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Holloway
Holloway - a hollow way, a sunken path. A route that centuries of foot-fall, hoof-hit, wheel-roll and rain-run have harrowed deep down into bedrock. In July 2005, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin - author of Wildwood - travelled to explore the holloways of South Dorset's sandstone. They found their way into a landscape of shadows, spectres & great strangeness. Six years later, after Roger Deakin's early death, Robert Macfarlane returned to the holloway with the artist Stanley Donwood and writer Dan Richards. The book is about those journeys and that landscape.
Moving in the spaces between social history, psychogeography and travel writing, Holloway is a beautiful and haunted work of art.
Moving in the spaces between social history, psychogeography and travel writing, Holloway is a beautiful and haunted work of art.
41 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
13 people are currently reading
2487 people want to read
About the author
Robert Macfarlane
117 books4,423 followersRobert Macfarlane is a British nature writer and literary critic.
Educated at Nottingham High School, Pembroke College, Cambridge and Magdalen College, Oxford, he is currently a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and teaches in the Faculty of English at Cambridge.
Robert Macfarlane is the author of prize-winning and bestselling books about landscape, nature, people and place, including Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003), The Wild Places (2007), The Old Ways (2012), Holloway (2013, with Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards), Landmarks (2015), The Lost Words: A Spell Book (with the artist Jackie Morris, 2017) and Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019). His work has been translated into many languages, won prizes around the world, and his books have been widely adapted for film, television, stage and radio. He has collaborated with artists, film-makers, actors, photographers and musicians, including Hauschka, Willem Dafoe, Karine Polwart and Stanley Donwood. In 2017 he was awarded the EM Forster Prize for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Educated at Nottingham High School, Pembroke College, Cambridge and Magdalen College, Oxford, he is currently a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and teaches in the Faculty of English at Cambridge.
Robert Macfarlane is the author of prize-winning and bestselling books about landscape, nature, people and place, including Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003), The Wild Places (2007), The Old Ways (2012), Holloway (2013, with Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards), Landmarks (2015), The Lost Words: A Spell Book (with the artist Jackie Morris, 2017) and Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019). His work has been translated into many languages, won prizes around the world, and his books have been widely adapted for film, television, stage and radio. He has collaborated with artists, film-makers, actors, photographers and musicians, including Hauschka, Willem Dafoe, Karine Polwart and Stanley Donwood. In 2017 he was awarded the EM Forster Prize for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 160 reviews
November 21, 2016
It is difficult to know how to describe this exquisite little book. It is only 33 pages long, and some of those pages are filled with delicate black-and-white drawings of trees. It’s a memoir of a camping trip inspired by a book I’ve never heard of, it’s a extended poem about the sunken holloways of Dorset – those deep, mysterious tunnels between tree-roots that were once roads, goat-tracks, and field-paths – and it's a celebration of nature, friendship, and language. I’ve read it three times now, and find new delights each time. It was so beautiful, so marvellous, I have gone and bought several more of Robert Macfarlane’s books since, hoping for more enchantment.
October 9, 2018
Holloway - a hollow way, a sunken path. A route that centuries of foot-fall, hoof-hit, wheel-roll of rain-run have harrowed deep down into bedrock.
Holloway follows a journey, and its repetition. In 2005, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin journeyed to the Chideok Valley in the Marshwood Dale of Dorset to 'explore the holloway' of its sandstone. Here, 'They found their way into a landscape of shadows, spectres & great strangeness.' Following Deakin's death, Macfarlane decided to revisit the same holloway, accompanied by artist Stanley Donwood and writer Dan Richards. The book which ensued is 'about those journeys & that landscape...'.
Holloways can be found 'where the stone is soft - malmstone, greensand, sandstone, chalk.' Their characteristics, and the way in which they came to be, are described in the following manner: 'Like creases in the land, or the wear on the stone sill of a doorstep or stair, they are the result of repeated human actions. Their age chastens without crushing. They relate to other old paths & tracks in the landscape - ways that still connect place to place or person to person.' Macfarlane traces the history of these distinctive holloways, noting that they have been in existence since the Iron Age. None, he says, are 'younger than 300 years old.' Very few holloways are still in use; most prove to be impracticably narrow given the ways in which we now travel: 'They exist,' affirms Macfarlane, 'but cryptically. They have thrown up their own defences and disguises: nettles & briars guard their entrances, trees to either side bend over them & lace their topmost branches to form a tunnel...'.
