At the Water's Edge
A Walk in the Wild
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- 12,99 €
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- 12,99 €
Publisher Description
“This wonderful collection of wildlife encounters will make anyone want to pull on their boots and re-discover the world on our doorsteps.”—Kate Humble, TV host & author
For the last thirty years, naturalist John Lister-Kaye has taken the same circular walk from his home deep in a Scottish glen up to a small hill loch. Each day brings a new observation or an unexpected encounter—a fragile spider’s web, an osprey struggling to lift a trout from the water or a woodcock exquisitely camouflaged on her nest—and every day, on his return home, he records his thoughts in a journal.
Drawing on this lifetime of close observation, At The Water’s Edge encourages us to look again at the nature around us, to discover its wildness for ourselves and to respect and protect it.
“A delight.”—Country Life
“This is a quiet but rousing call to action for anyone who loves the natural world and wants to help preserve it.”—Sunday Telegraph
“I’d put it in the hands of anyone who ever enjoyed a day out in the fresh air, even those who don’t think they like the countryside: they’ve got to be seduced by this prose.”—BBC Radio Scotland
“Beautifully observed and rich in description, the book sounds too with an urgent voice, warning of what will be lost to us should we continue to take too little action to protect the natural world.”—Esther Woolfson, author of Field Notes from a Hidden City
“A thoughtful analyst of the evolutionary interplay between human being and animal.”—The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For 30 years, British naturalist ListerKaye (Nature's Child) has taken the same walk every day from his home in the Scottish Highlands to a nearby loch. In these "rekindled" observations from his field diary, he records the life humming on the "uncompromising" crags; he waxes on the beauty of peregrine falcons roosting on rock ledges, the happy clamor of osprey and otters feasting on trout, the poetry of photosynthesis, and as the seasons turn, he records the new litters, the migrations, and decay. If Lister-Kaye shifts his focus from the Highlands to marvel at how tropical birds and flowers have evolved together, with "orchids mimicking butterflies and spiders," or sea algae's dependence on chemosynthesis it's only to return ineluctably to his glen and its particular place in the world. This lyrical and precisely observed book (think Annie Dillard's A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) is an ode to the wonder of nature, "its sublime design and grim function," the miracle of interspecies friendships, and a cri de coeur to find the political will for conservation.
