A good read...

I have just finished reading The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane; in it the author embarks on a number of journeys around Britain and Ireland in search of wilderness which he explores both geographically and intellectually.

One of the chapters that stood out for me was about Holloways, ancient tracks or roads that cross our country; Macfarlane explores the Holloways of Dorset in the company of Roger Deakin (more on Roger in a future post). Macfarlane talks about how these tracks would follow contours, ancient field systems, valleys and rivers; they followed the grain of the landscape and worked with in it. Primarily this would be because of the logistics of actually constructing these roads, rudimentary tools, if any, would be used, equally the way in which people travelled, on foot, by horse and cart would necessitate where possible keeping to the natural shelter of valleys and woods.

The motorways and A-roads of today don’t have a dialogue with the landscape they pass through; hills have been blasted through, ancient forest felled, archeological sites concreted over. The way we travel has also changed, the landscape is all too often something observed from the window of a speeding car, just as our roads are not sympathetic to the landscape they run through, our connection with the landscape as we travel is also almost non existent. Walking these ancient tracks, following ridges, streams and contours helps us gain a greater understanding of the landscape we live in, a world away from observing the world from our air conditioned cars.

One of they key themes of the book is cartography and the way we map the landscape. The AA road atlas is but one way of mapping our country – Macfarlane travels to the wild places of our lands, islands, woods, ridges, valleys and estuaries and creates a new map, a geological map, a philosophical map, a historical map of the wild places that remain in our country.

In short it’s a call to the wild and for us city folk a reminder that we need space, that we are, at the end of the day, rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. A humbling and rather beautiful book.