dovegreyreader scribbles

The Wild Places ~ Robert Macfarlane

In an e mail correspondence with Robert Macfarlane last year (and how thrilled I am that he is to chair the Man Booker Prize) we joked about the fact that you might all be saying 'Oh not him again,' each time I posted about The Old Ways. I did warn Robert that there was to be more of the same now that I have finished The Wild Places, so I hope you can cope. It was one of my highlights of 2012 to meet and talk with Robert at Port Eliot Festival , a memorable conversation that I will always treasure, as I hope will those who were there to hear it on that hot summer's day in the dovegreyreader tent...

and by his own admission Robert doesn't expect to be yarn-bombed again any time soon.

But nor did I expect a book or its author to transform and re-enthuse my walking quite so radically. I have now read The Old Ways twice, and alongside it, and since that spirit-enhancing holiday in Orkney, I have
been meandering my way through The Wild Places... probably years after you have all read it, but all coinciding with a decision to do some proper job walking again through last year and into this one.

On reflection I can see that Bookhound and I had perhaps let our serious walking dwindle once the children had grown and flown, and once our dear old border collie had trotted off to round up heavenly sheep...in fact I think we missed them all. Years ago we would tramp for miles up on Dartmoor together and come home muddy and tired but happy, or we would drag thechildren off to Switzerland for summer walking holidays (sorry kids) ...

None of which seemed to put them off, perhaps the opposite because they all took to the Great Outdoors in their own ways, it becoming for each of them an intrinsic part of their lives, and we would now be hard-pushed to keep up with their pace. Gradually, and without those companions, Bookhound and I chose to do different things together leaving it all to be rediscovered again now, but in a new and different way.

Divided into chapter headings that equate to place...Beechwood, Island, Valley, Moor, Forest, River Mouth, Cape, Summit, Grave, Ridge, Holloway, Storm Beach, Saltmarsh, Tor and returning in conclusion to its starting point Beechwood, I can now see The Wild Places as a circular route that mirrors so many of the different places that many of us have probably known and walked.

To start and come back to that place we know with a different understanding has been one of the many experiences for me of reading the book, and for that place to be a Beechwood has special resonance. This is the Green Lane or Holloway, a few yards from our front door, that we scuffle up with the dogs most days to get to 'our' Beechwood. It is not exactly 'our' Beechwood, but if loving and visiting a place day in day out counts, then it is certainly 'ours' in spirit, a Wild Place we know well and through every season and I will be taking you up there every so often through this year.

But The Wild Places is also a book to take the mind back to pre-infinity and establish a sense of the vastness of time that has sculpted what I am seeing...

'Wildness... is an expression of independence from human direction, and wild land can be said to be self-willed land. Land that proceeds according to its own laws and principles, land whose habits - the growth of its trees, the movements of its creatures, the free descent of its streams through its rocks - are of its own devising and own execution.'

'Like our garden then' I now see I have cheekily scribbled in the margin.

If I could see the American hardwood forest I think I would be completely overawed at the idea that it has waited seventy million years for people to come and live in it.

I will never look at an ancient oak in the same way again knowing that they take 300 years to grow, 300 to live and another 300 to die. Nor to take lightly the scourge of the plague which decimated 30 million elm trees back in the 1960s, and the new one that may do likewsie with our ash trees right now. Robert Macfarlane gave currency, context and perspective to what I was seeing as I travelled through this book, and doubtless will see as I walk, with care and attention, my own versions of his chapter headings which will start with our Beechwood.

Robert notes a quote from a source he has long forgotten which echoes in my mind still...

'Landscape was here long before we were even dreamed. It watched us arrive.'

And I guess, being realistic without being maudlin, it will watch us depart eventually.

Off the beaten track up on Dartmoor and we come across stone circles...

and standing stones...
and you cannot fail to get that sense of a rooted and solid, yet largely unknown past.

Robert draws his own map of his Wild Places, a 'prose map' he calls it, and every reader could likewise draw their own. It is one of the merits of a book like this, a book that fires the imagination of the reader to explore their own territory with the compass set in the direction of mindful-ness (well, best use a proper one and a map too maybe)  It is the close observation and that joined-up thinking that I love, those random echoes, the memories and associations that place can ignite.

Books like The Wild Places are not for reading in a weekend and blogging about on the Monday for the sake of having something to say... not that I ever do. I have been reading it for six months, my thoughts on it are so elongated and stretched out that it is hard to rein them all back in under the banner of a single post, and I am not sure a single post does books like this any justice whatsoever.

So please accept this as an introduction to a book of permanence around here, and one I will be writing about heading by heading as I explore and consider my own Wild Places. through next year.

I am sure you all have Wild Places too...

 

 

Robert Macfarlane @PortEliotFest

I had been looking forward to ALL the events in the dovegreyreader tent and had been doing my 'homework' for weeks beforehand. It is a real treat to be able to create a relaxed and informal space within which to ask our questions and listen to the writers talk, but I knew it would be an extra special occasion to talk with Robert Macfarlane about The Old Ways. This has been such a special book for so many of us, and I know that personally it has transformed not only the way that I walk along but the thinking that takes place as I do so.

The audience and I had plenty of questions for Robert and he gave wonderful replies ... connections with Edward Thomas, paths that need walking and our right to roam, where to walk barefoot (The Isle of Lewis), risk aversion, walking in fearful territory...The Broomway and Ramallah and I think the pictures tell their own story about how relaxed and enjoyable this all felt... 

