To truly experience the land and recognise how our life depends on it, you need to go out there. Fortunately, you can take a book out to “there”, and kill two birds. Hypothetically. {Or maybe not - if the paper your book is made from was felled so destroying a habitat, then perhaps a bird was killed}.

This is a compilation of book recommendations to help bring a new/different/holistic approach to land. So, first, consider how you’re acquiring your books (do you really need to purchase it, or does a friend have it? Could you listen to an audiobook? I personally prefer a book in hand so I buy preloved or head to the library). Second, read the book, then go out and put your hands in the soil; Breathe in the air. Swim in the sea. Jump in a lake. Walk a trail. Speak to a farmer. Grow some vegetables. Without land, we wouldn’t have anything. We need the soil, we need plants, we need the water within it.

Robert Macfarlane - The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot.

Re-read countless times, this is a journal of sorts. Author Robert Macfarlane is one for taking you on a journey along with him, and The Old Ways documents his expeditions on, you guessed it, “old ways” - the trails and paths mostly forgotten yet still trodden by some. Each time I read it I spot something new. You could just as easily pick up the book and select one “way” depending on your mood; there are stories of rituals, and of pilgrimage, but just as well, stories of a grand day exploring somewhere unknown. It was in this book that I first heard of The Broomway, and with only visual clues from Macfarlane’s chapter I eventually set out on my own discovery of this old way [read about my Broomway journey in this blog post].

So it’s not a walking book. It’s not a landscape book. It’s not a history or a geography book. It’s simply about place and our association with it as an individual and as a collective, and it’s a consideration we need to address as we move through a drastically changing climate.

Get the book ⇾ The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot.

Rebecca Solnit - Wanderlust: A History Of Walking.

I could probably choose any Rebecca Solnit book and it would have pertinence to the land. However, Wanderlust is an examination of walking and therefore our physical movement and emotional connection to the world. It’s a fairly historical book more than it is philosophical, considering the changes in how walking is perceived throughout varying cultures over time, but still draws us in to question our own purpose for walking. Is it political, social, solitary, exercise?

To me, walking is a chance to slow down and assess; I can’t help but think when I walk, and it’s of course different depending on my mood, the weather, my comfort, any company. This book in particular asks us to question the place of walking outside of simply getting from A to B, especially in a vehicle dominated world.

Another book on walking, which is actually in the main cover photo as I’d loaned the above from the library, is A Philosophy Of Walking by Frédéric Gros. This one is a bit more chapter-y, in that it breaks down different writers and philosophers who focussed on walking, and the history through it that way, rather than as such the personal process of walking itself that Solnit uncovers.

Get the book ⇾ Wanderlust: A History Of Walking.

Jacquetta Hawkes - A Land.

Described as a poetic and historic account of Britain’s landscape, A Land, by nature writer and archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes offers an opportunity to consider the importance of land in all its various guises in a post-war country. Originally published in 1951, I have a 1959 print with super brown-yellowed crumbling pages. It’s a fragile emblem of our current landscape, physically and politically. The middle pages provide images of geological objects, such as a waterfall-formed pot hole, a cob and brick barn, and ammonite marble, that make abstract the very landscape we are ignorant to each day, so highlighting the detail with which we actually rely upon yet rarely fully appreciate. This book brings those notions back into focus.

Men know their affinity with rock and with soil, but they also use them, at first as simply as coral organisms use calcium, or as caddis-worms use shell and pebbles, but soon also consciously to express imagined ideas.

Get the book ⇾ A Land.

Vandana Shiva - Reclaiming The Commons: Biodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth

This one is heavy. It’s a massive book, but massive in topic too. It very specifically tackles the legal history of the international and national laws related to biodiversity and Intellectual Property rights, and the corporate war ensuing when it comes to biopiracy. While there are books looking at the physical commons, like those capturing activist battles over land rights, this one is more about the invisible commons - the way that indigenous knowledge is wiped away in lieu of “innovative” modern technology.

There is limited awareness with everyday people about the control from big business in our food system. In fact, it seems there is very little respect for farmers and farming in general (especially when we look at policy and at food waste), despite the fact that we can’t live without them. Reclaiming the commons allows our food system to decentralise and become sovereign: not in the colonial sense of the word - as in being ruled by a monarch - but as the autonomous, self-governing, independent ruling that once existed. Reclaiming the commons is about resilience, and this book will open you up to the reasons why current operations are not supporting us.

