The Old Ways A Journey on Foot

by Macfarlane, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780670025114
• ISBN10: 0670025119
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781101601075
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-10-11
• Publisher: Viking Adult
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

From the acclaimed author of The Wild Places, an exploration of walking and thinking In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pilgrimage and ritual. Told in Macfarlane's distinctive voice, The Old Waysfolds together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology and literature. His walks take him from the chalk downs of England to the bird islands of the Scottish northwest, from Palestine to the sacred landscapes of Spain and the Himalayas. Along the way he crosses paths with walkers of many kinds-wanderers, pilgrims, guides, and artists. Above all this is a book about walking as a journey inward and the subtle ways we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move. Macfarlane discovers that paths offer not just a means of traversing space, but of feeling, knowing, and thinking.

Author Biography

Robert Macfarlane is the author of the prize-winning books of Mountains of the Mind and The Wild Places, both of which were New York Times Notable Books. He has contributed to Harper’s, Granta, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Author's Note	p. xi
Tracking (England)
Track	p. 3
Path	p. 11
Chalk	p. 35
Silt	p. 57
Following (Scotland)
Water - South	p. 85
Water - North	p. 117
Peat	p. 139
Gneiss	p. 167
Granite	p. 183
Roaming (Abroad)
Limestone	p. 209
Roots	p. 233
Ice	p. 259
Homing (England)
Snow	p. 289
Flint	p. 305
Ghost	p. 331
Print	p. 357
Glossary	p. 365
Notes	p. 375
Select Bibliography	p. 395
Acknowledgements	p. 409
Index of Selected Topics	p. 413
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