Robert Macfarlane talking in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

Robert Macfarlane signing books in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

More thought about the gifts and the Knitsuke, whilst not exactly knitted, did allow us to incorporate a Devil's Eyeball stone collected (legally) from Ascension Island by The Weatherman (also answers to Mr Knit Angel) whilst on a six month posting there during the Falklands conflict. It was a little kit which we called There and Back Again..the old ways of navigating.

Robert Macfarlane and his knitsuke in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

You might also notice that Robert didn't escape the yarnbombing either...that wristband made by the Knit Angel while Robert spoke.

Next the quiltsuke.

Well I loved making this...a hand appliqued and quilted picture of Robert's sea voyage from Lewis to the Shiants which is recorded in The Old Ways...

Robert Macfarlane and his quiltsuke in the dovegreyreader tent at Port Eliot 2012 © Tommy Hatwell (all rights reserved)

Out of sight is a little boat heading for the Shiants (my thanks to Google Earth for helping me get them in the right place) and for the record, the beams from the lighthouse (I checked, it is on the north of the island) are quilted in glow-in-the-dark thread which really does, and the ribbon that ties the whole thing up into a scroll is Cornish tartan for a Cornish festival.

I said it to Robert and the audience, and do you know what, I'll say it again here...if The Old Ways doesn't win prizes I will eat my walking boots.

 

The Long Man of Wilmington...Fran walks The Old Ways

Now that we are over the Jubigleefulness and Robert Macfarlane's book is now out there fending for itself, Team Old Ways have their walking boots on and cameras to hand in ther respective landscapes, thus proving the wonder of these group read approaches to a book. I think we will cover a lot of ground between us and we look forward to sharing those excursions with you in the coming months. You may remember Fran's wonderful excursions with Team Edward Thomas... and of course her outing with Robert and Ronald last week... well don't tell Mr HB but this time she has been out on a date with yet another man...

When I saw that Lynne had put the Ravilious painting of the Long Man of Wilmington up on the blog a while ago with our thoughts about Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways, I was spurred in to action to get some photos posted of the walk I made up to the Long Man last month. It was a real early spring day, a very stiff east wind so pretty cold, but wonderful shadows on the Downs from the clouds as they raced across the sky.

I walked from Wilmington village up to the foot of the Long Man, then took a steep path on up Windover Hill and over the top.
 
Here you can look south towards the sea and Newhaven. The South Downs way runs along the top of the Wilmington hill towards Alfriston, dropping down to cross over the river Cuckmere just before the parish church which can be seen in the photo.

It seems little changed from 1939 when Ravilious painted the Old Man. Even a barbed wire fence is almost in the same place.

No one knows for sure the age of the Long Man, or even why this figure was chosen, but various theories abound. At 226 feet tall it is one of the largest carved figures in the world. The modern Druids claim it is Iron Age, as there is a fort from this time on top of the hill, just ramparts and dips in the ground now. They gather for celebrations at special times on their calendar such as May Day. In 2003 more research was done and the evidence collected suggests it was first carved in the mid 16th century. But then others claim it could be as old as Neolithic times as there is also a long barrow from this age on the top of the hill, above the figure.

What ever the truth is I am very fond of the Long Man. He can be seen from the train when I am heading home from London, and always a welcome sight.

I plan to return there later in the year when the fields are a different colour, the grain having ripened. I wonder what Ravilious would have made of the lurid yellow of the rape fields which are splashed across the whole landscape in this area?

More of The Old Ways ...

On this second and more measured walk through Robert Macfarlane's book I am taking my bearings from the subtle little compass points which are different for each chapter, and which I had missed first time round, whilst the series of words which follow seem to be offering me a route, the latitude and longitude of the book, some waymarkers to guide me through what is to come.

Perhaps these are the wordish equivalent of the markers that guided Robert as he took to the treacherous footpath known as the Broomway, vast sand and mud-flats off the Essex coast with a tidal race that will catch the innocent walker unawares. The cockle shells dropped every hundred yards or so to steer him back because the victims buried in the nearby churchyard at Foulness are testament to the risk. If it hadn't been there Wilkie Collins would have had to invent it says Robert, and I immediately got the drift (sorry wrong word) and that sense of gothic eeriness.

The dangers are legendary and well-documented. The mist will descend, the coastal lights will disorientate the mind, the scale and distance will distort the eye and beguile the walker into heading out to sea when they believe they are returning inland, whilst all about the mud waits to suck in another panicky victim.

Well of course Robert negotiates it successfully or no book, but it felt a bit touch and go as he set off with his equally nervous friend David. and with the final words of advice from their absent guide ringing in their ears..

'The Broomway will be there another day, but if you try walking in the mist, you may not be. So if it's misty when you arrive at Wakering Stairs, turn around and go home.'

'It was misty when I arrived at Wakering Stairs...'

and as the pair walked out..

'I'm worried that if I don't make it back in time, the tide will float off with my shoes,' I said to David.

'If we don't make it back in time, the tide will float off with your body, ' he replied unconsolingly. 

It all made me think how risk averse and fear-filled we have necessarily become, because in these days of multi-media we know every single thing that can and does go wrong. Who in their right mind would head out across Morecambe Bay unguided in the wake of the Chinese cockle-pickers tragedy... 

