Country
matters on Booksquawk
448
pages, Penguin
Review
by Pat Black
It’s
time to dig our old walking boots out from the back of the cupboard.
Of
course they smell funny! Be something wrong if they didn’t…
Our
guide is Robert Macfarlane. His bestselling The
Old Ways is about the act of following paths, and describes journeys he’s
taken in the UK and elsewhere.
Macfarlane
isn’t afraid to get spiritual as he seeks to delineate the paths of the mind
and the psychological topography our feet follow, on clearly signposted routes
and uncharted territory alike. In considering the way, you will consider
yourself, things that have happened, things that might happen, and things that
happened to other people. These paths are internal as much as external, the
author reminds us.
This
type of thinking was old news to the Aborigines going Walkabout, or the peregrini and holy men of other
religious persuasions, looking for enlightenment on the road throughout
history. We’re travelling on a very, very old path indeed.
Macfarlane
was friends with the late, great Roger Deakin, and indeed the Waterlog author haunts the early part of
this book as Macfarlane considers a walk they’d taken through an ancient
holloway. Other long-dead writers also keep step with Macfarlane, particularly
Edward Thomas and Nan Shepherd. Indeed, Macfarlane pens a vivid reconstruction
of the former’s last days as he prepared for the front line in the First World
War – before the poet’s pathway was cut short in the crude straight lines of
the trenches.
To
follow Macfarlane’s line, writing about the natural world and our paths through
it is as important as actually walking. Considering the act - reflecting upon
the act - becomes as necessary as putting one foot in front of the other.
Macfarlane
examines the literal bedrock of Britain – chalk, gneiss – and the shifting
sands and silt above it as he walks, often in the company of fellow
enthusiasts. The book’s sub-title is actually a bit of a misnomer, as a good
portion of it is dedicated to following paths by sea to the Hebrides on a boat,
where no footsteps have voluntarily treaded apart from those laid by maniacs in
Victorian diving suits. Macfarlane’s companions aren’t quite in the “rich
eccentrics and artists” category we see now and again in Roger Deakin’s work,
though there are a few people who seem charmingly detached from the cares and
hassles of ritualised, 4x4 beat wage slavery. Who doesn’t want to get away from
that, frankly?
Special
mention must go to the artist Macfarlane stays with, who has acquired a human
skeleton. He wants to bore a hole in a gigantic rock, like coring an apple,
place the bones inside, then replace the bore hole and leave it for a few
millennia until someone discovers it, and wonders what was going on.
I
have been thinking about this for months. To quote The Joker: “I don’t know if
it’s art, but I like it.”
Other
routes include part of the Camino de Santiago in Spain and a perilous track –
for more than one reason – in Gaza.
Perhaps
the most memorable walk is on the Broomway in Essex, a beach path which is
swamped by the tide at certain times of the day. Under a strict time limit, in
misty conditions, with the hard-packed sands like glass under their feet,
Macfarlane and a companion dice with death. Their journey is hazy, almost
psychedelic in tone, divorced from reality in a dreamlike state. Like the
strange compulsion which might seize you to leap off a cliff face as you peer
over the edge, Macfarlane’s feet seem to want to take him out to sea, even as
it advances towards him, and certain doom.
Climbing
can be a deadly serious business, of course – quite literally. The hairiest
things ever got for me was a stroll along Striding Edge in high winds, but I’d
bet that drop has accounted for surer feet than mine over the years. Macfarlane
keeps loftier company, heading out among the big boys in the Himalayas. He
focuses on the high country near Mount Kailash, a place of ancient pilgrimage
for Buddhists in Tibet.
He
enjoys the trip, but his guide tells horrendous stories about people who have
been killed trying to reach the summit. Macfarlane successfully fights the urge
to reach for the top. In considering that spectacular snowy peak, cut through
with black rock, he echoes the thoughts of Roger Deakin, who planned to swim in
the Gulf of Corryvreckan, only to think better of it on the day. Some natural
phenomena are absolutely fine to just look at.
There’s
more hair-raising stuff when Macfarlane recounts a hike in the Cairngorms, when
he follows the footsteps of an earlier, unknown climber in the snow only to
find that the tracks appeared to have vanished off a cliff-face. For a few
decidedly hirsute moments, it seems as if the author might follow. He is candid
about his feelings of panic and guilt at having veered off a safe route and
come so close to a nasty end.
There
are other-worldly fears in The Old Ways,
too. Macfarlane joins Guy N Smith in the club of “British writers who claim to
have seen a feral big cat in Britain” after a creepy encounter with a
glowing-eyed creature as he drives through the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire. A
friend who is with him corroborates the sighting, and also thinks it was a big
cat of some kind.
Even
spookier is an experience he has while camping out alone in Chanctonbury Ring,
a notoriously haunted copse in the South Downs where he is menaced at night by
an unseen, shrieking creature outside his tent.
If it’s a bird, then it’s no bird he’s ever heard before.
Even
if you’ve never experienced hillwalking outside of screaming abuse at Tomb Raider in the 1990s, or embarking
on Peter Jackson’s entire Lord Of The
Rings special edition saga on DVD, this is a gripping journey. It is
infused with the spirit of adventure, but also a sense of wonder – an
unbeatable combination.
If
you’re like me – someone whose spirit would haunt less well travelled paths,
should spirit exist – The Old Ways
will make you hungry for the open road, and eager to head for that twilit blue
world glimpsed only fleetingly, like the green ray, somewhere between the
treeline and the far horizon.
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