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Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills
Neil Ansell spent five years living between the back of beyond and the middle of nowhere, on his own, with no electricity, gas or water and effectively only the wildlife around him for company. His dilapidated cottage, rented for £100 per year, is so exposed to the elements that it appears to rain uphill, and so remote that you can walk for twenty miles west without seeing a single other dwelling. As the years pass he feels himself dissolving into, and becoming, just another part of the landscape.
206 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
69 people are currently reading
1385 people want to read
About the author
Neil Ansell
6 books46 followersNeil Ansell is an award-winning freelance journalist and writer. He spent seven years with the BBC as a community affairs specialist, working predominantly in television but also in radio, and working in both news and current affairs as researcher, assistant producer and producer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 133 reviews
May 7, 2021
Absolutely a great choice for my bedtime reading. The author spent 5 years alone in a primitive cabin in Wales. No water, phone, electricity, and very little interaction with other humans, just wildlife. Robinson Crusoe by choice, but with the ability to escape at any time. After 5 years he left because he could feel himself becoming too attached to his eccentric lifestyle, and wanted to rejoin the world.
This goes in my category of "rather read about it than do it" books, but it was a calming and pleasant escape.
This goes in my category of "rather read about it than do it" books, but it was a calming and pleasant escape.
January 15, 2018
One of the most memorable nature/travel books I’ve ever read; a modern-day Walden. Ansell lived in primitive conditions in a cottage in the Welsh hills for five years. Solitude and surviving on life’s basics suited him, and putting in unlimited time and attention led to absolutely magical encounters with wildlife, especially corvids and birds of prey. His memoir is packed with beautiful lines as well as philosophical reflections on the nature of the self and the difference between isolation and loneliness. “I came to the hills to find myself, and ended up losing myself instead. And that was immeasurably better.”
April 12, 2018
This book had been recommended to me by someone who knows that I enjoy disappearing into remote parts of the countryside to contemplate life from time to time. I'd bought the book a while back, and saved it up to read at the right time...
How disappointing can a book be?
Other than a few pages in the Epilogue, we get very little reflection from the author on how his retreat from the world changed or even affected him in any way.
We are told very little about the world outside the few hundred yards or so he wanders from his remote cottage - apparently in the Welsh hillsides, but it really could have been anywhere.
What we're left with is no more than a glorified bird spotting journal. Although only just over 200 pages long, reading this book felt like a lifetime of hearing about one swallow after another circling a wooded copse. Often I'd have to re-read lumps to make sure I really had read the same thing twice (thrice, or actually four times by the time I'd re-read it!).
It's a poorly thought out book, and a very poorly executed book.
We learn nothing of the author's back story - why he felt the need to isoalte himself from the world like this - nor what this isolation either meant to him at the time, or how it changed him.
It's just a very turgid twitcher's diary, I'm afraid - and a very disappointed reader. This book could have been so much more, which is why the disappointment was so acute.
How disappointing can a book be?
Other than a few pages in the Epilogue, we get very little reflection from the author on how his retreat from the world changed or even affected him in any way.
We are told very little about the world outside the few hundred yards or so he wanders from his remote cottage - apparently in the Welsh hillsides, but it really could have been anywhere.
What we're left with is no more than a glorified bird spotting journal. Although only just over 200 pages long, reading this book felt like a lifetime of hearing about one swallow after another circling a wooded copse. Often I'd have to re-read lumps to make sure I really had read the same thing twice (thrice, or actually four times by the time I'd re-read it!).
It's a poorly thought out book, and a very poorly executed book.
We learn nothing of the author's back story - why he felt the need to isoalte himself from the world like this - nor what this isolation either meant to him at the time, or how it changed him.
It's just a very turgid twitcher's diary, I'm afraid - and a very disappointed reader. This book could have been so much more, which is why the disappointment was so acute.
April 27, 2019
Everyone has a dream about getting away from it all, of leaving the rat race or the corporate grind, forgetting about deadlines and commitments, and focusing on no time scale shorter than the seasons. Neil Ansell managed to do it, living for five years off the grid deep in the Welsh hill country in a dilapidated 150 year old house. He had no electricity, no running water, and no indoor plumbing. Nor did he have a car, and it was a thirty minute hike each way to his mailbox, seven miles to the nearest village to buy provisions. This was serious solitude. The winters were brutal, and during them he lived next to his fireplace like a medieval peasant.
It might sound more like a sentence of solitary confinement, but he loved it and says he was never bored. Life lived under such circumstances has its pleasures, but it is also hard work. A fire was essential, for cooking and heat, and thus required him to ensure he always had plenty of wood chopped and split, including a sufficient stockpile to get him through long stretches of rain or snow when he would be housebound. Water had to be fetched from the well, plants gathered and the garden tended in season, and time had to be made for innumerable minor household tasks.
He tried to get out walking ever day, even in the rain. The weather had to be very bad to keep him indoors. His walks took him over hill and dale, through deep ancient woods and beside tumbling streams, across moors and fens and fields. It was possible for him to go weeks without seeing another human being, but he wasn’t a complete hermit, and friends would arrive occasionally, bringing food and news and conversation.
Much of his time was spent observing the natural world around him. He made note of every creature he saw, but especially the birds. More than half of the book consists of his descriptions of the many different kinds in his area. Each species is described in loving detail, including their male and female appearances, nesting behavior, feeding habits, territorial displays, time of year in which they arrived and left, and predator/prey relationship. There are tiny finches, acrobatic sparrowhawks, ungainly buzzards, plovers and other wading birds, including the recently introduced Mandarin Duck all the way from East Asia. Ruling over all of them is the mighty goshawk, which until recently was believed extinct in Britain. Its appearances around Ansell’s cabin were few, but everything else in the sky respected its dominance and the natural wariness of the other birds increased dramatically when the goshawks were nearby.
Ansell was a vegetarian, so the animals were safe with him. He was content to observe and reflect on their lives and relationships to their environment. He set up a feeding table in his back yard, where he could watch the birds from beside his fireplace. Many species came to partake, and of course the squirrels, opportunistic as always, took their share and more. For all his appreciation of his visitors, Ansell was not romantic about them; he recognized that their lives were short and hard, and they existed on the razor edge between life and death.
Eventually he had done all he set out to do and was ready to return to civilization. This decision was probably hastened by a serious illness that resulted in his being hospitalized and having to take medication for months. The experience served as a potent reminder of his mortality and how vulnerable he was back up in the hills. He even had a phone installed, but he refused to plug it in; it would only be used for outgoing calls in emergencies.
