me. I envy

him his wonderful knowledge of so many things, both in the natural and literary worlds. But most of all I envy him his wonderful skill at writing about all these things and weaving them into this fascinating tale of the wild places in the British Isles. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

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LibraryThing member thewordygecko

Outstanding work on the natural world. Beautifully written with clear precise language, deep feeling, and a sense of history. Took me with him on every walk and scramble. Magnificent.

LibraryThing member CommonReeda

Beautifully observed and written. It is comforting to know we still have such places on these crowded islands.

LibraryThing member theforestofbooks

I was slightly nervous reading this again as I adored this book when I read it first last year. I needn’t have worried as I quickly became absorbed. The author relates his journey through the British Isles trying to track down those wild untouched places, from: mountain summits, woodlands,

beaches and even Dorset’s own wild place. His reaction to what he finds is surprising to him and thought provoking to the reader. The language and the imagery used is sublime, conjuring places vividly into life and encouraging to me to find my own wild places, to feel and see the beauty that the landscape and nature has to offer.

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LibraryThing member eleanor_eader

Macfarlane’s travelogue of his exploration of some of the country’s wildest places is a thoughtful, well-researched look at our remaining wilderness. A compelling mixture of enthusiasm, sadness and observational genius, his book takes the reader from his local beech-wood to mountain summits and

salt-marshes. His prose often takes flight to become near-poetry, but remains unpretentious and his lyricism simply adds to the atmosphere of perfect retelling, while he examines our response to, and treatment of, the wildness that mankind has dedicated his existence to conquering.

Although I enjoyed it, (particularly the author’s views on the subject of maps and how they are losing any sense of the organic), this took me a while to get through; I’m not used to travelogues, and found that the absence of a story-like thread of narrative meant I put it down more often than I would a work of fiction or biography, but despite that I found The Wild Places to be a rewarding read, that did it’s job in making me yearn for remoteness and a better relationship with the surviving natural areas in the UK.

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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee

This is another engrossing paean to the remote stretches of the world. In his other books, [The Old Ways] and [Mountains of the Mind] Robert Macfarlane has shown his passion (obsession?) for walking or climbing in some of the world's most secluded and inaccessible areas, and this book offers more

of the same.

His prose has an admirable clarity and conciseness which matches the stark landscapes he portrays, and although he conveys considerable amounts of very technical information (covering the geological composition of the landscape, and lots of aspects of mountaineering) he never loses the reader's attention, even for readers as previously ill-informed on these subjects as I am.

Here he also offers historical perspective on the yearning for solitude in some of the world's l;east hospitable locations, with a brief history of the peregrini, lone monks who would take to sea in rudderless and oarless boats to be taken wherever fate of the will of God might take them. Macfarlane travels out to a remote storm-tossed island of the Scottish coast to experience the peregrini's life for a few days.

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LibraryThing member camharlow2

The wild places of the title are all in Britain and Ireland and are areas that Macfarlane regards as possibly dangerous and yet full of energy. He chose them to reflect a variety of landscapes, such as “Island”, “Moor” and “Summit” and devotes a chapter to each. Each place is described

in eloquent, almost poetic language and prompts recollections of his visits to similar locations, but also he reflects on the fact that often, even in remote areas, the landscape has been changed by humans. His tour takes place in just over a year, which is mirrored in the changing seasons in which his visits are undertaken. During the course of his travels, his thoughts and writing, Macfarlane comes to realise that his initial definition of wild needs revising. He appreciates that wildness can also be found in small, uncared-for patches that may be discovered on our doorstep and not necessarily in remote regions.

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LibraryThing member bodachliath

Robert Macfarlane is a uniquely perceptive and eloquent writer on nature and landscape. In this book he travels to various British places in search of different types and degrees of wildness.

LibraryThing member Aspenhugger

"Are there any genuinely wild places left in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales? That is the question that writer Robert Macfarlane poses to himself as he embarks on a series of breathtaking and beautifully described journeys through some of the archipelago's most remarkable landscapes. As he

climbs, walks, and swims in all manner of weather -- sleeping on cliff tops and remote beaches, deep in snowy wildwoods and ancient meadows, and bathing in phosphorescent seas or hiking frozen rivers at night -- his understanding of nature is transformed. With lyrical elegance and passion, he entwines history and landscape in a bewitching evocation of wildness and its vital importance."
~~back cover

This is an absolutely exquisite book! The writing itself is intricate and sweet, and the author's love and compulsion for nature in all her faces and moods is compelling. I was overwhelmed to find that the author was close friends with Roger Deakin, with whom he spent many hours journeying through the wild areas of Britain. His recounting of Roger's last illness and death had me in tears as though his dying was news to me -- a heartfelt eulogy for a dear friend.

This book will not only take you to "remarkable landscapes" and lonely beautiful places, it will burnish a love of the natural world and of friends and family. Definitely a keeper!

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LibraryThing member aprille

I read this relatively soon after reading Landmarks (which I enjoyed). I find that this earlier book largely overlaps that content. It is similarly arranged by natural feature and even some of the people are the same. Though the theme of this book is in general "wildness" rather than "place and

memory" I didn't get out of it what I was looking for.

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LibraryThing member Overgaard

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

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LibraryThing member Treebeard_404

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

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