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Category: Travel and The Great Outdoors
Wilderness Dreams
The Call of Scotland's Last Wild Places
Mike CawthorneThis book has been a long time in the writing. While Mike Cawthorne's life over the last two decades has been mostly involved in climbing and journalism, he has managed to stow away a large memory bank of experiences of his times spent deep within the wilderness areas of Scotland.
Wilderness Dreams charts eight intriguing and thought-provoking journeys through the remotest parts of Scotland – 60 miles in an open canoe down an increasingly turbulent River Dee; struggling across the Monadhliath – the most ‘un-Scottish’ of landscapes – in a blizzard; an epic round of all the Munros achieved on shoestring finances, where the focus is on companionship and the effects of spending so long adrift in the mountains; there are treks through the Flow Country of Sutherland, through areas tarnished and threatened by energy firms and also encounters – with an obdurate crofter, and the unspoken testimony of a maverick hermit on the Cape Wrath Peninsula, the loneliest place on mainland Britain.
Shining through it all is the author’s passion for Scotland’s unspoilt acres, his alarm and anger at the burden placed on them by seemingly insatiable economic interests. These essays, which share threads of delight, self-realisation and freedom, are united by a commonality of experience that transcends any notion of ‘activity’ as an end in itself. Here is an unravelling of a relationship with the wild and the quiet truth that most journeys, the best journeys, are as much about mind as they are about place.
‘This is descriptive writing of a very high order. It could have been written by Stevenson, Buchan or Neil Gunn’.
Alan Taylor, Sunday Herald
Key Features
Cawthorne's most insightful writing to date. A moving and inspirational set of 8 essays on the meaning and future of Scotland's last wilderness areas. First edition sell-out.
Reviews
Mike Cawthorne’s Wilderness Dreams takes us romping through some of Scotland’s wildest places: a canoe trip down the River Dee, a blizzard in the Monadhliath, the dangers facing the Flow Country in Sutherland. The heart of the book, though, is the story of an expedition across the Munros in 1986, accomplished on no money and with falling-apart boots, and despite an occasional over-excitement in the landscape description, this is exciting stuff, and it’s written with humanity, passion and a touch of anger. For anyone who loves the Scottish hills, this is a book to read.
Boardman Tasker Award
Kendal, 16th November 2007
From the speech announcing the winner by Lord (Chris) Smith
» MORE at www.boardmantasker.com/
‘This is descriptive writing of a very high order. It could have been written by Stevenson, Buchan or Neil Gunn’.
Alan Taylor, Sunday Herald
‘Mike Cawthorne shows both his talent for writing and his deep affinity with the wilderness areas of Scotland in this book. I read his collection of essays in a very short time, finding each one hard to put down. As well as being a fascinating account of Mike's own experiences of hillwalking in Scotland, his essays are an enlightening education on the commercial greed that has damaged, and continues to damage, Scotland's natural landscapes. Read this book and you'll be absorbed, entertained, outraged, educated, humbled and, ultimately, inspired to experience the beauty of Scotland's wild places for yourself.’
Review by K Jackson on Amazon
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