This is a very relaxing book to read, the next best thing to taking a walk down some shaded woodland path. The writing style is casual but clear, and he does a fine job describing his life and the animals he shared it with. It made me want to find a cabin somewhere and take a nice long break from that rat race.
It might sound more like a sentence of solitary confinement, but he loved it and says he was never bored. Life lived under such circumstances has its pleasures, but it is also hard work. A fire was essential, for cooking and heat, and thus required him to ensure he always had plenty of wood chopped and split, including a sufficient stockpile to get him through long stretches of rain or snow when he would be housebound. Water had to be fetched from the well, plants gathered and the garden tended in season, and time had to be made for innumerable minor household tasks.
He tried to get out walking ever day, even in the rain. The weather had to be very bad to keep him indoors. His walks took him over hill and dale, through deep ancient woods and beside tumbling streams, across moors and fens and fields. It was possible for him to go weeks without seeing another human being, but he wasn’t a complete hermit, and friends would arrive occasionally, bringing food and news and conversation.
Much of his time was spent observing the natural world around him. He made note of every creature he saw, but especially the birds. More than half of the book consists of his descriptions of the many different kinds in his area. Each species is described in loving detail, including their male and female appearances, nesting behavior, feeding habits, territorial displays, time of year in which they arrived and left, and predator/prey relationship. There are tiny finches, acrobatic sparrowhawks, ungainly buzzards, plovers and other wading birds, including the recently introduced Mandarin Duck all the way from East Asia. Ruling over all of them is the mighty goshawk, which until recently was believed extinct in Britain. Its appearances around Ansell’s cabin were few, but everything else in the sky respected its dominance and the natural wariness of the other birds increased dramatically when the goshawks were nearby.
Ansell was a vegetarian, so the animals were safe with him. He was content to observe and reflect on their lives and relationships to their environment. He set up a feeding table in his back yard, where he could watch the birds from beside his fireplace. Many species came to partake, and of course the squirrels, opportunistic as always, took their share and more. For all his appreciation of his visitors, Ansell was not romantic about them; he recognized that their lives were short and hard, and they existed on the razor edge between life and death.
Even the garden birds that we watch with pleasure at our bird-feeders are in a state of conflict: safety or hunger. When the weather is at its worst, more and more birds throng to the table, because the alternative to facing their fear is starvation. It is easy to sentimentalize nature, to forget that the prevailing forces at work – besides the urge to hold a territory and find a mate – are hunger and fear.
Eventually he had done all he set out to do and was ready to return to civilization. This decision was probably hastened by a serious illness that resulted in his being hospitalized and having to take medication for months. The experience served as a potent reminder of his mortality and how vulnerable he was back up in the hills. He even had a phone installed, but he refused to plug it in; it would only be used for outgoing calls in emergencies.
This is a very relaxing book to read, the next best thing to taking a walk down some shaded woodland path. The writing style is casual but clear, and he does a fine job describing his life and the animals he shared it with. It made me want to find a cabin somewhere and take a nice long break from that rat race.
July 25, 2011
Peace and quiet. Time to hear yourself think. No need for a clock. All things that sound pretty wonderful to me, and that are found in this lovely book. Neil Ansell spent five years in PenlanCottage in Wales, an extremely isolated location where you won't hear your neighbors argue or their car alarm going off. Instead, bird song and silence....bliss.
Let me say immediately that this book is not for everyone. There's no car chases, not really any suspense (unless you count the search for where mother Mandarin duck laid her eggs), and no wild characters (except for the hares that speed through occasionally). But, for those of us who crave a little calm, this book is relaxing and appealing.
Ansell is a journalist, and he craves isolation as well. He's also precise in describing, for the most part, the types of birds that frequent the area and their breeding habits, even conducting a survey of species and totals.
A few of the birds I didn't recognize by their UK names, so I had to Google them for pictures. All of his descriptions of their stealth and means of throwing off predators is fascinating. Lots of facts are sprinkled in, such as how bats can live thirty years and return to their roosts the entire time.
Yet the book isn't just about what he sees outside the decrepit cottage, but what he sees inside himself. After a health scare, he observes:
"What remains if you peel away all those things that help you think you know who you are? If one by one you strip away your cultural choices, the validation you get from the company of your peer group, the tools you use for communication? Then what is left behind? If you had asked me that three or four years earlier, when I was just arriving at Penlan, I imagine that I would have guessed: your true self. But I soon found that in fact I rapidly became less and less self-aware; my attention was elsewhere, on the outside. And now that circumstances had forced me to look inward once again, it was to discover that there was perhaps no fixed self to find. So what was there instead? Now, more than ever, I had the sense that my life was no so very different from that of the birds fluttering on my bird-feeder, as though a boundary between us had been broken" (188).
I think this would be an amazing audiobook (Martin Shaw or Alan Rickman on the voice, please!) because the subject matter is soothing. When I went through a recent health scare, often it was suggested I use visualization to relax, especially during a few procedures that were without anesthetic. The nurses all said, "picture a long, sandy beach at sunset....". Nope, in the future I'll picture a rainy cottage with a wild-eyed rabbit perched on the back step and through the fog, a tree covered with yellow birds.
Let me say immediately that this book is not for everyone. There's no car chases, not really any suspense (unless you count the search for where mother Mandarin duck laid her eggs), and no wild characters (except for the hares that speed through occasionally). But, for those of us who crave a little calm, this book is relaxing and appealing.
Ansell is a journalist, and he craves isolation as well. He's also precise in describing, for the most part, the types of birds that frequent the area and their breeding habits, even conducting a survey of species and totals.
A few of the birds I didn't recognize by their UK names, so I had to Google them for pictures. All of his descriptions of their stealth and means of throwing off predators is fascinating. Lots of facts are sprinkled in, such as how bats can live thirty years and return to their roosts the entire time.
Yet the book isn't just about what he sees outside the decrepit cottage, but what he sees inside himself. After a health scare, he observes:
"What remains if you peel away all those things that help you think you know who you are? If one by one you strip away your cultural choices, the validation you get from the company of your peer group, the tools you use for communication? Then what is left behind? If you had asked me that three or four years earlier, when I was just arriving at Penlan, I imagine that I would have guessed: your true self. But I soon found that in fact I rapidly became less and less self-aware; my attention was elsewhere, on the outside. And now that circumstances had forced me to look inward once again, it was to discover that there was perhaps no fixed self to find. So what was there instead? Now, more than ever, I had the sense that my life was no so very different from that of the birds fluttering on my bird-feeder, as though a boundary between us had been broken" (188).
