A record of travels in one of the wildest and most remote corners of the UK – the Cairngorms. Following in the footsteps of Scottish writers such as Neil Gunn and Rowena Farre, Mike Cawthorne recalls the landscape as his subjects would have experienced it and, as he walks, we see the landscape of today and the issues that beset even such a remote place, ownership, wildlife, conservation and depopulation.
Wild Voices Journeys Through Time in the Scottish Highlands Synopsis
The journeys in this book are tales of adventure on foot and by canoe through some of the last wild places in Scotland. Each journey is haunted by the ghost of another writer - Neil Gunn, Iain Thomson, Rowena Farre - who has left behind the trace of his or her own experience of these isolated hills, glens, streams or lochs. Travelling in time as well as space, Mike Cawthorne gains a new perspective on burning contemporary issues such as land ownership, renewable energy, conservation and depopulation. On one level these are exciting and lyrical evocations of wild walks and nature in the raw, like the description of winter treks in one of Mike's earlier books, Hell of a Journey. On another level they explore the meaning of Scotland's surviving wilderness to wanderers in the past and its vital importance to us in the present day.
Mike Cawthorne began hill-walking on Ben Nevis aged seven, and has been climbing mountains ever since. He has worked as a teacher, professional photographer and freelance journalist. He has an intimate knowledge of the Scottish Highlands, undertaking his first long distance trek there in 1982. His first book, Hell of a Journey: On Foot through the Scottish Highlands in Winter (2000, new edition 2007) was short-listed for the Boardman-Tasker Prize for mountain literature. His second book, Wilderness Dreams, was published in 2007. He lives in Inverness.