It is very easy for me to wax lyrical about a book like this, I'll buy into any amount of psycho-geography, but as Kathleen Jamie says of nature in her book Sightlines, 

'It's not all primroses and otters...'

and I was mindful that Robert Macfarlane's muse and guiding spirit for this book was Edward Thomas, whose true subjects 'are disconnection, discrepancy and unsettledness', so this is not all pretty, and it is not all cosy and comfortable.

The chapter entitled Limestone seemed almost incongruous, truth be told I was a bit disconcerted to be uprooted from the Highlands of Scotland, where I was having a lovely time in the Gneiss and the Granite and really enjoying the scenery, only to be deposited in Ramallah in Palestine with Robert and his good friend, former human-rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh. But on second reading that location is assuming far greater significance and has become a pivotal moment in the book for me now...a sort of crossroads on the journey, a path it would very easy not to take, but one which necessarily must be, by someone.

All reminding me of The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost's poem that seemed to urge Edward Thomas on the road to France and perhaps, though this is a different century and a different country, this might be about creating a version of the world that Edward Thomas also faced as he headed into a war zone.

Perhaps this is also about the very different experience of walking whilst exposed to conflict and threat, with the potential for harm, injury and death at the hands of A.N.Other always uppermost in the mind... as several of the word-waymarkers suggest..

'Walking as resistance.... Bullet holes & bullet-casings... Walk, Don't Walk..'

Not everyone has the luxury of walking around green fields with lovely views, so with that walk, which is laden with genuine fear and anxiety, comes a much deeper connection with lives, with history and with the landscape... and Robert Macfarlane may well be in the line-up for the 100m final in a few weeks time, because having felt the fear and done it anyway, I doubt his lightning-speed scramble up that buttress, when he thought he may have been about to be ambushed, could be beaten.

But as Robert Macfarlane says,

'Paths are the habits of a landscape. They are acts of consensual making. It's hard to create a footpath on your own...paths need walking'

so The Old Ways is a book about challenge too, and with multi-dimensional challenges to the reader to engage with the landscape in every direction, not just across and following the signposts, but to think about what lies beneath the feet and what may be over there beyond the horizons of our own vision and experience, and to think about what may have gone before, and to think about what transitory imprint we each leave on those paths too as we add to the sum of millions of years.

And it all feels like a slightly subversive endorsement of my right to roam, of which I am a skilled but slightly lily-livered exponent, living as we do slap-bang in the middle of the very clearly way-marked Tamar Valley Trail. I ignore the signs and wander all over the place here. I shut gates carefully and walk around the edges of fields. I risk-assess for raging bulls, I attempt to coax stray sheep back into the fold and I try not to frighten the horses. If stopped (I never have been)  I would probably take the coward's way out and express surprise whilst apologising profusely for having my map upsidedown, rather than expounding my human rights. Don't get me wrong, Robert is not instigating such action, though he does acknowledge the constraints when writing about footpaths..

'...a labyrinth of liberty, a slender network of common land that still threads through our aggressively privatized world of barbed wire and gates, CCTV cameras and 'No Trespassing' signs.'

When we first moved here eighteen years ago we used to pass a very menacing sign painted in dripping red on a gate a few miles away saying  'Keep out...I am watching you...'

It just used to make me feel cross and slightly rebellious rather than fearful and law-abiding, a mood I may have unwittingly passed onto my children thinking back to the Kayaker's dare-devil bandit runs on out-of-bounds rivers years later. And all making me want to access my inner-trespasser, because somehow a book like this makes me feel that these Old Ways should and do belong to all of us.

 

 

The Old Ways - A Journey on Foot ~ Robert Macfarlane

'...there are kinds of knowing that only feet can enable, as there are memories of a place that only feet can recall...'

I can only imagine that if this book is of little interest to you, then you may just have heaved a big *sigh* and thought ' Oh no not that again,' and if that is the case you have my everso humble apologies ... and you might want to stride out on your journey around the blogosphere right now.

For those of you who have stayed a bit longer, thank you, it is publication day this week so time to share my thoughts on The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane, and wave the book on its way as it starts its own big journey, walking off into the world.

Team Old Ways have been fortunate enough to have been reading this for months now, and me even longer, but I knew the minute I laid eyes on it and read this in the introduction, that this would be a special book for me and hopefully many others...

'...an exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt ancient paths, of the tales that tracks keep and tell, of pilgrimage and trespass, of songlines and their singers and of the starnge continents that exist within countries.'

And I immediately thought of Maggie Pearly lane.

Maggie Pearly lane (and who knows if it is spelt Purly, Purley, Purlie, Pearlie... because this is oral history a la Devon) is one of the many green lanes that I walk in these parts of the Shire. I only know of its name because it is in the Gamekeeper's patch and he knows

everything...except only the bare 'facts'. That Maggie lived locally and hanged herself somewhere along this lane is the lore, and of course her ghost walks up and down it...as do I, and it would seem Maggie always wreaks her revenge on my shoes.

I will find out more one day.

But The Old Ways has all made me think more keenly about my feet inside those shoes too...

'The whole foot is a document of motion, inscribed by repeated action. Babies - from those first foetal footfalls, the kneading of sole against womb-wall, turning themselves like astronauts in black space - have already folded and creased their soles by the time they emerge into the world..'

And I think about a baby's foot and that primitive Babinski reflex it holds for the first year or so of life. If you stroke the sole of a baby's foot from the toes down watch those tiny toes spread out...it's heart-melting magic.