I think this would be an amazing audiobook (Martin Shaw or Alan Rickman on the voice, please!) because the subject matter is soothing. When I went through a recent health scare, often it was suggested I use visualization to relax, especially during a few procedures that were without anesthetic. The nurses all said, "picture a long, sandy beach at sunset....". Nope, in the future I'll picture a rainy cottage with a wild-eyed rabbit perched on the back step and through the fog, a tree covered with yellow birds.
July 26, 2017
This is a book about birds.
I was not expecting this.
It hardly matters that Mr Ansell is living in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, he may as well be describing long walks he has taken from his terraced council house in any rural village or small town. I was led to believe that this would be a book akin to 'The Call of the Wild' - with practical details and a cohesive narrative of the experience the author had. In that I think the blurb and even the title of the book have set it up to fail, as they make much of the isolation and the simple life - which is barely described in this book.
I would not have bought this book if I thought it was just going to be about wildlife, and not a narrative over the five years, in which stories of wildlife happen to feature. There is very little sense of time passing here, it's just one anecdote after another, and no real sense of WHEN these occurred, aside from which season the writer was in at the time.
If you like birds, then this is essentially a book length prose poem about birds, their nests, their personalities and their hunting patterns. Sometimes the talk turns to badgers or sheep or butterflies, but only as a garnish to the main course - birds.
Only not literally, because Mr Ansell is a vegetarian.
I was not expecting this.
It hardly matters that Mr Ansell is living in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, he may as well be describing long walks he has taken from his terraced council house in any rural village or small town. I was led to believe that this would be a book akin to 'The Call of the Wild' - with practical details and a cohesive narrative of the experience the author had. In that I think the blurb and even the title of the book have set it up to fail, as they make much of the isolation and the simple life - which is barely described in this book.
I would not have bought this book if I thought it was just going to be about wildlife, and not a narrative over the five years, in which stories of wildlife happen to feature. There is very little sense of time passing here, it's just one anecdote after another, and no real sense of WHEN these occurred, aside from which season the writer was in at the time.
If you like birds, then this is essentially a book length prose poem about birds, their nests, their personalities and their hunting patterns. Sometimes the talk turns to badgers or sheep or butterflies, but only as a garnish to the main course - birds.
Only not literally, because Mr Ansell is a vegetarian.
August 13, 2011
I heard Neil Ansell discuss his book at Dartington's Ways with Words. What struck me about him was his absolute genuineness. This was not an experience undertaken to write a book, marred by forced comedy or earnestness or excessive enthusiasm. Nor is it a project as such. I liked his observations on birds and animals, compressed from five years experience. It is reminiscent of J A Baker's The Peregrine.
August 30, 2015
Books, and the medium of writing that they reach us through, are by their very definition products of culture. In the beginning, there was not the word, no matter how much we writers would like to believe that. Furthermore, writing is almost invariably the result of thought. Even the stream-of-consciousness techniques of the dadaists and surrealists reach us through the authors' minds, the only difference being that they don't give themselves time to examine the thoughts. We could say then that thought is in a sense the matter of which books are made up, the way stuff is ultimately made up of atoms. And it is then precisely because thought is so inextricably bound up in our books, that a single book spawns so many elaborations and further writings and, ultimately, new books. Thought begets thought, and it is certainly not coincidental that we often speak of creative offspring.
But when it comes to offspring, of course, nature is still the dominant domain, our primary association. Nevertheless, whereas thought begets thought, and our cultural storehouses grow exponentially, the atoms that make up the world around us do not expand in such a way. Nature is cyclical, and in a sense always doubles back upon itself. One generation does not build upon the next.
These distinctions are important to keep in mind when approaching any instance of so-called nature writing. In Britain especially, the genre has recently made a glorious return, spearheaded by the books of Robert Macfarlane. It seems that the Brits more than ever long to get away from their cities, even if these are hardly as grimy as they once used to be. Since most people do not have the time to actually get away properly, the second-hand experience of books will have to do.
Neil Ansell's Deep Country, subtitled Five years in the Welsh hills, fits neatly in the new craze, and in fact, the book's premise makes it an easy sell, touting its author as a “latter-day Thoreau”. Those of you who have actually read Walden might have been surprised, as I was, by how many compromises Thoreau ultimately made in his quixotic attempt to live in a little hut in the woods. It's hard to read about his painstaking preparations for a harsh winter without realising that for so many people (especially in Thoreau's days), this was just life, not an experiment. For Thoreau was not the ascetic he is often made out to be, the kind of person that Christopher McCandless tried to emulate. In fact, he resided very close to town, and went in frequently to stock up on goods. While his theories were of self-sufficiency, the practice simply wasn't.
But what distinguishes Ansell rather sharply from being just another Thoreau, or McCandless, is that he is not an escapee from society seeking higher presence of mind in absence of [whatever], nor is he just another misanthropic curmudgeon, berating the world from his safe cabin outside of it. Ansell describes the process of moving to the Mid-Wales cottage on the roof of the Cambrian Mountains as a gradual one, as something he kind of slipped into. He had, he says, a busy social life, many friends, but the cottage came into his life at the right time, when he was already busy burning bridges; it was only a small step to burn the last few.
Nevertheless, in a book like this you expect long harangues on the state of society, and on the beauty of getting away from it all. You expect that the guy who was busy burning bridges did so because he had good reason to think over his life, and that his spell in the wilderness would finally give him the time to do this. This didn't happen to Ansell, and that is telling. In what is probably my favorite passage, he explains what the isolation did to him, and how. I have to quote this at length:
Of course, there is indubitably an ascetic quality to Ansell's quest, as this passage aptly shows, and of course, there is that sense of freedom, that sense of going back to the roots, learning to live all over again, in harmony with nature. But there is no ideological hammering. As he himself says, if he arrived at any state of mind at all, it was by accident. There is something pleasantly que sera sera about him, and – perhaps following on from this – a great sense of peace which is felt in the writing. “I couldn't feel lonely,” he states at one point. “Loneliness is the product of an isolation that has not been freely chosen.” He makes it all sound so simple.