In Holloway, Macfarlane examines the original journey which he took with Deakin, whom he lovingly describes as '... worker with wood; writer of books; maker of friends'. He talks quite touchingly of what the pair chose to take away with them on their journey to Dorset: 'These were among the things we carried with us: the novel Rogue Male, published by Geoffrey Household in 1939; a map of the area; two tents; a trenching tool; penknives (Roger's blunt, mine blunter); matches & candles; two hipflasks (one of whisky, one of arak.)' It is in Household's novel that the location of the particular holloway the pair sought is revealed.
This is the first time in which I have read one of Macfarlane's full works, but it will not be the last. His choice of vocabulary is striking and often original; his descriptions incredibly evocative. His prose is layered, rich, and unusual. For instance, he writes: 'One need not be a mystic to accept that certain old paths are linear only in a simple sense. Like trees, they have branches & like rivers they have tributaries. They are rifts within which time might exist as pure surface, prone to recapitulation & rhyme, weird morphologies, uncanny doublings.' Throughout, Macfarlane's writing is gentle and lilting. He offers peaceful meditations on the countryside, as well as the subtle ways in which the landscape has changed, along with our place within it.
This rich prose has such a sumptuousness to it, and the whole has a poetic feel. Of their initial immersion in the holloway, Macfarlane writes: 'The bright hot surface world was forgotten. So close was the latticework of leaves & branches & so high the eastern side of the holloway that light penetrated its depths only in thin lances. We came occasionally to small clearings, where light fell & grass grew. In the windless warm air, groups of flies bobbed & weaved, each dancing around a set point like vibrating atoms held in a matrix.' Macfarlane's descriptions and rumination both are vivid and atmospheric.
On his second journey, Macfarlane read poetry by Edward Thomas, 'who was the great twentieth-century poet of the old way... His poems are thronged with ghosts, doubles & paths that peter out. He understood himself in topographical terms & he saw that paths run through people as surely as they run through places.'
Holloway is a slim volume, but it evokes a great deal. Spanning under 40 pages, it is a wonderful book to absorb in a single sitting, and is sure to give one a greater appreciation of the natural phenomenons which surround one. It is worth noting the wonderful idea which came with the initial printing of Holloway; in its first run, 277 copies were produced, as that is the height in metres above sea level of Pilsdon Pen, where the Iron Age fort in which this book was begun is situated. Pilsdon Pen is the second highest point in the county of Dorset, and clearly offered much inspiration to Macfarlane and Deakin.
Holloway follows a journey, and its repetition. In 2005, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin journeyed to the Chideok Valley in the Marshwood Dale of Dorset to 'explore the holloway' of its sandstone. Here, 'They found their way into a landscape of shadows, spectres & great strangeness.' Following Deakin's death, Macfarlane decided to revisit the same holloway, accompanied by artist Stanley Donwood and writer Dan Richards. The book which ensued is 'about those journeys & that landscape...'.
Holloways can be found 'where the stone is soft - malmstone, greensand, sandstone, chalk.' Their characteristics, and the way in which they came to be, are described in the following manner: 'Like creases in the land, or the wear on the stone sill of a doorstep or stair, they are the result of repeated human actions. Their age chastens without crushing. They relate to other old paths & tracks in the landscape - ways that still connect place to place or person to person.' Macfarlane traces the history of these distinctive holloways, noting that they have been in existence since the Iron Age. None, he says, are 'younger than 300 years old.' Very few holloways are still in use; most prove to be impracticably narrow given the ways in which we now travel: 'They exist,' affirms Macfarlane, 'but cryptically. They have thrown up their own defences and disguises: nettles & briars guard their entrances, trees to either side bend over them & lace their topmost branches to form a tunnel...'.
In Holloway, Macfarlane examines the original journey which he took with Deakin, whom he lovingly describes as '... worker with wood; writer of books; maker of friends'. He talks quite touchingly of what the pair chose to take away with them on their journey to Dorset: 'These were among the things we carried with us: the novel Rogue Male, published by Geoffrey Household in 1939; a map of the area; two tents; a trenching tool; penknives (Roger's blunt, mine blunter); matches & candles; two hipflasks (one of whisky, one of arak.)' It is in Household's novel that the location of the particular holloway the pair sought is revealed.
