The concept that “the earliest stories are told not in print but footprint” is brought home by a walk on a beach where erosion of each tide uncovers prehistoric footprints preserved in the mud. He walks in the path of a hunter and spies prints left by playing children. He makes a wonderful digression on the anatomy of feet: Sometimes, my imagination wanders as I walk, and I wonder about the characters who have walked these same paths before me. In England, I walked in some of the ancient forests including Savernake and Sherwood and imagined days gone by. McFarlane writes, “As I walk paths, I often wonder about the origins, the impulses that have led to their creation the records they yield of customary journeys, and the secrets they keep of adventures, meetings and departures.” The acclaimed author of The Wild Placesand Underlandexamines the subtle ways we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move Someone asked what this book was like and I found myself describing it as the most satisfying fantasy novel I'd read in a long time, only it's not fantasy and it's not a novel.

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot eBook : Macfarlane, Robert

Macfarlane tends to prefer the wilder and woollier environments. His second book, The Wild Places, tried to get as close to wilderness as these islands can provide; I have not read his first, Mountains of the Mind, because of a review that said he describes whittling his frozen fingers with a penknife while crawling up, or down, some godforsaken peak.As Macfarlane himself wrote in the Author's note: 'It tells the story of walking a thousand miles or more along the old ways in search of a route to the past, only to find myself delivered again and again to the contemporary' (p364). He has a rare physical intelligence and affords total immersion in place, elements and the passage of time: wonderful' Antony Gormley Read more Details

The Old Ways - Paths The Old Ways - Paths

Macfarlane relishes wild, as well as old, places.He writes about both beautifully . . . I love to read Macfarlane' John Sutherland, Financial TimesIf you have a particular interest in the writer Edward Thomas, you will enjoy the last sections of the book. As I haven’t, other than loving the poem Adlestrop (and doesn’t everyone?), and as I’m not very familiar with the South Downs in England, I frankly found these sections a bit of a bore. That’s purely on the basis of personal interest, however, and didn’t detract from the pleasure the rest of the book gave me. In this intricate, sensuous, haunted book, each journey is part of other journeys and there are no clear divisions to be made the walking of paths is, to [Macfarlane], an education, and symbolic, too, of the very process by which we learn things: testing, wandering about a bit, hitting our stride, looking ahead and behind. Alexandra Harris, "The Guardian"" Anne Campbell on Lewis is "searching for the atavistic memory of maps of paths reclaimed by peat & time." Steve Dilworth on the Island of Harris recounts that he "has spent a lifetime making ritual objects from gathered local materials for a tribe that doesn't exist." Colorful characters abound in this book, serving as a pleasant relief from some of the more technical aspects that abide in The Old Ways. Macfarlane moves solo along the Outer Hebrides at times, occasionally sleeping in cave outcroppings while at other times taking refuge with area islanders, people who are themselves in many cases refugees from a more urban environment. He also takes part in a tenuous sea journey on a barely-seaworthy vessel. He expresses that often "voyages out become voyages in." Robert Macfarlane travels Britain's ancient paths and discovers the secrets of our beautiful, underappreciated landscape.

The Old Ways,’ by Robert Macfarlane - The New York Times ‘The Old Ways,’ by Robert Macfarlane - The New York Times

Macfarlane explores the meditative aspects of being a pedestrian not so much a travelogue as a travel meditation, it favors lush prose, colorful digressions if you ve ever had the experience, while walking, of an elusive thought finally coming clear or an inspiration surfacing after a long struggle, "The Old Ways" will speak to you eloquently and persuasively. "The Seattle Times" So much of this is written so, so beautifully, and I wanted to love it, but again there were just a few... off things that tempered that potential for me. Mainly the fact that after a while it begins to feel so, so very white-male-centric (with Nan Shepherd the regular exception to prove the rule, or at least make it that much more heavy apparent) in a way that feels really quite unnecessary - so much of the book is taken up with a combination of both meeting people who are still alive, and discussing the writings of those who have (usually) passed on, all around the context of walking the old ways, and those he chose to focus on did not always feel worth the attention. Or rather - there are others whose stories might have been far more interesting. The occasional digression from the British Isles alone - to Palestine, and to the Himalayas - shows the potential to have also digressed from this focus, but also lead to uncomfortable moments, like this one, when talking to the mother of his Palestinian friend, writer/lawyer Raja Shehadeh: This was my first book by Macfarlane, and my first book of this decade, and a good start on both fronts. I really enjoyed his style of writing, which felt immersive, though the pace of the book was sedate. I love walking myself, it is, for me, one of the most meditative things I can think to do, and The Old ways is a sort of ode to the practice. Definitely curious to read Macfarlane's much-praised newest book Underland soon!' Sublime... It sets the imagination tingling, laying an irresistible trail for readers to follow' Sunday Times A Journey on Foot", reads the subtitle, but this is the story of many journeys. Fifteen of them are made by Macfarlane himself, along paths in the British Isles and, further afield, in Spain, Palestine and Tibet. He invokes, as he goes, hundreds of previous walkers, and hundreds of pathways – across silt, sand, granite, water, snow – each with its different rhythms and secrets. So the book is a tribute to the variety and complexity of the "old ways" that are often now forgotten as we go past in the car, but which were marked out by the footfall of generations. And it is an affirmation of their connectedness as part of a great network linking ways and wayfarers of every sort. Following Macfarlane's many travels, one understands why he thinks of his project as "a journey", singular rather than plural. In this intricate, sensuous, haunted book, each journey is part of other journeys and there are no clear divisions to be made.This book took me so long to read because McFarland took me to places I knew nothing about, so I “had to” do a lot of side-reading, a leading indicator on how much I am going to love a book. His sensibilities about place and our interaction with it, being in and passing through a place, putting our being there, were wonderful to share. I highlighted many passages that are quite moving and here is one. “Paths connect. This is their first duty and their chief reason for being. They relate places in a literal sense, and by extension they relate people.” Walking a path connects us to others who came before and those who come after us. We tend to think of landscapes as affecting us most strongly when we are in them or on them, when they offer us the primary sensations of touch and sight. But there are also the landscapes we bear with us in absentia, those places that live on in memory long after they have withdrawn in actuality, and such places -- retreated to most often when we are most remote from them -- are among the most important landscapes we possess.” On landscapes, McFarlane writes “We tend to think of landscapes as affecting us most strongly when we’re in them or on them when they offer us the primary sensations of touch and sight, but there are also the landscapes we bear with us in absentia. Those places live on in memory long after they have withdrawn in actuality and such places retreated to most often when we are most remote from them are among the most important landscapes we possess.” Word maps of sea routes occur in scaldic poetry & area also folded into the Icelandic sagas, containing Landtoninger (landmarks) in the 14th century Book of Settlements, whose 100 chapters tell the story of Iceland by the Vikings & include guides to the verstrveger, or western roads of the Atlantic that led from Norway to the Orkneys, Scotland, the Hebrides & Ireland as well as to the Faeroe Islands, Iceland & Greenland, using poetic logbooks or routiers& portolani for trans-oceanic passage crossings.All of this can become rather tedious at times, rather like the adage about asking someone the time & receiving a long discourse on the history of watchmaking. However, when Macfarlane is actively putting one foot in front of the other, describing scenery & folks encountered along the way The Old Ways is quite definitely a distinct joy to read. A wonderfully meandering account of the author s peregrinations and perambulations through England, Scotland, Spain, Palestine, and Sichuan Macfarlane sparticular gift is his ability to bring a remarkably broad and varied range of voices to bear on his own pathways and to do so with a pleasingly impressionist yet tenderly precise style. Aengus Woods, themillions.com