The title Deep Country refers to an idea that Ansell returns to quite a few times, namely that no matter how small the habitat you live in, you cannot exhaust it. When he leaves after five years, he is adamant that it is not because he is bored, or because he has seen everything there is to seen. He argues in favor of exploring a small place in depth, as opposed to larger stretches in breadth. Superficially, or quality over quantity, and of course above all a return to the olden days, when people's scope in the world was tied up to how much ground they could cover in one day.
Having set the scene, in both the physical – the direct surroundings of the Penlan cottage – and mental – what the hell is he doing there – sense, Ansell turns for the rest of the book simply to what he already hints at in the above passage: simple observation. In this also looms the comparison with Walden. Thoreau, too, set up the theological framework in the first few chapters and then wallowed in long-winded romantic reveries on the pond, the trees, and the wildlife. Interestingly, all I remember from those parts of the book are the moments when Thoreau's bubble is punctured by civilisation: his wonderful passages about the trains passing his cottage. In Deep Country, similarly, I am reading all these descriptions of the birds he saw and their closeness and familiarity, but nothing really sticks except the overall feel of him out there, going about his day. Which is enough for me.
But is it enough for a book? That I remember the train sections from Walden is of course precisely because they are intrusions from culture. The great value of interacting with nature, I think, is that it does not stir one's thoughts. We hardly ever sit and think about nature; no, we marvel at it, or we are left in awe, or are disgusted. All involuntary responses. The sense of freedom that we feel when returning to nature stems from the fact that nature can get by on its own; it does not need us. It is still much more perfect a machine than any that we will ever make: no lag, no reboots, beautiful graphics, and the bugs it does have do not need to be fixed.
The problem is that these consolations of nature cannot be truly got second-hand. Not like this. Writing about it, just so, as it is, is impossible: the very fact of words turns the spectacle, that most flawless of machines, into culture, and destroys everything good about it. There is a vacuousness in this here text, my eyes drift over it, and while it is not without its charms, it is ultimately, utterly without point.
Utterly without point. Come to think of it, Ansell would probably like that conclusion, actually. At the end of the book, he browses through the notebooks he erratically kept throughout that half decade, and observes that he has “disappeared entirely from [his] own narrative. I came to the hills to find myself, and ended up losing myself instead. And that was immeasurably better.” When he leaves the hut, he leaves it with exactly the same small bag of belongings that he arrived with. In a sense this indeed nicely renders the whole exercise as utterly without point, but of course it turns out that that is precisely the point.
But when it comes to offspring, of course, nature is still the dominant domain, our primary association. Nevertheless, whereas thought begets thought, and our cultural storehouses grow exponentially, the atoms that make up the world around us do not expand in such a way. Nature is cyclical, and in a sense always doubles back upon itself. One generation does not build upon the next.
These distinctions are important to keep in mind when approaching any instance of so-called nature writing. In Britain especially, the genre has recently made a glorious return, spearheaded by the books of Robert Macfarlane. It seems that the Brits more than ever long to get away from their cities, even if these are hardly as grimy as they once used to be. Since most people do not have the time to actually get away properly, the second-hand experience of books will have to do.
Neil Ansell's Deep Country, subtitled Five years in the Welsh hills, fits neatly in the new craze, and in fact, the book's premise makes it an easy sell, touting its author as a “latter-day Thoreau”. Those of you who have actually read Walden might have been surprised, as I was, by how many compromises Thoreau ultimately made in his quixotic attempt to live in a little hut in the woods. It's hard to read about his painstaking preparations for a harsh winter without realising that for so many people (especially in Thoreau's days), this was just life, not an experiment. For Thoreau was not the ascetic he is often made out to be, the kind of person that Christopher McCandless tried to emulate. In fact, he resided very close to town, and went in frequently to stock up on goods. While his theories were of self-sufficiency, the practice simply wasn't.
But what distinguishes Ansell rather sharply from being just another Thoreau, or McCandless, is that he is not an escapee from society seeking higher presence of mind in absence of [whatever], nor is he just another misanthropic curmudgeon, berating the world from his safe cabin outside of it. Ansell describes the process of moving to the Mid-Wales cottage on the roof of the Cambrian Mountains as a gradual one, as something he kind of slipped into. He had, he says, a busy social life, many friends, but the cottage came into his life at the right time, when he was already busy burning bridges; it was only a small step to burn the last few.
Nevertheless, in a book like this you expect long harangues on the state of society, and on the beauty of getting away from it all. You expect that the guy who was busy burning bridges did so because he had good reason to think over his life, and that his spell in the wilderness would finally give him the time to do this. This didn't happen to Ansell, and that is telling. In what is probably my favorite passage, he explains what the isolation did to him, and how. I have to quote this at length:
This was the pattern of my days, a simple life led by natural rhythms rather than the requirements and expectations of others. Imagine being given the opportunity to take time out of your life, for five whole years. Free of social obligations, free of work commitments. Think how well you would get to know yourself, all that time to consider your past and the choices you had made, to focus on your personal development, to know yourself through and through to work out your goals in life, your true ambitions.
None of this happened, not to me. Perhaps for someone else it would have been different. Any insight I have gained has been the result of later reflection. Solitude did not breed introspection, quite the reverse. My days were spend outside, immersed in nature, watching. I saw as much as I did because of two things: the first, quite simply, was time, the long hours spent out in the field; the second was alertness, a state of heightened attentiveness. My attention was constantly focused away from myself and on the natural world around me. And my nights were spent sitting in front of the log fire, aimlessly turning a log from time to time and staring at the flickering flames. I would not be thinking of the day just gone; the day was done. And I would not be planning tomorrow; tomorrow would take care of itself. The silence outside was reflected by a growing silence within. Any interior monologue quietened to a whisper, then faded away entirely. I have never practised meditation, but there is a goal in Buddhist practice of achieving a condition of no-mind, a state of being free of thought, and I seemed to have found my way there by accident. I certainly learned to be at ease with myself in the years I spent at Penlan, but it was not by knowing myself better – it was by forgetting I was there. I had become a part of the landscape, a stone.
Of course, there is indubitably an ascetic quality to Ansell's quest, as this passage aptly shows, and of course, there is that sense of freedom, that sense of going back to the roots, learning to live all over again, in harmony with nature. But there is no ideological hammering. As he himself says, if he arrived at any state of mind at all, it was by accident. There is something pleasantly que sera sera about him, and – perhaps following on from this – a great sense of peace which is felt in the writing. “I couldn't feel lonely,” he states at one point. “Loneliness is the product of an isolation that has not been freely chosen.” He makes it all sound so simple.