This is the first time in which I have read one of Macfarlane's full works, but it will not be the last. His choice of vocabulary is striking and often original; his descriptions incredibly evocative. His prose is layered, rich, and unusual. For instance, he writes: 'One need not be a mystic to accept that certain old paths are linear only in a simple sense. Like trees, they have branches & like rivers they have tributaries. They are rifts within which time might exist as pure surface, prone to recapitulation & rhyme, weird morphologies, uncanny doublings.' Throughout, Macfarlane's writing is gentle and lilting. He offers peaceful meditations on the countryside, as well as the subtle ways in which the landscape has changed, along with our place within it.
This rich prose has such a sumptuousness to it, and the whole has a poetic feel. Of their initial immersion in the holloway, Macfarlane writes: 'The bright hot surface world was forgotten. So close was the latticework of leaves & branches & so high the eastern side of the holloway that light penetrated its depths only in thin lances. We came occasionally to small clearings, where light fell & grass grew. In the windless warm air, groups of flies bobbed & weaved, each dancing around a set point like vibrating atoms held in a matrix.' Macfarlane's descriptions and rumination both are vivid and atmospheric.
On his second journey, Macfarlane read poetry by Edward Thomas, 'who was the great twentieth-century poet of the old way... His poems are thronged with ghosts, doubles & paths that peter out. He understood himself in topographical terms & he saw that paths run through people as surely as they run through places.'
Holloway is a slim volume, but it evokes a great deal. Spanning under 40 pages, it is a wonderful book to absorb in a single sitting, and is sure to give one a greater appreciation of the natural phenomenons which surround one. It is worth noting the wonderful idea which came with the initial printing of Holloway; in its first run, 277 copies were produced, as that is the height in metres above sea level of Pilsdon Pen, where the Iron Age fort in which this book was begun is situated. Pilsdon Pen is the second highest point in the county of Dorset, and clearly offered much inspiration to Macfarlane and Deakin.
January 22, 2020
A lovely little book, but I do wish that the sections written by separate authors had been blended better. The style is so distinctly different between each that it would have been perfectly clear (and far more immersive) to have alternated the two.
June 20, 2022
Hol weg
Holway
Holeway
Holewaye
Hollowy
Holloway
This beautiful tribute begins and ends with the etymology of the word applied to paths so old and well trod that they have sunk into the earth to a surprising depth, often completely hidden from casual view by wild foliage, bordered by overarching trees.
A track worn down by traffic of ages and the fretting of water...in places sixteen or eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields....
They are landmarks that speak of habit rather than suddenness....ways that still connect place to place and person to person. P3
One not be a mystic to accept that certain old paths are linear only in a simple sense. P4
In another of his books, Robert MacFarland devotes a fascinating chapter to a trip he made to explore such terrain with his close friend, Roger Deacon. We do learn that Roger died many years too young, in 2006, not too long after.Suddenly, that was the last trip they had together.
Five years later RMF returns to the Dorset holloway with two friends, listed as co-authors: Dan Richards, a writer; and Stanley Donwood, an artist of exceptional delicacy who captures the spirit of place with his drawings.
I now understand it certainly to be the case...that stretches of a path might carry memories of a person just as a person might of a path. P20
Holway
Holeway
Holewaye
Hollowy
Holloway
This beautiful tribute begins and ends with the etymology of the word applied to paths so old and well trod that they have sunk into the earth to a surprising depth, often completely hidden from casual view by wild foliage, bordered by overarching trees.
A track worn down by traffic of ages and the fretting of water...in places sixteen or eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields....
They are landmarks that speak of habit rather than suddenness....ways that still connect place to place and person to person. P3
One not be a mystic to accept that certain old paths are linear only in a simple sense. P4
In another of his books, Robert MacFarland devotes a fascinating chapter to a trip he made to explore such terrain with his close friend, Roger Deacon. We do learn that Roger died many years too young, in 2006, not too long after.Suddenly, that was the last trip they had together.
Five years later RMF returns to the Dorset holloway with two friends, listed as co-authors: Dan Richards, a writer; and Stanley Donwood, an artist of exceptional delicacy who captures the spirit of place with his drawings.
