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The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

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There is another elegy in The Old Ways – for Macfarlane's grandfather. And there are many new teachers: a sailor skilled enough to cross the Minch to the Shiant Islands; a sculptor and a Tibetologist; a friend who knows the danger and importance of walking in Ramallah "discovering stories other than those of murder and hostility". They all become important figures in a book about the ways people come to know places. of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane 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

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

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. Really do love it. He has a rare physical intelligence and affords total immersion in place, elements and the passage of time: wonderful' Antony GormleyWe are spared that kind of scene here, I am pleased to report, and I must also add that "godforsaken" is pretty much the last word Macfarlane would use to describe a mountain. In his chapter on walking in the Himalayas, he quotes a companion on the concept of darshan, a Sanskrit word that "suggests a face-to-face encounter with the sacred on earth; with a physical manifestation of the holy", and we are reminded that the Sherpas who accompanied the first expeditions had no word to describe the summit of a mountain, as that was where the gods lived, so it would be blasphemous even to try to reach one. 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: He goes on to write “The consolation of recollected places finds its expression frequently in the accounts of those exiles, prisoners, the ill, the elderly who can no longer physically reach the places that sustain them. When Edward Thomas travelled to fight on the Western Front the memories of his south country were among the things he carried.”

The Old Ways - Paths The Old Ways - Paths

It's amazing how viewing others enjoying themselves can revitalize our own energy. At one point after covering several miles, McFarlane stops to watch folk running and playing on the heath and writes, “The pleasure these people were taking in their landscape and the feeling of company after the empty early miles of the day gave me a burst of energy and lifted my legs.” 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.Macfarlane's first two books, Mountains of the Mind (2003) and The Wild Places (2007), were published to huge acclaim and have achieved the status of modern classics. The Old Ways joins up with them to form what Macfarlane calls "a loose trilogy about landscape and the human heart". That definition is striking. It takes some courage for a writer to say that his subject is "the human heart". It sounds a little old-fashioned, a little out-of-step with modern detachment. But that is part of what makes Macfarlane's voice significant. He willingly declares his love of things. He brings his powerful intelligence to bear on the need to express sentiments and sensations. 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. I have long been fascinated by how people understand themselves using landscape, by the topographies of self we carry within us and by the maps we make with which to navigate these interior terrains. We think in metaphors drawn from place and sometimes those metaphors do not only adorn our thought, but actively produce it.

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