The title Deep Country refers to an idea that Ansell returns to quite a few times, namely that no matter how small the habitat you live in, you cannot exhaust it. When he leaves after five years, he is adamant that it is not because he is bored, or because he has seen everything there is to seen. He argues in favor of exploring a small place in depth, as opposed to larger stretches in breadth. Superficially, or quality over quantity, and of course above all a return to the olden days, when people's scope in the world was tied up to how much ground they could cover in one day.
Having set the scene, in both the physical – the direct surroundings of the Penlan cottage – and mental – what the hell is he doing there – sense, Ansell turns for the rest of the book simply to what he already hints at in the above passage: simple observation. In this also looms the comparison with Walden. Thoreau, too, set up the theological framework in the first few chapters and then wallowed in long-winded romantic reveries on the pond, the trees, and the wildlife. Interestingly, all I remember from those parts of the book are the moments when Thoreau's bubble is punctured by civilisation: his wonderful passages about the trains passing his cottage. In Deep Country, similarly, I am reading all these descriptions of the birds he saw and their closeness and familiarity, but nothing really sticks except the overall feel of him out there, going about his day. Which is enough for me.
But is it enough for a book? That I remember the train sections from Walden is of course precisely because they are intrusions from culture. The great value of interacting with nature, I think, is that it does not stir one's thoughts. We hardly ever sit and think about nature; no, we marvel at it, or we are left in awe, or are disgusted. All involuntary responses. The sense of freedom that we feel when returning to nature stems from the fact that nature can get by on its own; it does not need us. It is still much more perfect a machine than any that we will ever make: no lag, no reboots, beautiful graphics, and the bugs it does have do not need to be fixed.
The problem is that these consolations of nature cannot be truly got second-hand. Not like this. Writing about it, just so, as it is, is impossible: the very fact of words turns the spectacle, that most flawless of machines, into culture, and destroys everything good about it. There is a vacuousness in this here text, my eyes drift over it, and while it is not without its charms, it is ultimately, utterly without point.
Utterly without point. Come to think of it, Ansell would probably like that conclusion, actually. At the end of the book, he browses through the notebooks he erratically kept throughout that half decade, and observes that he has “disappeared entirely from [his] own narrative. I came to the hills to find myself, and ended up losing myself instead. And that was immeasurably better.” When he leaves the hut, he leaves it with exactly the same small bag of belongings that he arrived with. In a sense this indeed nicely renders the whole exercise as utterly without point, but of course it turns out that that is precisely the point.
August 31, 2023
This book invites comparisons with Thoreau’s Walden, although Ansell is far more to my taste, and his Welsh wilderness was more authentically isolated than Walden Pond. I like playing at being a hermit, but I’m too soft and inauthentic to make the kind of long term commitment to discomfort that Ansell made. I admire him for it.
There is a great deal of absorption in the life of birds – perhaps too much so, for those who are not as ornithologically obsessed as the author. I didn’t mind. Nor did I mind that we get almost nothing about the author’s backstory, or the kind of deep reflections that Thoreau goes in for. Instead, we have an almost Taoist detachment:
“I have disappeared entirely from my own narrative...I came to the hills to find myself, and ended up losing myself instead.”
I rather liked this. The trouble with Thoreau is that his philsophical ramblings are like being buttonholed by the pub bore. Ansell is the opposite: sometimes I wished he would dive beneath the surface. But maybe – as the book seems to suggest – the whole secret is just to go with the flow.
There is a great deal of absorption in the life of birds – perhaps too much so, for those who are not as ornithologically obsessed as the author. I didn’t mind. Nor did I mind that we get almost nothing about the author’s backstory, or the kind of deep reflections that Thoreau goes in for. Instead, we have an almost Taoist detachment:
“I have disappeared entirely from my own narrative...I came to the hills to find myself, and ended up losing myself instead.”
I rather liked this. The trouble with Thoreau is that his philsophical ramblings are like being buttonholed by the pub bore. Ansell is the opposite: sometimes I wished he would dive beneath the surface. But maybe – as the book seems to suggest – the whole secret is just to go with the flow.
February 20, 2020
While I enjoyed the very idea of this book, of one living off the grid in the remote part of Wales without the very necessities of life, I was slightly disappointed. I needed more insight, more soul bending details of what solitude truly means and it’s effects. What resides here are accounts of Wales wildlife. Birds in particular. Bats as well. 99.9 percent of those birds I’d never heard of.
The book is very informative on those accounts and I enjoyed looking them up to see for myself. The prose is comfortable. It’s a slow, smooth read and if wildlife is your thing then I highly recommend.
The book is very informative on those accounts and I enjoyed looking them up to see for myself. The prose is comfortable. It’s a slow, smooth read and if wildlife is your thing then I highly recommend.
May 19, 2013
I took the baggage of expectations into this book, which is why I didn't rate it higher; it was a fine book, and I suspect others could enjoy it more than me. I have no criticism of it save for disappointment that my expectations weren't met, and that's all.
I had hoped that this would give me insight into the nuts and bolts of homesteading, but aside from some tantalizing brushes with daily life and practical knowledge (cutting wood, making mushroom ketchup), this is more of a bird diary than anything else. Birds are ABUNDANT in this book, and the author is quite knowledgeable about them, so certain passages and insights are a delight -- but cumulatively, it gets boring. Birdwatching is one of those things better experienced than read about, especially at length.
Other wildlife sightings perk the narrative a bit here and there, and Ansell is at his best when delving into the local history of Penlan and the lives of those who call it home (like the girl he met who was about to be married and had never really left the 50km or so of her birthplace), but these encounters are pretty rare. Sitting alone in a cabin, it turns out, doesn't make for the most engaging account.
But it was a relaxing read, and I did feel that short of up and leaving the city myself, putting my brain out on a Welsh hill was restorative after all. And Ansell's final refection on what the five years of isolation gave him were worthwhile. He went to the hills to find himself, but says instead his ego dissolved, and that he became a pair of eyes, a vessel. An interesting psychological shift I would have liked to hear more about, at the expense of some of the description of long-eared bats.
