Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places

Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places PDF

Author: Robert Macfarlane

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2020-11-24

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1324015837

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A hauntingly beautiful diptych of works inspired by Robert Macfarlane’s travels with celebrated collaborators to two eerie corners of England. In Holloway, "a perfect miniature prose-poem" (William Dalrymple), Macfarlane, artist Stanley Donwood, and writer Dan Richards travel to Dorset, near the south coast of England, to explore a famed "hollowed way"—a path used by walkers and riders for so many centuries that it has become worn far down into the soft golden bedrock of the region. In Ness, "a triumphant libretto of mythic modernism for our poisoned age" (Max Porter), Macfarlane and Donwood create a modern myth about Orford Ness, the ten-mile-long shingle spit that lies off the coast of East Anglia, which the British government used for decades to conduct secret weapons tests.

Ness

Ness PDF

Author: Robert Macfarlane

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2019-11-07

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 0241396573

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Eerie, unsettling and hauntingly beautiful - a new collaboration from the bestselling creators of Holloway, Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood 'Ness goes beyond what we expect books to do. Beyond poetry, beyond the word, beyond the bomb -- it is an aftertime song' Max Porter, Booker-longlisted author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers Somewhere on a salt-and-shingle island, inside a ruined concrete structure known as The Green Chapel, a figure called The Armourer is leading a ritual with terrible intent. But something is coming to stop him. Five more-than-human forms are traversing land, sea and time towards The Green Chapel, moving to the point where they will converge and become Ness. Ness has lichen skin and willow-bones. Ness is made of tidal drift, green moss and deep time. Ness has hagstones for eyes and speaks only in birds. And Ness has come to take this island back. What happens when land comes to life? What would it take for land to need to come to life? Using word and image, the pair have together made a minor modern myth. Part-novella, part-prose-poem, part-mystery play, in Ness their skills combine to dazzling, troubling effect. Robert Macfarlane is the author of The Lost Words with Jackie Morris, The Old Ways and Underland. Stanley Donwood is an artist and the author of Slowly Downward, Household Worms and Bad Island.

The Outermost House

The Outermost House PDF

Author: Henry Beston

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2024-01-01

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 1504081714

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The classic nature memoir of Cape Cod in the early twentieth century, “written with simplicity, sympathy, and beauty” (New York Herald Tribune). When Henry Beston returned home from World War I, he sought refuge and healing at a house on the outer beach of Cape Cod. He was so taken by the natural beauty of his surroundings that his two-week stay extended into a yearlong solitary adventure. He spent his time trying to capture in words the wonders of the magical landscape he found himself in thrall to. In The Outermost House, Beston chronicles his experiences observing the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. Beston argued: “The world today is sick to its thin blood for the lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.” Nearly a century after publication, Beston’s words are more true than ever.

Holloway

Holloway PDF

Author: Robert Macfarlane

Publisher: Faber & Faber Non Fiction

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780571310661

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In July 2005, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin travelled to explore the holloways of South Dorset's sandstone. They found their way into a landscape of shadows, spectres and great strangeness. Six years later, after Deakin's early death, Macfarlane returned to the holloway with the artist Stanley Donwood and writer Dan Richards. This book is about those journeys and that landscape.

The Gifts of Reading

The Gifts of Reading PDF

Author: Robert Macfarlane

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2017-06-01

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13: 0241982707

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From the acclaimed author of The Old Ways and Landmarks -- an essay on the joy of reading, for anyone who has ever loved a book Every book is a kind of gift to its reader, and the act of giving books is charged with a special emotional resonance. It is a meeting of three minds (the giver, the author, the recipient), an exchange of intellectual and psychological currency, that leaves each participant enriched. Here Robert Macfarlane recounts the story of a book he was given as a young man, and how he managed eventually to return the favour, though never repay the debt. From one of the most lyrical writers of our time comes a perfectly formed gem, a lyrical celebration of the transcendent power and humanity of the given book.

Mountains of the Mind

Mountains of the Mind PDF

Author: Robert Macfarlane

Publisher: Granta

Published: 2009-07-02

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1847081576

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WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD Once we thought monsters lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with the sublime. Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the name of national pride. In this ground-breaking, classic work, Robert Macfarlane takes us up into the mountains: to experience their shattering beauty, the fear and risk of adventure, and to explore the strange impulses that have for centuries lead us to the world's highest places.

