Robert Macfarlane (1) (1976–)

This is a book to read slowly, and to savour. Robert Macfarlane is a man to whom walking is more than an enjoyable pastime. It informs his life. He walks the ancient pathways of England, of Europe, of the world. He considers what paths mean to our history and our topography.

He looks at paths that are not paths as most of us understand them: passages on the sea. It interested me to think about his idea of reversing our usual take on maps, and to empty the landmass of routeways in favour of populating the sea with them. In this way we gain a greater understanding of very ancient peoples - back to the Bronze Age and beyond - who realised that with the wind behind you, then unthinkable distances could easily be covered. Distant seaboards exchanged goods and culture in a way such people would not have done with their landward neighbours. But he's equally fascinating in Spain, in Palestine,in Tibet, but most of all in his beloved British Isles. This is where he ends his book, ruminating about depressive poet and keen walker Edward Thomas' life and final days in the Great War.

If you enjoy walking - and even if you don't - this will change your mindset about the way you view the paths you travel.… (mais)

Over the last few years I must have bought at least 10 copies of Landmarks to send to special friends. It was originally lent to me my a friend, Laura Hartley after a discussion about where we thought we belonged. Robert Macfarlane doesn't just write about place, he writes about writers who write about place. Consequently, this book's chapters celebrate the work of wonderful writers such as Nan Shepherd, Barry Lopez, John Muir, J.A. Baker, and Roger Deakin. Their books have cascaded out of Landmarks on to my shelves and into my understanding of place.

I love the way Macfarlane tastes the nuances of language as it creates place. I just wish I could talk to him about my place and actually show him what it means to me to be in place.

I didn't start at the beginning when I read this book and often recommend to my friends that they start at the end with the enchanting Chapter 'Childish'.… (mais)

My copy of Mountains of the Mind got wet before I read it. The pages were all buckled and the cover slowly disintegrated over the week or two that I tucked it away while traveling through bush fires. For some reason this gradual erosion fitted the sense of frayed worn-outness that beset the various characters who mountaineer through time in this wonderful book.

I'm a mountain person. I like solitude, cool air, high vantage points, rock under my feet, and the feeling of being enclosed by a broken skyline of crags and cliffs. So, I was looking forward to reading this book and, as with everything I've read so far of Robert Macfarlane's (Landmarks, Underland), I was not disappointed.

He traces the idea of mountains from places to be avoided to objects of fascination and compulsion, arriving at Mallory's failed attempts to climb Everest and then, best of all, a fleeting encounter with a hare. I say this because I think Robert Macfarlane is at his best when describing his own experiences, like the Chapter, Red Dancers in Underland. His courage and perceptive sensitivity shine through when he is alone.

Mountains return to us the priceless capacity for winder which can so insensibly be leached away by modern existence.

… (mais)

Robert Macfarlane is one of my favourite authors. His interest in language and place is just the stepping off point for a profound series of reflections on how we perceive the earth. With Underland we are taken beneath the earth. Fascinating as the different caverns are (each is quite extraordinary), the Chapter entitled 'The Red Dancers' appears to me to reach another level. Here Robert is on a personal quest and the tension mounts.… (mais)