Get the book ⇾ Reclaiming The Commons: Biodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth.

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

Definitely welled up with tears during the reading this. It is a very personal approach that invites the reader to go deep into oneself for their own reflection. It’s a book about responsibility and gifts; how the things in our everyday life give us meaning and purpose, and how they help us survive. Whether it’s a person or a plant or a place, the writer helps us question how can we approach these things with the respect that each being deserves.

How in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again?

Before I was a food grower I was definitely mindful and aware of the value inherent in what I was using, but I was also flippant, not really aware of the grandiose nature of origin and death. Nowadays I talk to plants and animals, and I give them remarks of “well done” and “thanks”. I feel that the book in itself may not give you the practical ways to shift your mindset, because you need physical experience and to emotionally manifest the themes into your own life, however, as both a story and as an introduction to a mindset shift, it is simply a beautiful read.

Get the book ⇾ Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

Paul Wood - London Is A Forest.

This is a book I first read at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. It was May and around 33˚C. I live in London, and so while I couldn’t at the time physically visit the locations that Paul Wood takes you on in these guides, I could visualise a lot of the areas. To my shame I still haven’t been on the walks he presents, in fact - even when not looking for the specific trees mentioned, you would still have a jolly nice walk through a varying urban landscape, but most of them require travelling out of the city to begin.

The book is set into chapters that lead you on walks throughout London, introducing you to significant and interesting trees along the way, and in particular the landscape types (like commons, heath, downland, ancient woodland) that you would come across. It’s fairly factual and historical rather than a personal account, so it gives you the opportunity to actually use the book to engage with the stories on a practical level; some personal stories give you grand emotions, but it’s not your specific journey - you’re invited to embark upon that. If nothing else, this book raises awareness on just how much greenery there is in London and how we should absolutely cherish and advocate for it. And the book itself has nice paper with a good font so it’s a pleasure to hold and read in that sense.

Get the book ⇾ London Is A Forest.

John Rensten - The Edible City: A Year Of Wild Food.

Another one leafed through during the pandemic, it meant I needed to have patience. And more patience than usually required for seasonal eating, too. I purchased it in May, so I was able to go straight out and find elderflower to make a cordial, in the process having a distanced chat with another forager. The beauty of this particular foraging book lies in that it is about edible London. It could probably be used as a guide in other urban spaces, for a lot of the ingredients Rensten introduces are rife across the UK, with a lot classed as weeds. But the hints at location gives you a lovely treasure hunt; he never explains fully where he foraged so as to protect the patch. And it’s written like a diary so you do feel you’re on this hunt alongside him.

There are a myriad of recipes that completely tantalise. What I need to actually do is go through the book prior to the next month, so readying myself for the ingredients, plan in trips and then make the dishes. But it feels like this isn’t what foraging is about; the illustrations are clear enough to give advice, and the plants are not particularly worrisome anyway, so rather than seeing it as a cookbook, I’ve used it as a compendium of plants to refer to seasonally so I know what’s around. You could use it as a cookbook though and really get into seasonal wild cooking.

For example, we’re currently in August so there are stories about: meadowsweet, Japanese rose, alexanders, wild marjoram, sweet woodruff, water pepper, black and white mulberry, and hazel. I re-read August and did a lot of “umm”-ing.

Get the book ⇾ The Edible City: A Year Of Wild Food.

Isabella Tree - Wilding.

The key to Knepp’s success, conservationists are beginning to realize, is its focus on ‘self-willed ecological processes’. Rewilding is restoration by letting go, allowing nature to take the driving seat. In contrast, conventional conservation in Britain tends to be about targets and control, doing everything humanly possible to preserve the status quo.

Many corner-turned pages in this one, covering topics that are controversial, including the re-introduction of wild boar, beavers and longhorn cattle to “wild” areas of Britain, and other topics that are still only just coming to the fore, including soil health and mycorrhizal fungi. It is a stark look at one farm’s manoeuvre from intensive “conventional” agriculture in wake of recognition that their way of doing things was economically and environmentally unsustainable, to one of essentially experimenting with the land and letting it call the shots.