I am now on my second and much slower read of The Old Ways and unlocking more secrets of a book that I know will have a permanent shelf-life here. 

The first read had all the anticipation of an unknown journey...

Where would we going next... 

What would we be seeing...

Who might we meet...

What might go wrong...

And I tagged along a bit like a very keen puppy, embracing Robert's own description of his journey in writing this book...

'the traveller's usual mix of excitement, incompetence,... adventure and epiphany...'

as his chapter titles took me to Chalk, Silt, Water South and North, Peat, Gneiss, Granite, Limestone and more via Track and Path.

It is the second read (still in progress) which feels much more like a sojourn, taking time to soak up the writing, which feels beautifully supple and absorbing, and of the step-into-these-boots-and-know-this-for-yourself variety. You may not have come across this genre before, but it is the best way I can think of to describe the routes various offered to the reader to draw them into the journey. When the skylarks 'pelted' their song down, and the light 'pearled' on the barley to a backdrop of hawthorn hedges which 'foamed whilst the wood pigeons 'clattered', well I knew where I was.

Likewise I recognised the starlings 'making their car-alarm trills, their aerosol can rattles and their camera-shutter clicks' because this is not all idyllic Arcadian nostalgia and sentimental wandering, time frequently collapses in on itself and the modern landscape edges its way in  via fly-tipped rubbish blocking gateways, adding yet another layer of geological complexity.

I can see it now... the fossil hunter in a zillion years time finding the preserved vacuum cleaner 'whose transparent body was filled with black flies' and whisking it straight off to the Natural History Museum, which will probably still be standing, and where they will hold a special exhibition of King Tut proportions probably to be called The Dyson Era or something.

And this has also brought to my attention the beauty of the geological map of the British Isles, not something I could even have feigned interest in before now.

Robert likens it to the intricate marbling of a Victorian endpaper and indeed the book utilises that by using the map on its own endpapers. But when I try to get my head around the idea that the chalk in that green corner of the south east was laid down on the seabed at the rate of about 1mm per century over a period of about 35 million years and now just look at it...

...well I can't quite get my head around the scale of all that. yet when I am out walking now I can somehow shrink it right back down to Edward Thomas's vision of

'path as story, with each new walker adding a new note or plot-line along the way.' 

With my interest in geology, and what may lie beneath my feet now picqued I discovered a forgotten copy of Richard Fortey's book The Hidden Landscape on the shelf. By the time you read this (DV etc) we will be in Orkney sampling... well more of the same actually, the identical Devonian sandstone geology as home if you look at the map carefully, the country top and tailed in rusty orange ochre, and you can be sure I will have been conducting Did You Know Pleistocene seminars as we traversed the Great Glen from Fort William to Inverness en route.

There are also some clever little nuances in The Old Ways that had completely passed me by in my rush to reach the destination first time around, but I'll tell you about those tomorrow...

 

 

Team Old Ways... more first footings

Every single thing I write about Team Old Ways seems to involve a pun, and it's only then that I realise how much the language of walking pervades the every day...so you'll have to believe me when I say that they are really getting into their stride with Robert Macfarlane's book now. For me, one of the really interesting aspects is that we are a group of individuals, all reading the same book but taking it into different landscapes around the UK, and around the world, and interepreting it in the light of our own journeys, in our own very personal way.

This is proving to be a really enjoyable project...here are a few more of their First Footings...

Roxane ... Reading The Old Ways, I quickly became a committed reader, "enchanted" by Robert Macfarlane's way of guiding me through his journeys into wishing that they would be mine. By bringing back to life some of his heroes, Robert Macfarlane is passing on the "flame" enlightening the chosen paths in a multitude of colors and dimensions. The images dance keeping pace with the words, steps, history, people and tradition. All find a rhythm, the rhythm of lives echoing through the landscapes, beating the foot on this Earth, our shelter, our universal connection with mankind, sending a wish to the future. I am looking forward to discovering the dormant mysteries under my local paths, a delightful way to enhance the experience of the journey ahead in the Pacific Northwest, my corner of the World.

Thank you to Robert Macfarlane for such an inspiring personal account of his experiences as a knowledgeable wanderer.

 

Liz...Firstly I want to record the privilege I have felt at being able to read The Old Ways ahead of publication; it somehow echoes the adventure of the book – going into the unknown, but with the knowledge and experience of a master guide.

Yet at first I felt alarmed at what I perceived to be a reckless approach to his travels. Robert seemed to just hurtle off without a care in the world, and then as I read on I realised that there is a gender issue here –  as a middle aged woman I would really struggle to just up and off, and when tired, or night fell, chuck my sleeping bag on a grassy knoll under the stars. But it was the vicarious experience that I was enjoying – I could piggy back onto Robert’s adventures and yet be safe and warm.

From a psychological perspective his journeys are informed by Edward Thomas’s exhortations to train his eye to detect the disturbances and imprints on the landscape. In many ways perhaps it's the same for our own sense of well being – we need to observe the terrain of our lives so we can recognise the disturbances, and come to understand their significance to our own journey through life.

 

Julie...I almost always walk with my husband, who is from California and started backpacking in the Sierra Nevada mountains as a teenager. Before meeting him at age 20, I had very little experience of "nature walks" or nature in general. I'm from a suburb of New  York City -- not exactly a "nature girl." So my husband's point of view about the outdoors has shaped mine. Over the years this has been challenging because our personal aesthetics are very different. I like small, complex environments -- tidal pools or vernal ponds, for example. He likes huge sweeping vistas and bare rock. He likes to go up. Steeply.

