Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place

Description

Nearly as old as the hills themselves are the man-made monuments that dot their slopes: the cairns, burial chambers, and stone circles that seem to mark out, in some mysterious way, man's relationship to the landscape. We do not know what impulse drove our earliest ancestors to cluster boulders and prop slabs against the skyline, but as successive generations have stood before these strange stones and pondered their origins, such sites have been imbued with significance and overlaid with myth. In Rising Ground, Philip Marsden sets out on foot to explore the power of the landscape and the continuing hold it has upon our imagination. Starting in Bodmin Moor and moving westward along the narrowing Cornish peninsula to Land's End with a growing awareness of the great ocean beyond, Marsden travels an ancient route of pilgrimage towards the setting sun, rehearsing the soul's passage after death. Along the way, he seeks out others whose have felt similarly compelled by the landscape, from Geoffrey of Monmouth and the inventors of the Arthurian legends to Tudor topographers and 18th century antiquarians; and from Romantic scholars to post-industrial poets, abstract painters, and new-age seekers. As he camps on clifftops, criss-crosses the moors, and digs around in the archives, Marsden reflects on the spirit of place, asks how we are shaped by our connection to the landscape, and takes us right to the heart of what it means to belong.

PHILIP MARSDEN is a writer and journalist. He is the author of several works of travel writing and non-fiction, including most recently The Levelling Sea and The Barefoot Emperor, and a novel, The Main Cages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Cornwall with his wife and children.