The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

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Just a passing comment, as this is not a concern of the book: I found it a bit odd that someone so attached to the landscape would seemingly have so little concern for environmental destruction or the slaughter of animals. Perhaps he didn't want to be "political" by venturing into that territory. This book is a meditation on how journeys are never just about getting from one place to another. Every land or seascape poses vistas to observe, problems to overcome, and reminders of deep time. Although most of the trips he describes take place in the British Isles, he goes as far afield as Palestine and Tibet. For me, in fact, those distant walks were the most interesting part of the book. In Palestine you have to break the law just to live, and in Tibet the sheer struggle for survival seems to highlight the majesty of limitless mountains and endless time. This was an interesting and well-written book. The author clearly love words and is frequently intoxicated by them.

The Old Ways Quotes by Robert Macfarlane - Goodreads The Old Ways Quotes by Robert Macfarlane - Goodreads

I walk a lot. I live near the ocean – and sometimes I don’t even see it through the cloudy cataracts of work and worry that I can’t peel off. It is not just about walking, journeys on foot. One surprising journey was sailing, on ancient sea roads which, he writes, 'are dissolving paths whose passage leaves no trace beyond a wake, a brief turbulence astern. they survive as convention, tradition, as a sequence of coordinates, as a series of way marks, as dotted lines on charts and as stories and songs' (p88).. 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. 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 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

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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. Landscape, to borrow George Eliot's phrase, can 'enlarge the imagined range for self to move in'. How do I reach into my grab-bag of dozens of highlighted passages and do justice to this telling without boring you? I can't — but I can't resist sharing anyway, and hoping that I choose wisely enough to convince you to read more: Sublime... It sets the imagination tingling, laying an irresistible trail for readers to follow' Sunday 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

The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane: 9780147509796

Talking of war, many men returning from the first World War came home to England with no job or prospect of attaining reliable employment enough to support a family. I knew of this, however what I hadn’t realized was that “The life of the road was the only option available to them, and in the 20-years after the war there was a substantial tramping population on the road sleeping out and living rough. Plumes of smoke rose from copses and spinneys up and down the country as the woods became temporary homes to these shaken out casualties of conflict.” How tragic to give so much and then, come home to meander aimlessly without a purpose, or place to stay. 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: 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.” If 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. Bindlestiff: a tramp or a hobo, especially one carrying a bundle containing a bedroll and other gear.Macfarlane really raves with the cult of walking that is now thriving in almost all Western countries, and he sometimes turns it into pure bigotry. I was particularly bothered by his phobia of Neolithic and Mesolithic paths and remains, which regularly turned into a kind of "noble savage"-mania. The author also constantly puts himself in the spotlight as if he were the presenter of a TV documentary permanently visible with all his peddling tics. I was bothered by historical inaccuracies, such as the claim that the ancient Romans only had eyes for country roads and neglected the seaways. His excursions almost always end with hallucinations as if prolonged walking suddenly gives access to another dimension of reality in which ghosts, panthers and other unlikely phenomena can be observed. Soren Kierkegaard spoke of every day being able to walk himself "into a state of well-being, away from every illness & into his best thoughts." Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot is a book that endorses the therapeutic value of walking but in particular, following the old & sometimes ancient pathways within the U.K., especially the Hebrides and to points well beyond, including Spain, Palestine & Tibet.

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane - Goodreads

The compact between writing and walking is almost as old as literature -- a walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells. 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. The finest essay writing about ways -- paths both terra firma, water, sand, snow, and ice. Each chapter is a separate work, and Macfarlane interweaves his story of experiencing the path and introduces the reader to past travelers and present masters of the path. Moments of the most brilliant prose (naturalist perspective) I have ever read. Sentences I would read again and again for their freshness and astounding organization. "The moon, low, a waxing half, richly coloured -- a red-butter moon, setting down its own path on the water. The sea full of luminescent plankton, so behind us purled our wake, a phosphorescent line of green and yellow bees, as if the hull were setting a hive swarm beneath us. We were at the convergence of many paths of light, which flexed and moved with us as we are headed north" (134).No hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Translation: There is no road, the road is made by walking. Antonio Machado Cautioned by Anne Campbell that walking barefoot is 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). 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 finds insight in how much human language is infused with words for travel paths and their purpose. For example, an Aboriginal tribe in western Canada has the same word for ‘knowledge’ and ‘footprint’, and the Tibetan word ‘shul’ carries the senses of ‘path forward’, ‘footprint’, and awareness of past events. English is particularly rich in pregnant words for pathways:

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot By Robert Macfarlane |The Works

This is truly a wonderful book about walking and our relationship with our landscape. I highly recommend the audiobook read by the sublime Robin Sachs in his wonderful voice.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 act of chart-reading, even more than the act of map-reading, is part data-collection and part occultism. Sailors, like mountaineers, practise their map clairvoyance based on intuition and superstition as well as on yielded information.