The Natural Explorer: Understanding Your Landscape

by Tristan Gooley

The most rewarding travel experiences do not depend on our destination or the length of our journey, but on our levels of awareness. A short walk can compare with an epic journey, when we take the time to focus on the things that dramatically enrich each journey.

Exploration is no longer about hardship or long distances, it is about celebrating the sense of connection and discovery that is possible in all our travels.

Genres: Nature, Travel, Nonfiction, Outdoors, Natural History, Walking, Environment

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays around the theme of looking at the landscape around you from a new perspective. It is well written but does not have the same coherence as his previous book, The Natural Navigator. His subject matters cover the coast, rivers, mountains, and being a book written by an Englishmen, the weather. He also considers the how the human population has impacted the land and has some philosophical moments when writing about senses and inner moods.

Worth a read if you like Deakin and Mcfarlane

[Maddy Ebbrell · Rating 1 out of 5]

For such a lovely charming book why did they make the Animal chapter so grotesque. I did not need to learn about abhorrent human practices of puppies.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting idea! Exploration has been achieved in the old-timer sense. Now there's the new type of exploration involving being present to the world around you. This book proves you do not need to travel far to have an adventure. There's lots to see out there, so use this book to unlock your senses to your surroundings.

[Darryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I think my Romantic tendencies may have left my reading somewhat biased, however I enjoyed the notion of forging a deeper connection to everyday landscapes and experiencing the world with greater awareness.

[Matt Beamish · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful book to read in small snippets or large slabs. It’s a wonderful experience of walking with the author but learning so many abstracted points and related information along the way. Mr Gooley’s writing style is perfectly conversational and a true pleasure to read.

[Miguel Panão · Rating 5 out of 5]

An inspiration to be a natural explorer of the XXI century. Very well written.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really thought provoking. Made me think about a lot of things in a different way. I like the way he blended now with people from the past.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a bit disappointing. I thought the choice to illuminate how to understand the everyday landscape by comparing our everyday travels to huge feats of exploration was odd. Gooley accepts some of these older explorers' statements altogether too uncritically, unintentionally (I would think) propping up various racist myths.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

The topic was a good one but the book tries to encompass just about every discipline associated with the countryside. He should have made it shorter and stuck to his immediate surroundings and what they revealed. The mention of early explorers aroused my interest to find out more about them although they had no direct connection apart from how to notice the simplest of things.

[Ciaran Monaghan · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF - I enjoyed some of this and liked the premise - helping people to appreciate the natural world and go out into it with their eyes open - but the writing wasn't the best and quite a few of the chapters ended up being a bit dull. I decided not to push on as I felt I'd got what I could out of it. If you want something similar, but better (in my opinion), then try Robert MacFarlane.

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

30 essays on subjective material such as time, the earth, and beauty, each one through the lens of a voyager searching for the unknown. Beautifully written and soulful, as well as thought-provoking and informative. I stopped multiple times while reading to look up additional information. I cannot wait for my next book with this author.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. Really opens your eyes to things in nature and people which you might otherwise miss. It’s not super in-depth, but a really fun, light read to understanding different places and landscapes.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining, informative read. The last couple of chapters seemed like padding.

[Megan Hancox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though provoking but I found some chapters unnecessary

[Ian Vince · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote a review of this for a magazine - here's what I said:

Following on from the success of The Natural Navigator, which was chosen as one of the National Trust’s ‘Outdoors Books of the Year’ in 2011, Tristan Gooley returns with a highly readable and engaging work devoted to the temporarily mislaid art of exploration.

He starts by setting out exactly what an explorer is and is not, and that’s important because he is attempting to reclaim the job title from adventurers – as Churchill memorably referred to Ernest Shackleton. For Gooley, heroic courage and derring-do will not do at all; explorers explore the world, rather than conquer it as a statement of man’s power over nature. Exploration starts in the act of observation and, once we understand that, we can perhaps begin by paying close attention to what is close to home.

As if to reinforce how little most of us notice of our immediate surroundings, the book follows Gooley’s journey around his local patch of West Sussex as he perceives and draws on the most intricate details to illustrate points about plants, animals, geology, the weather and so on. Each of the thirty or so chapters begins with an eloquent, short passage of often intense sensory input which sets the scene as he reads the landscape in much the same way that a parfumier describes a scent. As each chapter unfolds, we learn more of exploration not only through the author, but also through insight afforded by Gooley’s cast of explorers – Darwin, von Humboldt, Gilbert White, Dorothy Wordsworth, amongst others – all of which serve as explorations of the act of exploration itself.

Gooley, it turns out, is describing and expanding upon a journey that took him four hours. It’s an inspiring account but also a turning point – perhaps a classic in years to come – because its simple and beautiful aim is to help you recognise what your senses are telling you. It’s also an object lesson in how to frame a call to action, because this is a book you can’t put down until you absolutely have to get out and start seeing the world as you should. And that’s when the adventure really begins.

[Ian Russell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obviously it pays to read the description before purchasing a book. This wasn’t the Gooley book I’d wanted to read. After an interesting newspaper review, I had put one of his others, The Natural Navigator, on my to-read list well over a year ago, just waiting for its too rich price to come down. It never did. When this book came to my attention, at a knock-down price, I snapped it up. Surely it must be along the same lines?

My first impression was good: I liked the style of presentation. Each chapter comprises three parts; an amuse bouche quotation or poem (credited to another writer), an abstract from a walker’s journal (which I took to be Gooley’s as it is uncredited), and a much longer dissertation. It reminded me of the first blog I kept many moons ago, the three distinct parts coming together around the heading.

The second parts, abstracted from a walker’s journal, is far and away the better written. Unfortunately, its the lengthier third parts that make this book what it is. If you’ve an interest in geography, as an academic study, then possibly, this is your kind of book. Then again, it’s not exactly a brow-lifter, more a collection of light, meandering dissertations on a list of topics which Gooley considered pertinent to an appreciation of our landscape. A few of these are arguably tenuous. For the most part I was bored by the dry prose and the low bar he set himself and the readers. I managed as far as halfway and a bit more, then even the once enchanting journal abstracts lost their draw. I admit I skimmed through the rest. I’m giving it two stars for the bits of journal but, I wonder, should bother with his other book now?

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a series of short essays which aims to raise our awareness of the world around us, to enhance our experience of being in the great outdoors. The thread which connects each chapter is a short walk the author takes in the south of England and I'm sure it will make me think more about my surroundings the next time I'm out walking. It's a fairly lightweight book though, one which I will probably dip into now and again, but it's not very original really and if your general knowledge is already good, you won't learn much from reading it and will get bored quickly.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is in a series of three books (so far) by Tristan Gooley. I am reading them in reverse order from publication simply because I bought the Walker's Guide first and was inspired I suppose to get his two earlier books. This is more a series of essays on the landscape and how the whole environment is interwoven. The writer looks widely at patterns of land across the world and cites writers like Humboldt and Pliny to make his case about land and sea.

[Kate Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a sweet concept ... but what a yawn. It ended up on my bedside table as a book to help me sleep. Just a kind of lilting meandering prose, and often citing the same handful of (men's) work again and again.

[Celia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Natural Explorer is an interesting book with interesting ideas divided up to bit size chunks. I enjoyed reading this book it exposed me to a ideas and people I had not heard of before.

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably best thought of as a series of fascinating essays to dip into, rather than a book to read all the way through in one go.

[Joshua Friesen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did like his writing style. Good subject matter.