I have not read many nature narratives.  I have a hard time following and mentally visualizing most writer's descriptions of landscapes. And because I think of this subject as belonging more to my husband, I'm happy to leave it to him.  The two nature books I remember enjoying most are Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods (because I live near the Appalachian Trail, and because it was funny and self-deprecating), and Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses. The Old Ways is thus a departure for me as a book type. It's hard work because I am not very familiar with the English countryside -- it's something I only know (in a sketchy way) from novels and movies.  But the work has been very rewarding, in particular the chapter "Silt," which I loved for its mood and descriptive powers as well as the strangeness of an ancient path --  in the water.

So far I haven't felt that I am seeing my own part of the world with special new eyes, or words, but it has been good to have the project as a spur to get out and look around.

 

Sue...

'I lay down to sleep, placed an ear to the turf and imagined the depths of history the soil held ......'

writes Robert Macfarlane. So often when we walk through a landscape there is a tendency to appreciate it only as a visual experience; Robert Macfarlane has an awareness of its history, geology and spirituality. Not just a place to reflect, landscape can influence the way we think and more than that, draw us out beyond our thinking (to paraphrase Edward Thomas).

Shunning the more exotic locations I have visited, I will be placing my ear to the soil of my local park. Although I cannot claim to have lived "long & faithfully in a single place" I have acquired an intimate knowledge of a park I walk round most days. To date, I have been guilty of only looking skin deep and using it as a sanctuary to reflect. Under RM's influence, I will endeavour to find out more about its geological past; the historical figures such as Robert Louis Stevenson who walked its paths; its creative use as an open air theatre and my encounters with the individuals who currently use this landscape.

 

George ... The Old Ways has inspired me to explore a location I have often thought about. A relaxing, buzzing and colourful place  - at least in Summer. Here it is...

Swaddywell Field by Carry Akroyd

This picture on my wall transports me to John Clare country. I remain scandalously ignorant of this naturalist and poet. The Oldways resonates with layers of history, geology, art and wildlife. Discovering the same for Swaddywell Field’s charms is my quest!

 

 

 

Fran meets Ronald and Robert at Charleston..

I have planned a sequence of posts coming up about Robert Macfarlane's book The Old Ways to coincide with publication day next week, but I thought you would enjoy a preview with Fran's wonderful account of a trip to Charleston in Sussex last weekend to hear Robert in conversation with Ronald Blythe....and my thanks to Fran for this as always and of course the wonderful photos...

 

Saturday could not have been more perfect for going to hear Robert Macfarlane at Charleston Festival. Clear blue skies, hot sun and a fresh breeze.

Charleston was looking its flowery, Bloomsbury best.

The garden beginning to show its summer glory; a riot of purple iris, pink roses and masses of aquilegia's in varied hues.

The marquee for the events had been set up in Bloomsbury style.

The bookcases seen behind the chairs are photo blow ups on panels. Some of the old suitcases were painted Charleston style,and one planted up with wildflowers.....could start a new fashion. Inevitably the chairs were covered in Duncan Grant fabric. By the time midday arrived every seat was taken.

Olivia Laing led Ronald Blythe, a very sprightly 90 year old and Robert Macfarlane to their seats and introduced them to us.  Despite Olivia annoucing that both would be reading excerpts from their books both Ronald and Robert declined. Instead both spoke freely on the influences they had had, the people and places which had inspired their work.

Ronald, who spoke first was delightful. He lives in a house, Bottengoms Farm which he inherited from his friend John Nash, brother of Paul, both war artists, but also painters of the countryside. Through the Nash's Ronald met many interesting artists and writers, especially members of the Bloomsbury set. He has written about Carrington, met Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant yet never, until Saturday, had he visited Charleston. He was delighted to finally see the house he has heard and read so much about...

"Certain places belong in our memories and yet we have not visited them". 

It was he said, just as he had thought it would be, even the garden..

"very like my own, only tidier".

He went on to tell how houses such as his own and Charleston were so often rented by writers and artists, especially between the wars. They created colonies of creativity, cut off from the outside world, yet connecting with each other. I was struck that here was someone whose life was lived alongside those who we look on as WW1 artists and writers, a tangible link with the past. 
Ronald talked of his daily discipline; writing in the morning, gardening in afternoon. Adding that many of these creative people he has known gardened too, but described themselves as "plantsmen" as he does. He is interested in music, worked with Benjamin Brittain at Aldeburgh, enjoys architecture and, he said:

" I have had a wonderful life, with so many friends. They come to see me and we give each other things and books, that is why my house is full of so many memories." 

In his latest book At the Yeomans House he has written more of the people he has met, as well as the history of his house which dates back to Elizabethan times, but in a delightful, rambling sort of way, as though he is speaking to you. He looks at the latches and door handles wondering who has touched them over the centuries. He tells of how the barns would have been full of working horses, and the men who cared for them, of how land use has changed over the centuries, yet we have glimpses of it in the old buildings and their contents. 

Then it was Robert Macfarlane's time to speak.

For those of you who have read The Wild Places you may recall the chapter "Holloway" where he tells of visiting old, hidden drovers roads in Dorset with Roger Deakin. It was that experience, where they felt in touch with the past so much that the idea for The Old Ways was born. "Where", Robert said, "time pleated itself".

