
The Wild Places" is both an intellectual & a physical journey & Macfarlane travels in time as well as space. Guided by monks questers scientists philosophers poets & artists both living & dead he explores our changing ideas of the wild. From the cliffs of Cape Wrath to the holloways of Dorset the storm-beaches of Norfolk the saltmarshes & estuaries of Essex & the moors of Rannoch & the Pennines his journeys become the conductors of people & cultures past & present who have had intense relationships with these places. Certain birds animals trees & objects
- snow-hares falcons beeches crows suns white stones
- recur & as it progresses this densely patterned book begins to bind tighter & tighter. At once a wonder voyage an adventure story an exercise in visionary cartography & a work of natural history it is written in a style & a form as unusual as the places with which it is concerned. It also tells the story of a friendship & of a loss. It mixes history memory & landscape in a strange & beautiful evocation of wildness & its vital importance."