Here is Connemara, experienced at a walker's pace. From cartographer
Tim Robinson comes the second title in the Seedbank series, a
breathtakingly intimate exploration of one beloved place's geography,
ecology, and history.
We begin with the earth right in front of his boots, as Robinson unveils
swaths of fiontarnach--fall leaf decay. We peer from the edge of the
cliff where Robinson's house stands on rickety stilts. We closely
examine an overgrown patch of heather, a flush of sphagnum moss. And so,
footstep by footstep, moment by moment, Robinson takes readers deep into
this storied Irish landscape, from the "quibbling, contentious terrain"
of Bogland to the shorelines of Inis Ní to the towering peaks of Twelve
Pins.
Just as wild and essential as the countryside itself are its colorful
characters, friends and legends and neighbors alike: a skeletal,
story-filled sheep farmer; an engineer who builds bridges, both physical
and metaphorical; a playboy prince and cricket champion; and an
enterprising botanist who meets an unexpected demise. Within a landscape
lie all other things, and Robinson rejoices in the universal magic of
becoming one with such a place, joining with "[t]he sound of the past,
the language we breathe, and our frontage onto the natural world."
Situated at the intersection of mapmaking and mythmaking, Listening to
the Wind is at once learned and intimate, elegiac and magnificent--an
exceptionally rich "book about one place which is also about the whole
world" (Robert Macfarlane).