I had hoped that this would give me insight into the nuts and bolts of homesteading, but aside from some tantalizing brushes with daily life and practical knowledge (cutting wood, making mushroom ketchup), this is more of a bird diary than anything else. Birds are ABUNDANT in this book, and the author is quite knowledgeable about them, so certain passages and insights are a delight -- but cumulatively, it gets boring. Birdwatching is one of those things better experienced than read about, especially at length.
Other wildlife sightings perk the narrative a bit here and there, and Ansell is at his best when delving into the local history of Penlan and the lives of those who call it home (like the girl he met who was about to be married and had never really left the 50km or so of her birthplace), but these encounters are pretty rare. Sitting alone in a cabin, it turns out, doesn't make for the most engaging account.
But it was a relaxing read, and I did feel that short of up and leaving the city myself, putting my brain out on a Welsh hill was restorative after all. And Ansell's final refection on what the five years of isolation gave him were worthwhile. He went to the hills to find himself, but says instead his ego dissolved, and that he became a pair of eyes, a vessel. An interesting psychological shift I would have liked to hear more about, at the expense of some of the description of long-eared bats.
June 5, 2011
Rather alot about birds, and not enough about how Ansell actually survived, but was an ok read nevertheless.
January 12, 2020
This was a rather strange book I suppose if I'm honest.
For those of you expecting a personal account of time spent in the Welsh hills, you will be sorely disappointed. Neil Ansell's story instead revolves around the wildlife and the turning of the seasons in Penlan Wood where he spends five uninterrupted years (!!!!) in a solitary manner.
Even he admits that he wasn't affected by his time there in a self reflective manner:-
"Imagine being given the opportunity to take time out of your life, for five whole years...... Think how well you would get to know yourself, all that time to consider your past and the choices you had made, to focus on your personal development, to know yourself through and through, to work out your goals in life, your true ambitions. None of this happened, not to me............ Any insight I have gained has been the result of later reflection. Solitude did not breed introspection, quite the reverse. My days were spent outside, immersed in nature, watching".
He initially comes across as quite stoic and resistant to any mindfulness or contemplation, instead focusing on sawing wood, documenting bird behaviour, establishing daily, monthly, yearly routine.
It is only in the latter part of the book, indeed the last two chapters really, where he provides a miniscule element of personal consideration:-
"I have never practised meditation, but there is a goal in Buddhist practice of achieving a condition of no-mind, a state of being free of thought, and I seemed to have found my way there by accident. I certainly learned to be at ease with myself in the years I spent at Penlan, but it was not by knowing myself better- it was by forgetting I was there. I had become a part of the landscape, a stone."
But then, I am projecting my idea of what should happen when someone spends so much time alone in nature and not everyone is alike. We are not all self-reflective or mindful or sensitive to being solitary. Some people are happy to be alone and just be a human being, not doing. And Mr Ansell certainly does that well.
For those of you expecting a personal account of time spent in the Welsh hills, you will be sorely disappointed. Neil Ansell's story instead revolves around the wildlife and the turning of the seasons in Penlan Wood where he spends five uninterrupted years (!!!!) in a solitary manner.
Even he admits that he wasn't affected by his time there in a self reflective manner:-
"Imagine being given the opportunity to take time out of your life, for five whole years...... Think how well you would get to know yourself, all that time to consider your past and the choices you had made, to focus on your personal development, to know yourself through and through, to work out your goals in life, your true ambitions. None of this happened, not to me............ Any insight I have gained has been the result of later reflection. Solitude did not breed introspection, quite the reverse. My days were spent outside, immersed in nature, watching".
He initially comes across as quite stoic and resistant to any mindfulness or contemplation, instead focusing on sawing wood, documenting bird behaviour, establishing daily, monthly, yearly routine.
It is only in the latter part of the book, indeed the last two chapters really, where he provides a miniscule element of personal consideration:-
"I have never practised meditation, but there is a goal in Buddhist practice of achieving a condition of no-mind, a state of being free of thought, and I seemed to have found my way there by accident. I certainly learned to be at ease with myself in the years I spent at Penlan, but it was not by knowing myself better- it was by forgetting I was there. I had become a part of the landscape, a stone."
But then, I am projecting my idea of what should happen when someone spends so much time alone in nature and not everyone is alike. We are not all self-reflective or mindful or sensitive to being solitary. Some people are happy to be alone and just be a human being, not doing. And Mr Ansell certainly does that well.
Want to read
January 11, 2018Precis by the author here: https://www.theguardian.com/environme...
"What I found was not what you might expect. You might think that such protracted solitude would lead to introspection, to self-examination, to a growing self-awareness. But not for me. What happened to me was that I began to forget myself [...]
I could have stayed forever; becoming, no doubt, steadily more reclusive and eccentric. I had the measure of this life now, it had long since ceased to feel like any kind of a challenge; this was just me living the life I had chosen. What led me away in the end was a visceral, almost bodily, craving to have children, in a way that is rather expected of women but less so of men. And though it seemed unlikely, I was to meet the woman who would become the mother of my children while I was still living at the cottage."
"What I found was not what you might expect. You might think that such protracted solitude would lead to introspection, to self-examination, to a growing self-awareness. But not for me. What happened to me was that I began to forget myself [...]
I could have stayed forever; becoming, no doubt, steadily more reclusive and eccentric. I had the measure of this life now, it had long since ceased to feel like any kind of a challenge; this was just me living the life I had chosen. What led me away in the end was a visceral, almost bodily, craving to have children, in a way that is rather expected of women but less so of men. And though it seemed unlikely, I was to meet the woman who would become the mother of my children while I was still living at the cottage."
July 22, 2017
This was a beautiful, languid read, telling the story of Neil Ansell's five years living in isolation in the Welsh hills. It loosely cycles through the seasons, full of minutely observed anecdotes about birds, wildlife trivia and a smattering of local history. There are some glorious moments, like the time he opened his door to hare on his doorstep. The final chapter is quite brilliant as he reflects back on his experiences. But there was slightly too much bird life for me and not enough of the other stuff. I would have liked a little more of the reflection that dominates the end of the book and a little less of the sparrow hawk antics.
September 4, 2025
Oh my god I would absolutely love to do something like this, such an amazing account of interactions with landscapes and nature.
March 10, 2014
I have to say this book turned out not to be what I had expected and in a way, not what I had hoped. I had been keen to find out more about Ansell's experience of escaping from the conventional world and spending five years living alone in a isolated stone cottage miles from anywhere. I guess like many people I have sometimes wished I could get away from it all and wondered what it might be like.
