Wild Places was given to me by a friend recently after a conversation about wild camping.

It describes the authors search for the untouched, wild places devoid of human influence. What started out as a look for the most remote places in GB, turned into the acceptance that Wilderness can be found in many places, not just mountain tops, and that remoteness isn’t always necessary. As with most things to do with an experience, attitude and awareness play as big a part as does situation. He has described this in other examples of his writing as “ditch vision” – an ability to find the extraordinary in the rurally local.

What impressed me most about this book was the authors genuine desire to experience the places he hiked through and to. When I’m walking, I’m counting kilometers – am I going fast enough, will I make the destination in time for the train/bus, how much time do I have to stop and admire the view etc etc.

This guy does something totally different. I guess his style is UL as very often he talks about setting his bivy bag up in the shelter of a tree or a boulder, but the emphasis is always on the experience. ‘What is it like to bivy in a mountain in storm conditions’ – not, ‘ok maybe there will be a storm and I can sit it out’, but – ‘I want to experience this impending storm so I’m night camping on the top to get the full feel!’

The mind is very often concerned with percpetion – I know from my own experience as a photographer, that when I am photographing on the street, I am in a state of high concentration, I am ‘working’ on the images I’m making. It is why I don’t carry a camera when I hike, I don’t want the intensity of the concentration on the image, I want to be ‘in the moment’ of what is happening around me, without constantly constructing images in my head. Macfarlane however seems to get this focus on the experience. His intensity is a lesson in relearning how to connect with a wilderness experience regardless of where we are.

When I hike, I’m carrying my own little ‘wall’ around me – thinking about how the pack feels, is the tent pitched right, distance/time travelled, clothing, food in the pack etc it is for this reason, I’m almost kicking myself for ordering a duomid rather than a tarp – as I’m just putting another set of doors around me. The tarp would stop that – maybe for warmer months!