I now understand it certainly to be the case...that stretches of a path might carry memories of a person just as a person might of a path. P20
November 23, 2018
(2.5) In 2011 Macfarlane set out to recreate a journey through South Dorset that he’d first undertaken with the late Roger Deakin in 2005, targeting the sunken paths of former roadways. This is not your average nature or travel book, though; it’s much more fragmentary and poetic than you’d expect from a straightforward account of a journey through the natural world. I thought the stream-of-consciousness style overdone, and got more out of the song about the book by singer-songwriter Anne-Marie Sanderson. The black-and-white illustrations are nicely evocative, though.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
September 15, 2016
'Holloway' is a lovely little companion piece to 'Rogue Male' by Geoffrey Household. It takes all of 15 minutes to read and it's a beautiful, slight account of two poignant journeys to a holloway in Dorset. The same one that features in 'Rogue Male'.
Robert Macfarlane wrote 'Holloway' with Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards, and it relates a trip Robert Macfarlane made with the late Roger Deakin to find the Holloway that plays such an important part in Rogue Male....
Holloway - a hollow way, a sunken path. A route that centuries of foot-fall, hoof-hit, wheel-roll and rain-run have harrowed deep down into bedrock.
In July 2005, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin travelled to explore the holloways of South Dorset's sandstone. They found their way into a landscape of shadows, spectres & great strangeness.
Six years later, after Deakin's early death, Macfarlane returned to the holloway with the artist Stanley Donwood and writer Dan Richards. The book is about those journeys and that landscape
It was also where Geoffrey Household’s son scattered the author’s ashes.
Robert Macfarlane wrote 'Holloway' with Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards, and it relates a trip Robert Macfarlane made with the late Roger Deakin to find the Holloway that plays such an important part in Rogue Male....
Holloway - a hollow way, a sunken path. A route that centuries of foot-fall, hoof-hit, wheel-roll and rain-run have harrowed deep down into bedrock.
In July 2005, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin travelled to explore the holloways of South Dorset's sandstone. They found their way into a landscape of shadows, spectres & great strangeness.
Six years later, after Deakin's early death, Macfarlane returned to the holloway with the artist Stanley Donwood and writer Dan Richards. The book is about those journeys and that landscape
It was also where Geoffrey Household’s son scattered the author’s ashes.
January 18, 2015
A short and sweet companion piece to The Wild Places. In this Robert MacFarlane revisits the Holloway at Chideock in West Dorset which he visited originally several years earlier with his friend Roger Deakin, who died inbetween the writing of these two books. It is a gentle and poetic tribute both to Deakin and to the poet Edward Thomas.
March 25, 2025
A short book, but full of poetry, heart thoughts, a sense of deep time, nature ghosts, friendship, mystery and the roots of the country. There is a love of language, words books art and history to look up as a result of references strewn like wildflowers.
August 18, 2013
If one measured the value of a book by its length or weight related to it's cost this would be negligible, with a total of approx. 13 and a half pages of text, when all the partial pages are totalled up for a cost of £14.99.
However, as we fortunately don't do this & judge instead by quality of text and illustrations, this was a delightful book of the highest quality. Some of the text is a re-working of items found in Macfarlane's other work, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing what he did by bringing these together with new material in co-operation with Dan Richards. I would also have been prepared to pay more than the cover price simply for the wonderful illustrations by Stanley Donwood.
A joy of a book.
However, as we fortunately don't do this & judge instead by quality of text and illustrations, this was a delightful book of the highest quality. Some of the text is a re-working of items found in Macfarlane's other work, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing what he did by bringing these together with new material in co-operation with Dan Richards. I would also have been prepared to pay more than the cover price simply for the wonderful illustrations by Stanley Donwood.
A joy of a book.
April 16, 2016
This was written in memorial to the great nature writer Roger Deakin, sadly taken from us all at the peak of his writing powers.
Macfarlane, Richards and Doonwood revisit the Dorset village of Chideock and search again for the holloway that Macfarlane and Deakin visited in 2005. They find it, and so begins the discovery of the landscape that these ancient trackways inhabit.
Sadly it is a very short book, but it contains some very fine very writing and some exquisite art by Richard of these hollow ays. Its intensity is matched by its brevity and you are left wanting more.
