I love reading the travel articles in the New York Times and just today I came across this piece by Will Self from which I cribbed the title for my post. I did not know he had been authoring a series of articles about walking round out-of-the-way regions of the British landscape (even when these British landscapes exist in some other country). I have only read one of his books, Great Apes, but have read many of his short-form pieces. They are wordy, abstruse, lacking in obvious humor, and a thoroughly enjoyable read.
In this series of articles he comes across as a man who truly loves the land he treads upon. He provides descriptions of soil, earth, rock, sky: geologic details of texture and surface meaningful only to someone who wants to get a true sense of a place from the ground up. And he takes delightfully spare black-and-white photos usually devoid of any people. Again, it seems it is terra firma, the land, at which he marvels.
Check out some of his pieces at the link above.