What led Ansell to make this choice and what did significant people in his family think when he decided to do it? Did it make him re-evaluate the norms that most of us live by? Did he miss anything? Women, sport, reading, music?
I'm afraid there is little about this side of his experience, instead the book sometimes feels like an extended account of bird watching. There are many pages about the different birds that Ansell observed from various locations around the cottage. And while these are often interesting and informative in their own right, I really wanted to know something else which he just didn't seem to write about - his experience. What about the days when he woke up cold and tired and just didn't feel like having to chop wood again, what did he say to himself then, could he feel his mood changing as the day wore on?
The most interesting chapter is the last one, where Ansell describes his final months in the cottage and the role that illness played in making him think again about staying there. But even here I would have liked a little more reflection and disclosure perhaps. Why did it make him feel so bad when a phone was installed for him, what was the line of thinking which led him to conclude that he would have failed if he had used the phone for anything other than emergencies.
A further chapter exploring how Ansell found the return to normal life would have been interesting. Was it hard for him after five years away on his own?
So all in all a book that raised more questions for me than answers...
What led Ansell to make this choice and what did significant people in his family think when he decided to do it? Did it make him re-evaluate the norms that most of us live by? Did he miss anything? Women, sport, reading, music?
I'm afraid there is little about this side of his experience, instead the book sometimes feels like an extended account of bird watching. There are many pages about the different birds that Ansell observed from various locations around the cottage. And while these are often interesting and informative in their own right, I really wanted to know something else which he just didn't seem to write about - his experience. What about the days when he woke up cold and tired and just didn't feel like having to chop wood again, what did he say to himself then, could he feel his mood changing as the day wore on?
The most interesting chapter is the last one, where Ansell describes his final months in the cottage and the role that illness played in making him think again about staying there. But even here I would have liked a little more reflection and disclosure perhaps. Why did it make him feel so bad when a phone was installed for him, what was the line of thinking which led him to conclude that he would have failed if he had used the phone for anything other than emergencies.
A further chapter exploring how Ansell found the return to normal life would have been interesting. Was it hard for him after five years away on his own?
So all in all a book that raised more questions for me than answers...
July 28, 2020
My father, a botanist by profession and by proclivity, harrumphs about people who hike through field and forest but can’t identify plants: “If you really loved nature, it seems to me you’d want to at least know the names of what you’re looking at!” In my dad’s sight, plants are always in the foreground, and the rest of life is a bit blurrier.
In Deep Country, Neil Ansell’s meditation on five years in a remote cottage in mid-Wales, what’s foregrounded is wild animal life, especially bird life. Landscapes and plants are background, and other people, indoor life, and his own history are almost entirely out of the frame. He focuses intently on individual creatures, and over time he learns nesting habits, flight displays, feeding preferences, and other details about dozens of species. He looks, ever more closely, and barely notices his own self receding into the distance.
It’s all but automatic in our culture to foreground our own feelings and anxieties. This book is a beautiful account of looking up and, through intense interest in our natural world, breaking free of the claustrophobia of self-absorption.
In Deep Country, Neil Ansell’s meditation on five years in a remote cottage in mid-Wales, what’s foregrounded is wild animal life, especially bird life. Landscapes and plants are background, and other people, indoor life, and his own history are almost entirely out of the frame. He focuses intently on individual creatures, and over time he learns nesting habits, flight displays, feeding preferences, and other details about dozens of species. He looks, ever more closely, and barely notices his own self receding into the distance.
It’s all but automatic in our culture to foreground our own feelings and anxieties. This book is a beautiful account of looking up and, through intense interest in our natural world, breaking free of the claustrophobia of self-absorption.
November 5, 2020
Birds, birds, birds, birds and birds. Then more birds. I felt slightly aggrieved reading this book. It is so well written, but 90% about the wild birds in Wales. Honestly, this should be titled 'The private life of Welsh birds', and there should be a disclaimer on the cover declaring its avian content. Reader beware.
October 6, 2011
It's got birds in it. 5 years without East Enders. Brilliant.
June 23, 2020
When he was thirty, Neil Ansell undertook an extreme adventure. He moved into an old Victorian gamekeeper’s cottage, situated in one of the least populated regions in Britain. Without electricity, gas, running water, or plumbing, Penlan Cottage—uninhabited for decades—had only some basic furnishings, and Ansell brought nothing with him beyond some clothes. “I wanted to know how lightly I could tread on the earth,” he writes.
Ansell remained for five years, and Deep Country is the story of those years, a sojourn during which he experienced droughts, torrential rains, being snowed in, both mild and serious illness, and intense isolation. At one point, when he hiked to the village shop, he found that when he spoke to the shopkeeper, his voice cracked, and he realized that he hadn’t spoken a word to anyone in at least two weeks. But this isolation was part of the challenge: He wanted to find out “who I was when I could no longer define myself in terms of my relation to others.”
For most of the book, we accompany Ansell on his daily rounds and he is such a good storyteller that I found myself engrossed in the details of his life—his walks to his postbox, or to get wood, or to check on his 120 bird boxes, one of the research projects he took on each year. And his storytelling encompasses the wildlife he sees, especially the diverse population of birds—goosanders, goshawks, redstarts, woodpeckers, owls—who become his main company. He so focuses his attention on them as they go about their lives—hunting, eating, displaying, mating—that the stories become solely theirs.
This outward-looking viewpoint is one of the remarkable and surprising aspects of the book. You might imagine, he says, that all this time on his own would lead to self-examination. But this was not the case. “Solitude did not breed introspection, quite the reverse,” he says. “My days were spent outside, immersed in nature, watching…I certainly learned to be at ease with myself ...but it was not by knowing myself better—it was by forgetting I was there. I had become a part of the landscape, a stone.”
Ansell’s vivid descriptions made me long for photographs, and I recommend a YouTube video Ansell made for this excellent book, which offers at least a glimpse of the cottage and surrounding Welsh landscape that he made so fully his own.
Ansell remained for five years, and Deep Country is the story of those years, a sojourn during which he experienced droughts, torrential rains, being snowed in, both mild and serious illness, and intense isolation. At one point, when he hiked to the village shop, he found that when he spoke to the shopkeeper, his voice cracked, and he realized that he hadn’t spoken a word to anyone in at least two weeks. But this isolation was part of the challenge: He wanted to find out “who I was when I could no longer define myself in terms of my relation to others.”
