The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (43 page)

105
The Old English writan … harrowing a track
: I draw here on Ingold’s discussion of the relations between text, track and texture in Lines, p. 43.

105
As the pen rises … same seam or stream
: see Ingold, Lines, pp. 92–3.

110
‘The Shiants … the heartlands of Europe’
: Adam Nicolson, Sea Room: An Island Life (London: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 12–13.

111
‘The place has entered me … like a stain’
: Nicolson, Sea Room, p. 3.

111
the delusion of a comprehensive totality
: I am grateful for this phrase to Tim and Mairéad Robinson.

111
‘The mind cannot carry away … has carried away’
: LM, p. 3.

Chapter 6: Water – North

Pages

119
‘In antiquity, Irish scholars … intellectual’
: Richard Kearney, Navigations: Collected Irish Essays 1976–2006 (Dublin: Lilliput, 2006), p. x.

121
the first record of the guga hunt dates to 1549
: see James McGeoch, Catriona McGeoch, Finlay MacLeod and John Love, Súlasgeir (Stornoway: Acair, 2010); and John Beatty, Sula: Seabird Hunters of Lewis (London: Michael Joseph, 1992). I am grateful to Finlay MacLeod, the McGeoch family and Acair Press for their generosity in making materials available to me concerning Sula Sgeir and the guga hunt.

129
‘the bounce of light … elaborate counter-physics’
: Ian Stephen, ‘Anstruther to St Andrew’s Bay, aboard The Reaper’, in it’s about this (Glasgow: Survivor Press, 2004), p. 10.

129
‘long slanting line … to tell every day’
: Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883; London: Penguin, 1986), p. 96.

132
‘roomy’
: William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890; New York: Holt, 1905), pp. 136–7. James draws on the phrasing of the German physiologist and colour theorist Ewald Hering.

133
‘tin road … amber road’
: Kenneth White, On the Atlantic Edge (Dingwall: Sandstone, 2006), pp. 29–30.

135
‘Wheeling flights … to suck the deck’
: Ian Stephen, ‘Groundswell’, in Adrift/Napospas vlnám (Olomouc: Periplum, 2007), p. 72.

Chapter 7: Peat

Pages

146
He has devoted himself to the exploration … sixteenth century onwards
: see, for instance, Finlay MacLeod (ed.), Togail Tìr/Marking Time: The Map of the Western Isles (Stornoway: Acair, 1998); Finlay MacLeod, The Healing Wells of the Western Isles (Stornoway: Acair, 2000); Finlay MacLeod, The Chapels in the Western Isles (Stornoway: Acair, 2007); Finlay MacLeod, The Norse Mills of Lewis (Stornoway: Acair, 2009).

146
‘Sandwalk … the thinking path’
: see Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (New York: Knopf, 2002), p. 10; and Rebecca Stott, Darwin and the Barnacle (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 69.

153
‘drifts of sparkling bog-cotton … commemorate stories and people’
: Anne Campbell and Jon MacLeod, A-mach an Gleann (Stornoway: privately published, 2007).

154
‘a promontory or point … narrow neck’
: see the ‘Onomasticon’ in Richard V. Cox’s magnificent The Gaelic Place-Names of Carloway, Isle of Lewis: Their Structure and Significance (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2002).

157
‘Èig’: the term is taken from ‘Some Lewis Moorland Terms: A Peat Glossary’, a document running to four pages and 126 Gaelic terms, detailing the language used in three Lewisian townships (Shawbost, Bragar and Shader) to describe and designate features of the local moorland and peat-banks. Many of the terms are remarkable for their compressive precision; the whole is a deeply moving document. It was compiled between 2005 and 2007 by Finlay MacLeod, Anne Campbell and two others. For a much longer discussion of this document, and the relationship between toponyms and place-intimacy, see Robert Macfarlane, ‘A Counter-Desecration Phrasebook’, in Towards Re-Enchantment: Place and Its Meanings, ed. Gareth Evans and Di Robson (London Art Events, 2010), pp. 106–30.

158
‘Walking barefoot … flavour in the mouth’
: LM, pp. 103–4.