He had returned to the droveway a year or so ago, some six or seven after his first visit and found traces he and Roger had left; where they had cut holly branches for sticks, in their own way adding to the history of the places. 

He spoke of paths as communal places, and how they join one community to another, paths cross each other, as lives do, trails converge. Obviously he was speaking to an audience who have yet to read The Old Ways so he was explaining the ideas behind it. He mentioned and told a little of the last walk in the book, Print, as inter-tidal space is one which cannot be controlled. 

At this point Olivia Laing started to ask both men questions. it was lovely to see that Robert always waited for Ronald to speak first. Robert had, he told us, visited Ronald whilst in the early stages of writing The Old Ways, returning some books he had borrowed several years before and both joked about library fines. It feels an almost father/son relationship between them. 

Whilst discussing their differences; the way Ronald very much stays at home and people come to him whereas Robert goes in search of people to walk with in a variety of landscapes, Ronald told the story of Helen Thomas visiting Ivor Gurney when he was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum after suffering shell shock in WW1. 

Briefly, Ivor Gurney was a young admirer of Edward Thomas as well as musician and composer in his own right. Ivor had met with Thomas in Gloucestershire before the war and they had walked together. 
Helen, after Edward's death went to visit him, and was shocked at his state. Wondering how she could help she returned taking some of Edwards maps with her. Spread out on his bed she showed him the footpaths he had walked with Thomas. He suddenly became animated and "walked" the paths with his fingers, for a while less tortured by his state of mind. 

Ronald also spoke of John Clare, and his lack of privacy as a working ploughman. 

Both agreed they needed time alone, but also the stimulation of other artists and writers as well. Robert acknowledged how much he owed to all those people he has written of in The Old Ways for opening his eyes to the variety of paths and passages. 

Robert was interesting on the subject of Edward Thomas. He was drawn to him through his poetry and writings, yet found a man who wished he was the man he wasn't. Although at times nature was a solace to him, at other times Thomas felt it was indifferent to his plight. It was not until he went into the army, and over to France that the burden of expectation left him. A topic familiar to those of us reading Matthew Hollis last year.

Ronald said that the experience of war influenced how artists saw the landscape. Artist's such as the Nash's were profoundly moved by the Western Front; birds still sang there and poppies flourished despite the devastation all around. 

Robert spoke of absent landscapes such as those longed for by exiles, prisoners and refugees. Again this brought him back to Thomas who felt a familiarity in the chalk landscapes of Northern France, yet with out the pressures of home. 

Questions from the audience included one about landscapes on and from the water. This drew in Olivia Laing whose book To the River tells of a six day walk she made down the length of the River Ouse in Sussex one summer. Robert talked about his Broomway walk as being neither land or water, and that rivers and glaciers are the oldest routes of all. Ronald said the landscape as seen from the river is different from when viewed from land. 

In all the hour and half flashed by and soon I was one among many, for the tent was full, who joined the queue for Robert Macfarlane to sign my book. Plenty went straight to the bookstall and purchased a copy of The Old Ways. 

Robert was easy to talk too, and delighted to meet a Team Old Ways member. He is so overjoyed that we have started to follow so many paths of our own, above all that we "got" the book. He said there is always some apprehension just before publication day, so the First Footings on Lynne's blog were a delight to him. Judging by the response at Charleston and in this weekend's press he need worry no more. 

It was pretty hot by now and when he asked where I had walked recently, I told him I had been up on Firle Beacon [a mile or so away] the day before, early in the morning. Robert looked slightly wistful and said how he would love to get up there too. 

Possibly not this week or so judging by his busy pre-publication schedule. 

Team Old Ways...first footings

A reminder that this weekend the Team Middlemarch brougham will be screeching to a halt for discussions about Book Three Waiting for Death, but in the meantime another team has also been very busy...

My thanks to Team Old Ways who have been busy behind the scenes, reading and thinking about Robert Macfarlane's book The Old Ways, A Journey on Foot and planning their walking and chatting with each other online. How well it all seems to link into Tristan Gooley's book The Natural Navigator  too for making us all so hyper-observant to the landscape around us.

The consensus is that The Old Ways, coming to a bookshop near you from June 7th, is proving to be a very special book indeed in many different ways for each of us, and one that we are all enjoying reading immensely. 

Here are a few first impressions from some of them...

Bet ... In The Old Ways, Robert MacFarlane writes of how the landscapes we move through affect us physically, cognitively, and emotionally. Soon after my family moved to upstate NY in 1993, we were taken to Lake George, “The Queen of American Lakes.” We all instantly fell in love with this place as we have with no other. Since then we have hiked the mountains surrounding her, camped on her islands, and power-boated, and kayaked on her. I know that I feel and think differently there than I do anywhere else. I plan to share with you some of the history of the lake, some of my experiences on it, and some of its majestic and peaceful views.

Pat ...I think I can say that 'The Old Ways' has been life-changing for me.  For most of my adult life I have been the 'indoors type', admiring nature through windows or reading about it in books. But Robert Macfarlane's  writing about landscapes is so skilful that I am being lured outside.   Reading the book I feel as if I am there with him on his walks with all five of my senses a-tingling and alive to the outside world and my imagination firing on all cylinders.  Time to put the walking boots on and explore this wonderful planet.
My first walk could be to revisit a place that enchanted me when I moved down to Somerset from Manchester with my family 25 years ago - it is called 'Poet's Walk' and has associations with Coleridge and Tennyson as well as a fantastic view over the Severn Sea. 

