Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth

Description

There are still wild places out there on our over-crowded planet. Through a series of personal journeys, Dan Richards explores their romantic and exploratory appeal. Wildernesses, seemingly untouched by man's hand: mountains, tundra, forests, oceans and deserts. These are landscapes that speak of deep time, whose scale can knock us down to size. Their wildness is part of their beauty and such places have long drawn the adventurous, the spiritual, the artistic. For those who go in search of the isolation, silence and adventure of wild places it is - perhaps ironically - to the man-made shelters that they need to head; the outposts: bothies, bivouacs, cabins and huts. Part of their allure is their simplicity: enough architecture to shelter from the weather but not so much as to distract from the immediate environment around. Following a route from the Cairngorms of Scotland to the fire-watching huts of Washington State, from Iceland's Houses of Joy to the desert of New Mexico, and from the frozen beauty of Svalbard to a lighthouse perched in the Atlantic, Richards uncovers landscapes which have inspired writers, artists and musicians, and asks: why are we drawn to wilderness? And how do wild places become a space for inspiration and creativity?

Dan Richards is the co-author of Holloway (with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood) and the author of The Beechwood Airship Interviews and Climbing Days; the latter was shortlisted for the Adventure Travel Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Awards 2016. He has written for the Guardian, Harpers Bazaar, Caught by the River, the Quietus, Ernest Journal and Lodestars Anthology. In 2017 he was awarded a Royal Society of Literature Fellowship. @Dan_Zep

There's a special magic in Richards' luminous descriptions of nature and place, but also in the stories he tells . . . Richards has penned a thoughtful and beautifully written meditation on our quest to find spaces in which we can find something unexpected in ourselves and forge a new relationship with the natural world * * Guardian * * Richards' prose is by turns beautiful, funny, evocative and learned, the pages illuminated by lovely, warming footnotes . . . [Richards' voice is] vivid, self-deprecating, literary and very, very funny * * Observer * * Dan Richards is a wonderful storyteller, wise, wry and open-hearted, the perfect travelling companion. Outpost tells stories of emptiness, but is bursting with gorgeous life and language. It is a joy to read -- MAX PORTER Vivid, funny and moving - a wonderful stylist -- SARAH PERRY Fascinating and funny * * Financial Times * * Dan Richards is brave, bold, pure of spirit and, on occasion, foolish. In Outpost Dan follows both his father's footsteps and his own heart to explore the furthest possibilities of human habitation, and our interface with a changing wilderness. Intelligent, surreal and always generous, Dan Richards is a Jerome K. Jerome for our set-upon times who bequeaths us that rarest gift - laughter -- KATHARINE NORBURY, author of The Fish Ladder This book will be equally at home in the library of the armchair traveller and the kitbag of the weather-beaten nomad - Dan Richards has created an atlas of adventure for every reader possessed of an intrepid imagination -- NANCY CAMPBELL, author of The Library of Ice Dan Richards is that rare thing, a writer whose way of looking at the world is utterly unique . . . Outpost is shot through with a sense of wonder, an infectious enthusiasm and a surreal wit. Pure joy -- RUPERT THOMSON An incredible book, beautifully written, wild and wickedly funny -- PHILIP HOARE Just my kind of book, stuffed full of telling oddities, strange encounters and lyricism. Richards brings to us the supreme joy, glory and terror of what it is to be truly isolated in the wild -- BENEDICT ALLEN