160
‘During the summer of 1935 … became much easier’
: Frank Fraser Darling, A Herd of Red Deer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 27.

161
‘were capable of insight’
: I am grateful for the detail of Darling’s barefootedness, and for this phrase, to Hayden Lorimer, in ‘Herding Memories of Humans and Animals’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24:4 (2006), 497–518 (500).

163
‘dark of woodland … an inner light unveiled’
: Nan Shepherd, ‘The Colour of Deeside’, The Deeside Field 8 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1937), 8–12 (9–10).

Chapter 8: Gneiss

Pages

169
‘I find I incorporate gneiss … esculent roots’
: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, in Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982), p. 57.

171
‘I have spent my life … tribe that doesn’t exist’
: personal communication from Steve Dilworth, August 2010.

178
‘stuffed all the way … their own’
: Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia (1942; Edinburgh: Canongate, 1993), pp. 335–6.

Chapter 9: Granite

Pages

185
‘Since to follow a trail … a return’
: WOW, p. 17.

186
Wherever my grandfather had gone … he had walked
: for more detail on my grandfather’s remarkable life, see Edward Peck, Recollections 1915–2005 (New Delhi: Pauls Press, 2005).

186
‘interesting times’
: see Eric Hobsbawm, himself adapting an apocryphal Chinese hex, in Interesting Times: A Twentieth-century Life (London: Penguin, 2002).

190
Illegal droving, mostly by reavers
: I draw here and elsewhere on A. R. B. Haldane, The Drove Roads of Scotland (1952; Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2008); the detail about the via viridis is to be found on p. 11.

191
‘a lonely grass-grown track crossing the hills’
: Haldane, The Drove Roads of Scotland, p. 1.

191
‘The brown sails of the cattle boats … roads of Scotland’
: Haldane, The Drove Roads of Scotland, p. 222.

192
‘the elementals’
: LM, p. 4.

193
‘a traffic of love’
: LM, p. xliii.

193
‘does nothing … but be itself’
: LM, p. 23.

193
‘something moves … recounting it’
: LM, p. 8.

195
‘far out of her path’
: LM, p. xlii.

197
‘bland as silk’
: LM, p. 93.

197
‘rooted … in … immobility’
: LM, p. 92.

197
‘the central core of fire … the total mountain’
: LM, p. 105.

198
‘powerful absence[s]’
: Adam Nicolson, Sea Room (London: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 4.

199
‘When standing at the entrance … foot of the hill’
: Helen Thomas, 1932 foreword to The South Country (Dorset: Little Toller, 2009), pp. 15–16.

199
‘more readily picture the parts … principal tributaries’
: Neil Gunn, Highland River (1937; Edinburgh: Canongate, 1991), p. 33.

199
‘walking together … their own lives’
: John McGahern, ‘Country Leitrim: The Sky above Us’, in Love of the World (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), pp. 19–26 (23).

199
When the painter John Nash … they would travel together
: this story was told to me by Ronald Blythe when I visited him one day at his house in Wormingford, which is reached along a deep-sunk track.

200
‘shin[ing] as red as new-made rock’
: LM, p. 76.

200
‘well at the world’s end’
: Neil Gunn, The Well at the World’s End (1951; Edinburgh: Canongate, 1996).

201
‘A mountain has an inside’
: LM, p. 16.

201
‘pitching into them … the bottom
’, LM, p. 25.

201
‘walks the flesh transparent … accorded from the mountain’
: LM, pp. 106–8.

204
‘Knowing another is endless … grows with the knowing’
: LM, p. 108.

Chapter 10: Limestone

Pages

212
Raja had been walking … for more than forty years
: the best accounts of Raja Shehadeh’s exceptional life and walks are his own, in Palestinian Walks (London: Profile, 2007) and also in A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle (London: Profile, 2010).

219
‘an eye for the tracks … like catwalks’
: Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks, p. 5.

220
‘parched … some massacre has been committed’
: William Thackeray, Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, in Miscellanies (1846; Rockville, MD: Wildside Press, 2009), vol. 2, p. 561.