Fran... On finishing The Old Ways I feel as if my eyes have been opened wide. Going for a walk is now something more than just pleasure or exercise. My awareness of the place I am in is heightened ; by finding out how the landscape was shaped and above all listening to the stories told from the paths beneath my feet.

In the book Robert Macfarlane writes of Eric Ravilious, who painted parts of the South Downs familar to me. I shall be looking for some of the locations Ravilious used and seeing how they have changed but also discovering more of the ancient history of this area. Other walks close to my house will take me on drovers ways and smugglers paths across reclaimed marshland. Different terrain, different stories. 

Learning of land artists from Robert Macfarlane has started me off on another path; finding out about installations I can visit but also reading about such artists, watching films and above all becoming more aware myself of what makes up a landscape. Tree, water, pebble, birdlife; enriched walking which is giving me great satisfaction. 

Sabina ... Like Macfarlane I have associated Ravilious’ painting* with Thomas’ poetry &, like them, I love the downland. Reading The Old Ways has made me realise that much of my life has been spent near the downs: as a child on the Hampshire downs, then the Berkshire Downs & more recently beside the Hampshire downs. Now we live beside the Dorset downs so my walk will focus on the surrounding downland & woodland with the link to Hardy’s Woodlanders. Nearly all Hardy’s books begin with someone walking & we are surrounded by footpaths & holloways.
Reading The Old Ways has taken me back to Hudson, Cobbett & Holmes & a wonderful book written in 1914 called The Green Roads of England which is mostly about the old ways across the southern downs....
*Ravilious painted the Cerne Giant, round the corner from here, so Fran & I are hoping to compare our giants!

Carol...  I'm about a quarter of the way through so far, as I really wanted to devote serious reading time to this book. I took it to Cornwall with me last weekend and read a long chunk on a bench at Helford Point surrounded by the river, boats, birdsong and Spring flowers. What I've been most struck by so far is Robert Macfarlane's use of language. In particular, he frequently conveys more than one physical sense in a deft metaphor, which enriches the description so much. This has also slowed me right down - usually such a fast reader that I miss nuances, this writing makes me slow down and savour it. It's rich without ever seeming dense. I've noted down many examples from these first chapters, but wanted to share a very simple one. He writes of 'buttery sunshine' - not sunshine the colour of butter (visual) but buttery, evoking the texture, softness and, somehow, the comfort of butter. Perhaps my favourite sentence so far is also about sunshine

    'The sun loosed its summer light.... a liquid so rich I wanted to eat it, store it, make honey of it for when      winter came'.

He could equally have been describing the experience of reading his book. 

 

 

 

 

Writing Britain : Wastelands to Wonderlands at The British Library

I am already totting up more exhibitons to see on future London trips, and Bookhound and I will definitely be scheduling in Writing Britain : Wastelands to Wonderlands opening at The British Library today and running until September 25th, for our Summer Day in the City. I travel up and down to London solo many times through the year, but we try to fit in a together day every so often too. 

And I feel an affinity because the last I heard the British Library were archiving dovegreyreader scribbles for future reference material... heaven help anyone trying to find their way around it all, and on checking the archive for the first time ever, because I had completely forgotten that fact, they do seem to have 198,600 entries about us, which seems enough to keep any poor student busy in 2112.

Team Old Ways are busy reading their copy of Robert Macfarlanes' book The Old Ways and readying for their walks which they will be introducing on here very soon, and having just finished the book I can see how well this exhibition will segue into that reading.

Examining how our landscape has shaped our literature feels like a natural extension to Robert Macfarlane's quest to see how landscape has shaped ourselves, and with it comes a reminder that not every writer had such a 'religious or reverent response to the countryside,' this according to Genevieve Fox in her exhibition preview.

One hundred and fifty works will be on display and the range sounds awesome from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to Angela Carter's Wise Children and everything inbetween and including first editions, original drafts and author's notebooks. 

Genevieve Fox suggests the notebooks will be like entering a writer's inner landscape, though if you looked at mine you could be forgiven for thinking you had the map inside out. I keep notebooks with me constantly for quotes I see that I want to remember, but know I will have forgotten even where I saw them five minutes later, and for ...er... conversations I might hear...or  for taking notes when I am at a literary event (this is often as much to keep me awake during that early afternoon slot as it is to make sure I offer all of you a reasonably accurate account)  and for notes when I am wandering around the places I visit. I haven't always been such an avid notebooker but I am very conscious of the danger of remembering things that I may never have actually seen and that wouldn't do at all. And then Bookhound will take it off me and do a sketch so I am now insisting that he has a sketch book with him at all times because what could be better than a resident artist.

This being me I can't just accept that a notebook is a notebook plain and simple and leave it at that, I have to customize them with my 'love' of the moment. The first one is almost full, the next one is ready and waiting. I think you can all probably work it out... from my Angie Lewin year to my Eric Ravilious one.

I absolutely have to go if only to see George Eliot's manuscript for Middlemarch, which was on display for years but then suddenly disappeared. I always used to marvel at the thought that George Eliot wrote it by the light of a candle or perhaps oil lamps and with a scratchy old feather or something, and with hardly any crossings out.

