Jan-Maat’s review of The Wild Places > Likes and Comments

...there are humans who have ever lived" (p173)

Great analysis of a book I'd intended to read - simply because the idea of that walk across the 'British Isles' really appeals to me.

But his notion of the 'pristine wild' is certainly paradoxical (I associate 'pristine' with immaculately kept lawns). Deakin's definition of 'wild places' makes more sense to me - and I know many such places. One that immediately springs to mind is a small island on the western edge of Ireland. You can perch on the cliff edge and see nothing but the sea and seabirds while behind you the surface of the island still shows the patterns of the potato ridges which were dug generations before. A wild place, but cultivated too.

Fionnuala wrote: "Great analysis of a book I'd intended to read - simply because the idea of that walk across the 'British Isles' really appeals to me.

But his notion of the 'pristine wild' is certainly paradoxical..."

Oh I've given a false impression again - he doesn't walk across the british isles - he turns up at different places and walks about in them for maybe a day or two. The visits seems to be spread out over at least a year and a quarter, maybe longer.

Something I didn't say is exactly what you mentioned there - places are are now uncultivated but which were previously worked by people, and likewise places that are now heavily cultivated due to machinery but until recently were largely unpopulated - there's an ebb and a flow.

The idea of the pristine suggests for me a complete opposition that simply has never existed in physical reality - it rather part of our mental realities!

Thanks, Jan-Maat! I so enjoyed this review. I have been intrigued by Robert Macfarlane ever since I read his great introduction to Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, and I've bought his latest book, Landmarks, although I haven't read it yet.

I distinctly take your point regarding the idealisation of the "wild."

Terrific review, Jan-Maat. There's a body of literature on cultural landscapes, which I've read over the years and which helps me think about Macfarlane's writing. Cultural landscapes naturally have visible elements of human-associated activity- like hedges, stone walls or barbed wire fences - and they also have intangible elements, associated with traditions and cultural beliefs. Sometimes the natural and cultural landscapes come together to make places of overwhelming significance to the people who live there (Uluru-Katatjuta rock formations in Central Australia come to mind) and people from all over the world come to see them, perhaps struggle to glimpse the cultural significance but perhaps just look at the landscape feature, walk around it or on it, but not on it, in the case of these rocks which are sacred places to the Anungu people).
Almost any environment I can think of in Australia has been modified by human activity, or has some sort of cultural association. Our patterns of native vegetation are profoundly shaped by thousands of years of Aboriginals' deliberate firing to create grasslands. Our settled lands are shaped by the value systems of the surveyors who divided up land for sale and the colonists who moved onto the land and then farmed or grazed it. And the entire country is patterned with dreaming stories, ancient trade routes and significant sites of the Indigenous Australians.
So I grapple with the concept of wilderness. It seems to me to be much more about an individual's search for and experience of isolation in an environment that is some how unpredictable and probably harsh in some way. What I really enjoy about Macfarlane is his delight in close observation together with philosophic musing.

Issicratea wrote: "Thanks, Jan-Maat! I so enjoyed this review. I have been intrigued by Robert Macfarlane ever since I read his great introduction to Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, and I've bought hi..."

How fine you mention "rogue male" - he and Roger Deakin read it in this book together while in and around a hedge above a holloway.

Having read this I am fairly tempted to go for "mountains of the mind" too because this was a well written piece

Lyn wrote: "Almost any environment I can think of in Australia has been modified by human activity...So I grapple with the concept of wilderness."

Yes! Very happy you mention this since I was thinking along the same line and that was a problem I had that as far as I could tell Macfarlane didn't have, at least not as his dominant concept. At a couple of points he accepts that the wild vs human landscape is false but then implicitly at least it always seems to be in his thinking, yet as you say even hunter gatherer societies have an impact on the environment (as indeed so do earthworms) - and frequently in ways like you say for instance in burning off the undergrowth that are more dramatic and destructive than some might associate with that kind of lifestyle.

So for me too his conception of 'wild' was a false one from the start. But there is certainly a lot of feeling in the book, and one of teh other things I enjoyed were all his descriptions of play -climbing trees, piling things up, arranging stones in line, and so on

It's great to have someone to talk to about these things! sometime this year I will read Mountains of the Mind, which is sitting in one of my to-read piles, and then I might go back to simon Schama, Landscape and Memory which I read years ago and influenced me profoundly.
I like the idea of Macfarlane playing as he goes. Everyone needs a bit of play, even amid the most serious of musings.