Macfarlane, Richards and Doonwood revisit the Dorset village of Chideock and search again for the holloway that Macfarlane and Deakin visited in 2005. They find it, and so begins the discovery of the landscape that these ancient trackways inhabit.
Sadly it is a very short book, but it contains some very fine very writing and some exquisite art by Richard of these hollow ays. Its intensity is matched by its brevity and you are left wanting more.
January 22, 2019
A tiny little book that took me little more than 20 minutes to read, and even that was slow as I was savouring it. An ode to friendship, to nature, to the past. A book of memories and images. Part prose, part poetry and rather wonderful.
August 4, 2020
"I now understand it certainly to be the case, though I have long imagined it to be true, that stretches of path might carry memories of a person just as a person might of a path."
November 18, 2025
short and sweet but an incredible and descriptive story. captivating escapism and wowowow so many great analogies…and birds
March 25, 2017
I was given this book, which is very nicely produced, with pen and ink drawings illustrating a sunken path, a hollow way, an ancient track worn down by generations. But the illustrations are all rather similar, and the writing, in this very short book - a kind of memorial to the writer Roger Deakin who died in his forties - with whom Robert Macfarlane had walked along the holloway near Chideock in Dorset, looking for the hide described by Geoffrey Household in his novel Rogue Male.
Although written out as prose, the language is really that of poetry, but I'm afraid I don't find it very good or moving poetry. It is partly the use of obscure words which make the sense unclear, partly the images which I don't think always work, and partly the very annoying way in which sentences or phrases will be put into italics, for no apparent reason although they may be quotations, unacknowledged.
Macfarlane has a very high reputation, as a leading nature writer of today, but his writing just doesn't work for me. I find it too elaborate, too self-regarding, showing off.
Although written out as prose, the language is really that of poetry, but I'm afraid I don't find it very good or moving poetry. It is partly the use of obscure words which make the sense unclear, partly the images which I don't think always work, and partly the very annoying way in which sentences or phrases will be put into italics, for no apparent reason although they may be quotations, unacknowledged.
Macfarlane has a very high reputation, as a leading nature writer of today, but his writing just doesn't work for me. I find it too elaborate, too self-regarding, showing off.
March 9, 2020
macfarlane and donwood aka my favourite bookish duo
September 22, 2022
Roads tunnelled by time! What a cool book :)
June 13, 2024
Short but beautiful. It was about one specific place. Could have been expanded to include more about holloways in general.
February 9, 2017
It's hard to rate this book because it isn't a book, really. It's 48 pages of prose poem and it reaches 48 pages only because there are some pages with not much on them, lovely line drawings, and blank pages. Don't get me wrong: what's there is beautiful and haunting, more of an evocation of times and places and suggestions of ghosts than anything else. But if you're trying to learn about holloways, those sunken roads worn down by generations of feet and wagon wheels and overgrown by trees, you won't get much of that here. Beautiful writing, though, and I've always been a fan of Robert Macfarlane's writing.
You can learn more about holloways here:
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/...
You can learn more about holloways here:
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/...
May 14, 2022
“I remind myself that I have extended and presumably will extend again in time of the outer world.”
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August 24, 2013A slim, beautiful fragment; nature writing as ghost story. Macfarlane's section reads almost like a fugue, appropriate given the death of Roger Deakin looming over all. Like China Mieville in Railsea, though for less obvious reasons, he uses ampersands rather than 'and' throughout. Richards' even briefer piece is the conclusion, and in comparison feels almost like the walk up from those strange sunken paths to the light. Donwood punctuates the text with haunting images, each picture looking straight down a holloway, inviting the eye to follow towards the unknown destination. It makes me happy that something this strange can be published, and that libraries will then buy it. Gives one a hope that maybe civilisation's not so beaten down as all that.
August 6, 2017
The word comes from Hola Weg, an Anglo-Saxon term for a narrow path or sunken road. At one time they were ancient “desire paths” (shortcuts taken by foot or horse cart from village to village) and over the centuries the effects of wind, erosion and time itself have sunk them into the earth and turned them into underground tunnels held in place by a gnarled network of tree roots and brush overgrown with branches, foliage and thick hedges above. They are to be found all across Europe and this lovely little book is about a journey through one of them.