Returning to the British Library, the exhibition will be thematically arranged bearing in mind that it is not always nature that inspires, so the industrial revolution will have its place... Rural Dreams, Industrial Muse, Wild Places and Waterlands, Cockney Visions and Beyond the City, whilst The Thames will feature as a character in its own right, so I am excited to see what that will draw into the displays. 

There are plenty of events running alongside the exhibition including one with Robert Macfarlane on June 26th and I see a Bloomsday event on June 16th  you very lucky London people. Robert Macfarlane will be at Port Eliot this year so I am hoping to lure him along to the dovegreyreader tent with the promise of a cup of tea and cake served by the catering corps (Bookhound and the Weatherman have put in a request for an urn this year.) 

Please do report back if you see the exhibition or get to any events, we'd all love to know more....is anyone planning to go??

Come and walk The Old Ways with Robert Macfarlane...

Well not actually with Robert Macfarlane there... though who knows where this particular reading trail may lead given that the last shared project we did on Now All Roads Lead to France saw a group of us taking tea with Matthew Hollis in Covent Garden. Both Matthew Hollis and Robert Macfarlane will be at Port Eliot Festival this year so I am hoping I may be able to lure them both to speak in the dovegreyreader tent.

I am delighted to have been invited to speak as part of a panel discussing Social Reading at the London Book Fair next month, and whilst dovegreyreader scribbles might be a vehicle for all sorts of thoughts and reading of my own, it is also a place to involve you in that two-way love, along with the experience and pleasure of sharing great books whenever I can. Talking of which I hope you are ready for Team Middlemarch Book Two Old and Young this weekend...I think we may need to talk about Tertius Lydgate.

I knew as soon as I started reading it that The Old Ways was 'our' sort of book. A book that could be shared creatively and that we could go on a reading journey together (sorry it's the over-used 'journey' word, still haven't thought of a better one) alongside Robert Macfarlane, but also perhaps we could translate it into some real journeys, and walk or sail some landscapes of our own.

We went to the Eric Ravilious exhibition at the Royal Western Academy in Bristol yesterday and then lunch with the Kayaker, all a lovely Mothering Sunday treat, and the pictures were an absolute inspiration, merging seamlessly with The Old Ways which I have been reading this week...

Much more about Eric Ravilious to come but here's the information about The Old Ways from the Penguin website..

Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge home to travel the ancient tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast network of old routes criss-crossing the British landscape and its waters, and connecting them to the continents beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt ancient paths, of the stories our tracks tell, of pilgrimage and ritual, trespass and transgress, of songlines and their singers, of border-crossings and landscape portals, and of walking as a reconnoitre inwards.

Told in Macfarlane's distinctive and lyrical voice, the book folds together geology, archaeology, natural history and cartography, and is densely peopled by eccentrics, visionaries, artists and poets, all of whom understand themselves by means of landscape. Along the way, Macfarlane sleeps out in copses and beehive shielings, on mountain-tops and chalk downs. He discovers, above all, that paths offer not just a means of traversing space, but also ways of feeling, being, knowing and thinking.

Now I am not suggesting you all have to go out and find a beehive shieling to sleep under in order to take part, though of course I will be trying hard and may camp out on the veranda for a night (joke) but Penguin have very kindly agreed to send out twelve copies of The Old Ways, in proof edition to twelve interested readers here who would like to read the book, and then go off and travel their own landscapes and report back here for the rest of us.

That is not to say that anyone else can't buy a copy of the book when it comes out in June, do likewise and become part of Team Old Ways too.

So have a think...

Is this of interest to you...

Do you live in or near a landscape or route that holds special meaning for you and that you would like to share with the rest of us....

Perhaps you will be travelling to an interesting landscape and walking or sailing it soon...

Does this quote from the early pages of the book set your mind racing..

'...what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else?'

Does this vision of Edward Thomas's chime with you...

'...of path as story, with each new walker adding a new note or plot-line along the way.'

Would you feel able to write about your trail and your chosen landscape, and even better take some pictures for a post here in the future...

If you are wondering or worried about what may be involved in doing that perhaps check back to some of the Team Edward Thomas posts and see what people came up with. You would need to be aware that there will be some behind the scenes communication with each other involved via a members-only online list that I have set up, and to which the twelve will be invited. Fran H-B has kindly agreed to help me with this and I think Team Edward Thomas would agree it became a really helpful way of seeing our project through, and sharing links and thoughts before they shaped up on here.

If you think this is for you then you would be most welcome to join Team Old Ways and it would be great, given the worldwide audience here, to get a variety of worldwide landscapes..

By all means add comments to this post with your thoughts, but if you would like to be considered for one of the proof copies please e mail me at dovegreyreader at gmail.dot com using the subject line TEAM OLD WAYS. Those are the applications I will be selecting from, not the comments.

Include details of your proposed landscape and why you have chosen it... I may or may not come back to you with some questions but then I will steel myself to choose the twelve readers who offer us the widest range of experiences to receive a copy of the book very soon (they are ready and waiting to post).

I will apologise in advance for the bit I dread... that inevitably this may leave some people disappointed in the first instance if more than twelve of you apply, but the book proper will be published in June and it won't be too late to join in then if you wish. I envisage this will be ongoing throughout the year.

'As the pen rises from the page between words, so the walker's feet rise and fall between paces....writing and wayfaring are continuous activities, a running stitch, a persistence of the same seam or stream.'

And with that one last and very appropriate thought from Robert Macfarlane it's over to you.