For most of the book, we accompany Ansell on his daily rounds and he is such a good storyteller that I found myself engrossed in the details of his life—his walks to his postbox, or to get wood, or to check on his 120 bird boxes, one of the research projects he took on each year. And his storytelling encompasses the wildlife he sees, especially the diverse population of birds—goosanders, goshawks, redstarts, woodpeckers, owls—who become his main company. He so focuses his attention on them as they go about their lives—hunting, eating, displaying, mating—that the stories become solely theirs.
This outward-looking viewpoint is one of the remarkable and surprising aspects of the book. You might imagine, he says, that all this time on his own would lead to self-examination. But this was not the case. “Solitude did not breed introspection, quite the reverse,” he says. “My days were spent outside, immersed in nature, watching…I certainly learned to be at ease with myself ...but it was not by knowing myself better—it was by forgetting I was there. I had become a part of the landscape, a stone.”
Ansell’s vivid descriptions made me long for photographs, and I recommend a YouTube video Ansell made for this excellent book, which offers at least a glimpse of the cottage and surrounding Welsh landscape that he made so fully his own.
January 4, 2025
Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a fireside armchair read, one to daydream about as Neil’s beautiful prose takes you through the seasons, sights, sounds and smells of his isolated cottage life in the hills.
However, 2/3rds of the book is purely about the local bird life and if you’re not a twitcher, this doesn’t really mean much and I found myself drifting, and skipping a few sections. I’m still rating it 4 ⭐️ because I just loved the writing so much, even if the topic wasn’t always of interest.
“One late-autumn day I opened the back door to fetch some water, and there was a young hare sat on my back step. Save for the twitching of its nose, it froze in position as if I had surprised it as it was about to knock.”
“There were two distinct fogs here: a rising fog and a falling fog. The first of these would settle above the river on a clear cold night, and would bring me those bright mornings of such breathtaking beauty that as I looked out over the rolling ocean of foam beneath me I would think: forget everything else, it was worth coming here for this alone. In a falling fog, the clouds would drop over the mountains and envelop me… A dark beauty rather than the brilliant beauty of the rising fog.”
“That was my fourth autumn at the cottage, and I felt that I had the measure of life there. All my systems were in place for the months of austerity to come. My woodshed was well stocked with drying logs; what had needed harvesting from the garden vegetable patches was stored away in the pantry; I had my thirty jars of jam, my selection of pickled and dried wild mushrooms.”
However, 2/3rds of the book is purely about the local bird life and if you’re not a twitcher, this doesn’t really mean much and I found myself drifting, and skipping a few sections. I’m still rating it 4 ⭐️ because I just loved the writing so much, even if the topic wasn’t always of interest.
“One late-autumn day I opened the back door to fetch some water, and there was a young hare sat on my back step. Save for the twitching of its nose, it froze in position as if I had surprised it as it was about to knock.”
“There were two distinct fogs here: a rising fog and a falling fog. The first of these would settle above the river on a clear cold night, and would bring me those bright mornings of such breathtaking beauty that as I looked out over the rolling ocean of foam beneath me I would think: forget everything else, it was worth coming here for this alone. In a falling fog, the clouds would drop over the mountains and envelop me… A dark beauty rather than the brilliant beauty of the rising fog.”
“That was my fourth autumn at the cottage, and I felt that I had the measure of life there. All my systems were in place for the months of austerity to come. My woodshed was well stocked with drying logs; what had needed harvesting from the garden vegetable patches was stored away in the pantry; I had my thirty jars of jam, my selection of pickled and dried wild mushrooms.”
February 3, 2025
I gave myself months to slowly savour this book, reading a chapter as and when. The author was in no hurry, why should I be? I've never read a book quite like it. I found myself settling into a deep and profound peace as I made my way through its pages. My favourite aspect of this is that it's clear that his work was not intended as a narrative- it's what I love about non fiction, it doesn’t have to be. The style of writing changes as the author changes. As the chapters pass, his accounts become less about himself and more about the environment, and you become immersed in vivid descriptions of the ecology. The length of these descriptions may bore some. But for me, it put me right there in the river, in the peat bog, in the cottage. It forced me into a stillness and a sense of presence that I didn't even know I was capable of. The pages are a time capsule of Penlan Forest, beautifully preserved and full of awe for any reader patient enough to delve inside.
December 29, 2017
A man lives in an isolated cottage in Wales for 5 years, with no phone and no transport. Then he writes about it. His constant companions are the birds and other wild creatures that live in his locality. This book reads like an episode of Springwatch. I was totally absorbed by it, and I miss reading it now. So if you love nature, and want a tranquil read, then this is the book for you.
Available at my house for all Springwatch fans to borrow. I am now off to find a cottage in deepest Wales where I can watch the birds to my heart's content. Sigh!
Available at my house for all Springwatch fans to borrow. I am now off to find a cottage in deepest Wales where I can watch the birds to my heart's content. Sigh!
November 3, 2019
This simple yet detailed observation of five years spent in a quiet place in the Welsh hills reads like a plainspoken love letter to a fast disappearing and shrinking animal kingdom. It’s an account of noticing what surprisingly occurs in a human’s interior world when it is no longer part of a daily community of shared language and work. It’s a quiet call to notice the beautiful interdependence and diversity of this earth, before it’s too late. A wonderful read.
March 7, 2019
As the other reviews note, this is a book about nature, not a book about being alone. I recall three paragraphs of introspection. But it is a quite good book of nature writing, especially about birds.
December 12, 2024
This is an interesting little memoir, a bit meandering, not quite linear. The descriptions of wildlife in mid-Wales were engaging, but humbling--I didn't actually know what most of the birds Ansell mentions were, and had to look them up! I'll definitely look out for more of this author's books.
December 26, 2024
There are so many different birds
February 26, 2020
Repetitive. Not really for a reader who already has an interest in nature and knowledge of bird identification.
April 25, 2019
A beautiful book. Outdoing Thoreau in staying in one place, alone for long periods. No cheating this time. Follows a theme of the joys of looking at one limited piece of Nature in depth (see "The Fly trap, for instance). Neil Ansell's home patch is tiny - a corner of a Welsh hill farm and the reachable-on-foot moorland adjacent. So birds are often recognized as individuals and fine details of their behavior are lovingly noted.
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