Whether you’re into knowing where your food comes from, or care about endangered species, or have strict views on veganism, well, this is a book you should read. It’s a story: it isn’t saying you have to do things this way and only this way, but gives insight into the process of different steps that could bring about balance in an ecology that is quickly eroding. The importance on the title being ‘wilding’ rather than ‘rewilding’ lies in the perspective of how the land looked before humans came and intensified everything; there are always wild parts, even within ourself, but if it’s not particularly visible in the first place, then how can we “re-” something? Rewilding is a conservation technique where some control is needed, while Wilding is pure unadulterated letting go, letting be.

Get the book ⇾ Wilding.

George Monbiot - Feral: Rewilding The Land, Sea And Human Life.

I think Monbiot can cause some tension, especially when he talks specifically on veganism, but Feral takes you on specific rewilding journeys that introduce the overall need to take everything into consideration. For instance, bringing back the wolf and reintroduction of other predators on the wider ecosystem. However, there is a chapter on sheep monocultures and Monbiot really dislikes sheep. Overall though there are a lot of sources, balanced opinions and a lot of information regarding the ways that the land - specifically Britain - can be taken out of captivity and domestication into a more wild state.

Get the book ⇾ Feral: Rewilding The Land, Sea And Human Life.

Simon Ingram - Between The Sunset And The Sea.

I admit that I have a lot of books on mountains and walking and different landscapes. This one has been re-read a couple of times. It is a personal report of 16 different British mountains, but within that are themes of light, of air, of space, of danger, of science; so giving you historical and geographical and geological information about those mountains, all insight that can be used to glean a foothold on other landscapes. For instance, the science chapter uncovers the history of cartography, and now I better understand the reason for trig points. It’s simply a nice read, with some factual stuff, adventure stories and a lovely typeface. If you’re not one for literature quotes then perhaps you’d get annoyed as Ingram does like including poetic bits, especially in the ‘art’ chapter, but they’re all there to evoke additional drama and don’t hurt the overall flow.

The act of climbing a mountain has, by its very nature, an ambiguous end point. The temptation would be to say that the end is the summit, but in fact the summit only marks the exact halfway point of the journey.

Get the book ⇾ Between The Sunset And The Sea.

Naomi Klein - This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.

It took me a good six weeks to get through this. So many coffee shop sessions so that I could sit somewhere and focus. It was an eye-opener. I now have photos of pages with important (to me) passages (because it was a library loan) that I have to revisit to remember all of the vile information This Changes Everything contained. Even though it is now 8 years old, and recent years have had an additional impact on the policies and campaigns regarded in the book (I found myself considering additional impact from the Covid-19 pandemic through quite a lot of it), it is still an utterly relevant read.

Get the book ⇾ This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.

Nan Shepherd - The Living Mountain.

This is generally just a nice story, a poetic introduction to the place someone lived. It’s short and sweet, and gives an insight into a landscape not many practically experience in full. It is about the Cairngorm Plateau in Scotland, a relatively desolate and harsh environment, even in high summer. I’ve never visited, but would like to, yet have acquired guidance from this book and others that it is a place that needs to be approached with deep respect (as I approach any mountain range anyway). Even though it isn’t high as far as mountain ranges go, the Cairngorms, similarly to the North Pennines and their microclimate, seem to test every visitor.

Summer on the high plateau can be delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge. To those who love the place, both are good, since both are part of its essential nature. And it is to know its essential nature that I am seeking here. To know, that is, with the knowledge that is a process of living.

Get the book ⇾ The Living Mountain.

Rachel Carson - A Silent Spring.

It feels that A Silent Spring needs to be revisited year on year as a reminder of the impact that public outcry can have on policy. Written in 1967, it looked at the ecological impact of pesticide use. While back then it spurred on the banning of DDT, an organochloride used primarily as an insecticide and known to be an endocrine disruptor, it is just one of hundreds of pesticides, and so there are hundreds that are still widely used today - and primarily produced and distributed by just a handful of chemical companies.

Many pesticide poisoning cases do not make it into official health statistics as it causes a wide range of symptoms that can be difficult to diagnose. An estimated 44% of farmers and farm workers are poisoned by pesticides every year. That is 385 million people, every year. ~ Pesticide Action Network, UK

Get the book ⇾ A Silent Spring.

Images: Andy Goldsworthy [title unknown, source liveenhanced.com]; Edward Burtynsky, Saw Mills #1, Lagos, Nigeria, 2016; Richard Long, A Line In The Himalayas, 1975

p.s. this isn’t an affiliate blog for Good Reads. I just found that the site would give you options of where to purchase the book, including library sources.