Lyn wrote: "It's great to have someone to talk to about these things! sometime this year I will read Mountains of the Mind, which is sitting in one of my to-read piles, and then I might go back to simon Schama..."

Landscape and memory is also on my reread (physical) shelf!

Jan-Maat wrote: "Lyn wrote: "It's great to have someone to talk to about these things! sometime this year I will read Mountains of the Mind, which is sitting in one of my to-read piles, and then I might go back to ..."
:) L

"And I am one of those people who does find nourishment from even the memory of certain places," - i love that. As human destruction, or at least radical change, of all things natural is ongoing i find those memories increasingly nourishing.
Think i'll head out to count stars and line up stones & try to make a new one.

dianne wrote: ""And I am one of those people who does find nourishment from even the memory of certain places," - i love that. As human destruction, or at least radical change, of all things natural is ongoing i ..."

hard work making stars.

or a new memory.
especially after menopause.
tmi?

dianne wrote: "or a new memory.
especially after menopause.
tmi?"

no, enough information to make me laugh!

;>)

"The contemporary threats to the wild were multiple, and severe. But they were also temporary. The wild prefaced us, and it will outlive us"

Sounds like an excuse to not worry his head about conservation or climate change.

Just as well he avoided the places with the hard boys as he seems to get hurt often enough walking about on his own in Old Ways.

Miriam wrote: ""The contemporary threats to the wild were multiple, and severe. But they were also temporary. The wild prefaced us, and it will outlive us"

Sounds like an excuse to not worry his head about conse..."

His stated intention was to move from the geologically hard to the geological soft, no idea what his intentions were with regard to boys!

yeah tough one on conservation or climate change, on the basis of this book I couldn't say where one would pin him, perhaps if you put it to him he might wring his hands and prevaricate?

Great review Jan-Matt. Your portrayal of our inconsistent thought process and beliefs is spot-on. Perhaps nature is particularly generative of such thinking? But isn't it kind of nice to have a book that brings us up against real mind contortions rather than editing them all out? Perhaps we'll notice our own pivots more often and give some grace room to others.

Caroline wrote: "Great review Jan-Matt. Your portrayal of our inconsistent thought process and beliefs is spot-on. Perhaps nature is particularly generative of such thinking? But isn't it kind of nice to have a boo..."

You put that well Caroline, I agree an inconsistent book probably mirrors the reader better than a consistent one :) . Perhaps you are right and nature is too big for petty consistencies?

Aren't you on safe ground (so to speak) using the term British Isles, since it is the geographical term, I believe? United Kingdom of etc etc etc would be the political thing. So leave those poor people in the PO queue in peace, already.

·Karen· wrote: "Aren't you on safe ground (so to speak) using the term British Isles, since it is the geographical term, I believe? United Kingdom of etc etc etc would be the political thing. So leave those poor p..."

I don't know, the ground in these islands does not seem particularly safe to me at all any more, what was once solid suddenly is a quagmire, it's all very alice in Wonderland

I like your analysis of his contradictions and your own input about nurture/nature. It's true so many of us retain an idealised vision of wild as something uplifting and necessary to our definition of self and yet it is a deeply flawed perspective. As MacFarlane identifies there is barely a square of B.I. habitat untouched or unaffected by human use - that pile of craggy rocks at the top of Kinder etc. And I do like Deakin's idea of the wild micro world we never see in front of our noses!
But yes we like to insist on our wild/remote places - it's the Romantic inheritance. Love your review!!!

Laura wrote: "I like your analysis of his contradictions and your own input about nurture/nature. It's true so many of us retain an idealised vision of wild as something uplifting and necessary to our definition..."

Thanks Laura, though with the discovery of microplastics apparently everywhere MacFarlane's idea of the wild seems ever more naive and purely romantic, but like him we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater

Nicely captured, J-M
Do you think that this describes two discrete sets of humans?
"For Deakin the wild, as in something unregulated by human activity, is close at hand, while for Macfarlene it is remoter and reaching it in itself is an adventure, perhaps even a pilgrimage."

H (no longer expecting notifications) Balikov wrote: "Nicely captured, J-M
Do you think that this describes two discrete sets of humans?
"For Deakin the wild, as in something unregulated by human activity, is close at hand, while for Macfarlene it is ..."

Sorry that I missed your comment HB, possibly, I mean those are two common attitudes that either you have to go to great effort,travel, buy all the kit to do or achieve something, and those who do the small and immediate actions to achieve the same outcomes...