Paths are consensual, too, because without common care and common practice they disappear: overgrown by vegetation, ploughed up or built over (through they may persist in the memorious substance of land law). Like sea channels that require regular dredging to stay open, paths NEED walking.” He senses that the light-fall, surfaces, slopes and sounds of a landscape are all somehow involved in accessing what he calls the 'keyless chamber[s] of the brain'; that the instinct and the body must know ways that the conscious mind cannot...he recognizes that weather is something we think in- 'the wind, the rain, the steaming road, and the vigorous limbs and glowing brain and that they created...We and the storm are one' - and that we would be better, perhaps, of not speaking of states of mind, but rather of atmospheres of mind or meteorologies of mind.” Macfarlane explores the meditative aspects of being a pedestrian not so much a travelogue as a travel meditation, it favors lush prose, colorful digressions if you ve ever had the experience, while walking, of an elusive thought finally coming clear or an inspiration surfacing after a long struggle, "The Old Ways" will speak to you eloquently and persuasively. "The Seattle Times"

The Old Ways - Penguin Books UK

The act of chart-reading, even more than the act of map-reading, is part data-collection and part occultism. Sailors, like mountaineers, practise their map clairvoyance based on intuition and superstition as well as on yielded information. The book starts and ends in MacFarlane's jolly own England. He also hopscotches across the globe to walk in Scotland, Palestine, and Tibet. His descriptions can be arresting. A police state of poetic diction, if you will. Good stuff. It's amazing how viewing others enjoying themselves can revitalize our own energy. At one point after covering several miles, McFarlane stops to watch folk running and playing on the heath and writes, “The pleasure these people were taking in their landscape and the feeling of company after the empty early miles of the day gave me a burst of energy and lifted my legs.”Macfarlane relishes wild, as well as old, places.He writes about both beautifully . . . I love to read Macfarlane' John Sutherland, Financial Times

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot eBook : Macfarlane, Robert

Robert Macfarlane travels Britain's ancient paths and discovers the secrets of our beautiful, underappreciated landscape.A beautifully modulated call from the wild, that will ensorcell any urban prisoner wishing to break free.” ―Will Self Paths are the habits of a landscape. They are acts of consensual making. It's hard to create a footpath on your own...Paths connect. This is their first duty and their chief reason for being. They relate places in a literal sense, and by extension they relate people.

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot By Robert Macfarlane |The Works

I was intrigued to come across this book, which according to Robert McFarlane, is “about people and place; about walking as a reconnoiter inward and the subtle ways in which we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move.” It is not just about walking, journeys on foot. One surprising journey was sailing, on ancient sea roads which, he writes, 'are dissolving paths whose passage leaves no trace beyond a wake, a brief turbulence astern. they survive as convention, tradition, as a sequence of coordinates, as a series of way marks, as dotted lines on charts and as stories and songs' (p88).. I felt a sensation of candour and amplitude, of the body and mind opened up, of thought diffusing at the body's edges rather than ending at the skin.” The miniature sandscapes of ridge and valley pressed into the soles of my feet and for days after the walk I would feel a memory of that pressure and pattern.” Soren Kierkegaard spoke of every day being able to walk himself "into a state of well-being, away from every illness & into his best thoughts." Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot is a book that endorses the therapeutic value of walking but in particular, following the old & sometimes ancient pathways within the U.K., especially the Hebrides and to points well beyond, including Spain, Palestine & Tibet.Felt pressure, sensed texture and perceived space can work upon the body and so too upon the mind, altering the textures and inclinations of thought.” Touch is a reciprocal action, a gesture of exchange with the world. To make an impression is also to receive one, and the soles of our feet, shaped by the surfaces they press upon, are landscapes themselves with their own worn channels and roving lines.” No hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Translation: There is no road, the road is made by walking. Antonio Machado