Book Notes: The Last Wilderness by Neil Ansell

Neil Ansell's "The Last Wilderness" is simply a charming and rather wonderful book. There isn't really any kind of plot, there aren't any characters other than himself, and there aren't any pictures (not that you'd notice that). The premise is simply that Ansell took five trips to North West Scotland during a year, and walked through the landscape, recording his impressions of the landscape, the wildlife, the vegetation, the weather and his responses to all these various stimuli.

It is in reading books like this, or Jim Crumley, or Nan Shepherd that I realise that although I love long days spent in the Scottish Highlands, I hurry too much. My tendency is to plan a route, and demolish the miles to and from a goal, and as a result I often miss the richer experiences that are available. This is the sort of book in which the author describes picking his way slowly along an unpathed lochside, enjoying the shape of the trees, resting quietly, until otters tumble out from the rocks and scamper around him.

Ansell clearly has had a lifelong love of nature, and describes being the odd-one-out at school where team sports were the prevailing obsession. He, it seems, was happier wandering in the woods, watching, listening and learning. Writing in middle-age, that lifetime of absorbing knowledge is gently unpacked to the reader as he shares his insights into geology, conservation, history and the changing landscape. From time-to-time he wanders off into reminiscence, and tells whimsical and improbable stories from a lifetime of exploring landscapes all over the world, before resuming his narrative of trudging little-known backwaters around Loch Morar.

I was a little saddened when he threw in the comment about environmental harm, "It is a rather biblical outlook; to see the world solely as a resource placed there for our own benefit" (p83). While it is often assumed that the 'subdue the earth' text in Genesis and Peter's meat-feast vision suggest that the earth exists solely for human pillaging; this is a serious misreading of the text. In biblical terms the earth exists primarily to display the glory, generosity, and goodness of God to his whole creation of which we are a special part. The story starts with God making it, and ends with God renewing it. So, unless we are to suggest that the way to honour an artist is to destroy his art; this is a sorry slur on the bible's view of our environmental responsibility. (For more on this see arocha.org)

I especially loved the chapters about landscapes that I know, or have been in. As I said, I have marched through them too quickly, but his descriptions of places I know were especially pleasing. I found that I needed to read the book with a map in hand, to trace his routes and see where he had diverted from the busy, 'trade-routes' and just wandered. Like me, he usually walks in the remote parts of Scotland alone and positively enjoys this. Not that he is anti-social, he documents some lovely days spent with girlfriends, fellow-walkers and people he meets in Bothies or in the wilds. Rather, the landscape is the point of his adventures, not merely the context for a social activity. He is certainly a more courageous walker than I am, in terms of isolated wanderings when in ill health, far from help or rescue. While I would walk with a sniffly cold, Ansell was happy enough to wander far from home while awaiting heart-surgery!

It was only when I was about three-quarters of the way through the book that I realised that it was picture-less. That is a tribute to the wonderfully rich, and vivid prose which paints pictures in the mind, rather like the old adage about radio having better pictures than TV.

One of the most moving threads running through the book is Ansell's reflections on his declining hearing. He is aware that certain ranges of sounds are becoming lost to him, as time progresses, and that some of the bird-songs he has loved since childhood are now lost to him - in all but long-held memories. His adjustment to this sadness, as his world becomes progressively quieter is a beautifully observed lament, which partly explains the subtitle of the book: A Journey Into Silence.

This is the kind of book that makes me yearn to be in the hills. Sadly, I sprained my ankle rather badly on Sunday, and won't be there for some time. Thankfully though, even at home on a dreich grey night in May, with a dram in one hand and Ansell's book in the other, I am transported there in my mind.