Written by British nature writer Robert Macfarlane and beautifully illustrated with drawings by Stanley Donwood, the book recounts their journey to a remote area in England in search of a Holloway and the experiences they had as they explored it. Macfarlane described it as a landscape of shadows specters & great strangeness, a landscape “so dark and damp with a feeling of visiting the past that you could almost expect to see a dinosaur appear at any moment or some other ancient and extinct creature.”
It’s intriguing to know that such places exist, worn into the earth and hidden away in remote places, and that it’s possible to find them and walk through them just as generations of people once did hundreds of years ago. Since I’ll never have that opportunity, I’m glad I stumbled across Macfarlane’s wonderful little book. It’s short enough (only 33 pages) to be read in a single sitting and so this is one book I plan to go back to again and again. I’ve also found a number of websites with additional information and fascinating photos of Holloways, like this one: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/...
Written by British nature writer Robert Macfarlane and beautifully illustrated with drawings by Stanley Donwood, the book recounts their journey to a remote area in England in search of a Holloway and the experiences they had as they explored it. Macfarlane described it as a landscape of shadows specters & great strangeness, a landscape “so dark and damp with a feeling of visiting the past that you could almost expect to see a dinosaur appear at any moment or some other ancient and extinct creature.”
It’s intriguing to know that such places exist, worn into the earth and hidden away in remote places, and that it’s possible to find them and walk through them just as generations of people once did hundreds of years ago. Since I’ll never have that opportunity, I’m glad I stumbled across Macfarlane’s wonderful little book. It’s short enough (only 33 pages) to be read in a single sitting and so this is one book I plan to go back to again and again. I’ve also found a number of websites with additional information and fascinating photos of Holloways, like this one: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/...
December 21, 2024
A lovely little book, the perfect poetic homage to the mighty Roger Deakin. Way back Deakin and Macfarlane found a Holloway during an exploration session, the perfect little hideaway sunken into the ground, the sort of hiding place you need when on the run from the fuzz. Now for this book Macfarlane is trying to locate it again with a couple of mates, this book is a reporting of that search.
It starts off recounting time spent with Deakin exploring Dorset and finding this Holloway, then we jump to Macfarlane searching again and how the little bits he finds confirms that his time with Deakin was real, rather touching at times.
The illustrations by Donwood are stunning, he has captured the depth of the Holloway and just how deep the shadows go, blending this artwork with the poetic writing makes this a lovely little read…I think I need to put in the effort to locate myself a Holloway and have a re-read on location.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2024...
It starts off recounting time spent with Deakin exploring Dorset and finding this Holloway, then we jump to Macfarlane searching again and how the little bits he finds confirms that his time with Deakin was real, rather touching at times.
The illustrations by Donwood are stunning, he has captured the depth of the Holloway and just how deep the shadows go, blending this artwork with the poetic writing makes this a lovely little read…I think I need to put in the effort to locate myself a Holloway and have a re-read on location.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2024...
November 12, 2023
A different sort of book from McFarlane’s usual factual but lyrical nature writing, this starts on similar territory to those other longer books but quickly becomes more poetic and abstract.
The book itself is a Holloway, the reader starting on firm ground in the daylight but descending quickly with the author into the liminal space and uncertain figures within, before emerging blinking at the other end.
The book itself is a Holloway, the reader starting on firm ground in the daylight but descending quickly with the author into the liminal space and uncertain figures within, before emerging blinking at the other end.
April 1, 2024
This is a delightful short read that is beautifully illustrated with black and white sketches. It is a story of camping, friendship, landscape, and being present in the world and with each other. It may be short but it is enlightening and will weave itself into your mind from the moment you open the cover to long after you've turned that last page.
August 6, 2018
A neat little volume to read before setting off on an adventure to a new place.
February 5, 2019
Stunningly illustrated book about a little known phenomenon.
February 1, 2023
MacFarlane has a wonderful way of bringing you right into the scene so you can soak it up. This one will make you want to investigate the Holloways either in person on virtually.
November 15, 2025
A fine line between eloquent and intentionally incomprehensible.
January 20, 2019
What a powerfully gorgeous book about what it feels like to embrace nature & live in the moment. Even though I live on a different continent than the authors, the prose brought back almost physical memories of my bushwalking & camping days. Loved it so much. #MountTBR2019
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May 30, 2020Small but exquisite - both words and illustrations
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