Landmarks

Landmarks PDF

Author: Robert Macfarlane

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2015-03-05

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0241967864

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2015 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2016 Landmarks is Robert Macfarlane's joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two. Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather. Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it. Praise for Robert Macfarlane: 'He has a poet's eye and a prose style that will make many a novelist burn with envy' John Banville, Observer "I'll read anything Macfarlane writes" David Mitchell, Independent 'Every movement needs stars. In [Macfarlane] we surely have one, burning brighter with each book.' Telegraph '[Macfarlane] is a godfather of a cultural moment' Sunday Times

The Wizard and the Prophet

The Wizard and the Prophet PDF

Author: Charles C. Mann

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2018-01-23

Total Pages: 640

ISBN-13: 0307961702

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From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493--an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world. In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups--Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces--food, water, energy, climate change--grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.

Rewilding

Rewilding PDF

Author: Micah Mortali

Publisher: Sounds True

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1683644220

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Reconnect with your wild essence as you awaken your innate bond with the natural world “Rewilding is a return to our essential nature. It is an attempt to reclaim something of what we were before we used words like ‘civilized’ to define ourselves.” —Micah Mortali In his long-awaited book Rewilding, Kripalu director Micah Mortali brings together yoga, mindfulness, wilderness training, and ancestral skills to create a unique guide for reigniting your primal energy—your undomesticated true self—and deepening your connection with the living earth. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans lived intimately with the earth. We were in the wild and of the wild. Today, we live mostly urban lives—and our vital wildness has gone dormant. As a result, we’re more isolated, unhealthy, anxious, and depressed than ever, and our planet has suffered alongside us. With Rewilding, Mortali invites us to shed the effects of over-civilization and explore an inner wisdom that is primal, ancient, and profound. Whether you live in the middle of a city or alongside the woods, the insights and practices on these pages will bring you home to your wild, wise, and alive self. Highlights include: Practice-rich content—mindfulness exercises, guided meditations, yoga and pranayama, inward sensing, forest bathing, and much moreThe “life-force deficit”—explore how our separation from nature affects us physiologically and spirituallyAncestral skills—such as tracking, foraging, building fires, and finding shelterDevelop a sense of calm, clarity, connection, and confidence in both your daily life and the great outdoorsWhat you can learn from nature’s teachers—lessons from mountains, rivers, trees, and our animal kinRewild in the wild—guidelines around safety, preparedness, appropriate gear, and packing listsA mindful rewilding flow—put everything together in an immersive, step-by-step rewilding experienceAwaken your authentic spiritual connection with the natural world as you come home to your true selfUnderstand the relationship between our health and the health of our planet—and how we can begin to heal both Part celebration of the natural world, part spiritual memoir, and part how-to guide, Rewilding is a must-read for anyone who wants to embrace their wild nature and essential place in the living earth.

Islands of Abandonment

Islands of Abandonment PDF

Author: Cal Flyn

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-06-14

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1984878212

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A beautiful, lyrical exploration of the places where nature is flourishing in our absence "[Flyn] captures the dread, sadness, and wonder of beholding the results of humanity's destructive impulse, and she arrives at a new appreciation of life, 'all the stranger and more valuable for its resilence.'" --The New Yorker Some of the only truly feral cattle in the world wander a long-abandoned island off the northernmost tip of Scotland. A variety of wildlife not seen in many lifetimes has rebounded on the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl. A lush forest supports thousands of species that are extinct or endangered everywhere else on earth in the Korean peninsula's narrow DMZ. Cal Flyn, an investigative journalist, exceptional nature writer, and promising new literary voice visits the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth that due to war, disaster, disease, or economic decay, have been abandoned by humans. What she finds every time is an "island" of teeming new life: nature has rushed in to fill the void faster and more thoroughly than even the most hopeful projections of scientists. Islands of Abandonment is a tour through these new ecosystems, in all their glory, as sites of unexpected environmental significance, where the natural world has reasserted its wild power and promise. And while it doesn't let us off the hook for addressing environmental degradation and climate change, it is a case that hope is far from lost, and it is ultimately a story of redemption: the most polluted spots on Earth can be rehabilitated through ecological processes and, in fact, they already are.