The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
Robert MacFarlane. Viking, $26.95 (412p) ISBN 978-0-670-02511-4
This scintillating travelogue is a celebration of well-worn footpaths and ancient sea routes. Naturalist MacFarlane (The Wild Places) traipses across Britain via Stone-Age trails, sand flats that briefly emerge between daily tides, and sea lanes to the Hebridean Isles. He ventures abroad into the bullet-strewn hills of the West Bank and follows a pilgrimage route in Spain. Along the way, the author meets artists, poets, farmers, sea-bird hunters, and adventurers, each with stories to tell and idiosyncratic attitudes toward the terrain ahead. MacFarlane writes with a discerning eye and an immediacy that immerses us in his surroundings%E2%80%94whether a delicately misty shore, a seemingly chaotic field of rocks that reveals hidden patterns, or a holy Himalayan mountain that makes him "[gaze] up, neck cricked and mouth bashed open at the beauty of it all." MacFarlane strikes a fine balance between lyrical nature writing and engrossing scholarship that makes him the ideal walking companion. (Oct. 15)
Details
Reviewed on: 08/27/2012
Genre: Nonfiction
Compact Disc - 978-1-4708-1692-6
Hardcover - 288 pages - 978-0-241-14381-0
MP3 CD - 978-1-4708-1693-3
Open Ebook - 320 pages - 978-1-101-60107-5
Other - 448 pages - 978-0-241-14553-1
Paperback - 448 pages - 978-0-14-750979-6