220
‘bleached … crunched, gnawed & mumbled’
: Herman Melville, Journals, ed. Howard C. Horsford and Lynn Horth (1957; Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1989), p. 83.

226
‘landswept … except the touchable earth’
: John Berger, ‘A Place Weeping’, Threepenny Review 188 (Summer 2009), at
http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/bergersu09.html

Chapter 11: Roots

Pages

235
‘We have been increasingly on pilgrimage’
: Edmund Blunden, ‘On Pilgrimage in England: Voyages of Discovery’, TLS, 28 March 1942, p. 156. I am grateful to Alexandra Harris for drawing Blunden’s essay to my attention.

235
‘The number of quiet pilgrims … a circle from snail shells’
: Václav Cilek, ‘Bees of the Invisible – Awakening of a Place’, Artesian 1 (Autumn/Winter 2008), 27–9.

236
‘there is no road, the road is made by walking’
: Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla (1912; Madrid: Catedra, 2006), p. 223. The translation is by Robert Harvard.

237
‘Bohemia … a place within the heart’
: Cilek, ‘Bees of the Invisible – Awakening of a Place’, 27–9.

244
‘Each of my books records an actual journey … an interior path’
: various of the details here are taken from catalogue essays and other writings in Spanish and English by Miguel Angel Blanco, some of which are collected at
www.bibliotecadelbosque.net/

244
‘My life has been united … seen my destiny’
: Miguel Angel Blanco, ‘Trees of Power’, at:
http://www.bibliotecadelbosque.net/arbolcaido.html

251
‘lost in prayer … above the ground’
: Jan Morris, Spain (1964; London: Penguin, 1982), p. 130.

254
‘As I watch … landscape bristles’
: LM, p. 11.

Chapter 12: Ice

Pages

262
‘The power of such … invisible magnet’
: Lama Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds (1966; New York: Overlook Press, 2006), p. 271.

264
‘I should warn you … full of blood’
: Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (1978; London: Harvill, 1996), p. 33.

267
‘When I think of Scott … always young’
: J. M. Barrie, Courage (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922), p. 32.

269
‘Our gates to the glorious … adventure and sunshine’
: E. M. Forster, Howards End, ed. Douglas Mao (1910; London: Longman, 2009), p. 10.

269
‘sword-light of the Himalayas’
: Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard, p. 78.

273
‘The effect of this strange Matterhorn … cannot resist it’
: John Ruskin, Modern Painters (1843–60; London: George Allen & Sons, 1910), vol. 4, pp. 247–8.

278
‘a rough circle … my starting-point’
: SC, p. 21.

279
‘the tang of height … a good place’
: LM, p. 9.

279
‘I believe that I now understand … pilgrimage to a mountain’
: LM, p. 108.

Chapter 13: Snow

Pages

292
‘the strong paths … their settings’
: Christopher Tilley, The Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments (Oxford: Berg, 1994), pp. 30, 75.

293
‘become more aerial … other points of view’
: W. H. Hudson, Nature In Downland (1900; Middlesex: Echo Library, 2006), p. 13.

295
‘because the colour … so beautifully obvious’
: Eric Ravilious, letter to Peggy Angus, July 1939, in James Russell, Ravilious in Pictures: Sussex and the Downs (Norwich: Mainstone Press, 2009), p. 22.

295
‘a kind of wariness … personal involvements’
: J. M. Richards, Memoirs of an Unjust Fella (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980), p. 95.

295
‘always seemed to be … material existence’
: John Lake, undated letter to Richard Morphet, quoted in preface to Helen Binyon, Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist (Guildford: Lutterworth, 1983), p. 23.

299
‘the snow and the snow light … northwards’
: Peter Davidson’s brilliant
The Idea of North
(London: Reaktion, 2005), p. 104.

300
‘Goodbye Tush … as you can see’
: Eric Ravilious, letter to Tirzah Ravilious, ?30 May 1940, in
Ravilious at War: The Complete Work of Eric Ravilious, September 1939–September 1942
, ed. Anne Ullman (Upper Denby: Fleece Press, 2002), p. 95.