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The Sacred Combe: A Search for Humanity's Heartland
We ve all got one. A secret, special place. Hidden. Enclosed. A little greener and more fertile than the world outside. Here the birds are slightly more exotic, slightly more confiding, the grass greener and the fruit sweeter. To know such a place, to love such a place, is part of being human.
Sometimes it s a place of myth, like the Garden of Eden. Sometimes it exists in fictional form, like Narnia or Shangri-La. Sometimes it comes in memories of a golden day in childhood, or in a glorious, doomed love affair. Sometimes it s a real place that we daren t go back to, for fear that it or we had changed.
And just occasionally it s a real place. A place where you leave a small piece of your heart and return as often as you can so as not to lose it. It s a place of privilege.
Simon Barnes found such a place when he woke in his first morning in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia to find elephants eating the roof of his hut. It was a homecoming, and he has been faithful to that passion ever since. Here he has known peace, danger, discomfort, fear and a profound sense of oneness with the Valley, with all nature and with the world. With the Valley he found completion.
This book explores the special places of the mind and the world, with special reference to the Luangwa Valley and the glorious support of the Valley s great artist, Pam Carr. It s a book about the quest for paradise, and the eternal human search to find such a paradise everywhere.
Sometimes it s a place of myth, like the Garden of Eden. Sometimes it exists in fictional form, like Narnia or Shangri-La. Sometimes it comes in memories of a golden day in childhood, or in a glorious, doomed love affair. Sometimes it s a real place that we daren t go back to, for fear that it or we had changed.
And just occasionally it s a real place. A place where you leave a small piece of your heart and return as often as you can so as not to lose it. It s a place of privilege.
Simon Barnes found such a place when he woke in his first morning in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia to find elephants eating the roof of his hut. It was a homecoming, and he has been faithful to that passion ever since. Here he has known peace, danger, discomfort, fear and a profound sense of oneness with the Valley, with all nature and with the world. With the Valley he found completion.
This book explores the special places of the mind and the world, with special reference to the Luangwa Valley and the glorious support of the Valley s great artist, Pam Carr. It s a book about the quest for paradise, and the eternal human search to find such a paradise everywhere.
- GenresNatureNatural History
240 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2016
4 people are currently reading
41 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 9, 2023
A superb book from a wonderful author about finding those very special hidden places in the natural world. I read a lot of Simon Barnes books, and he always manages to capture my thoughts and feelings far more eloquently than I could ever hope to. "The realest, deepest and most important truth of this book is that a sacred combe is wherever you want to look for it. The need to find it comes from an impulse deep in humanity: an unstoppable urge to get closer to the non-human world."
August 14, 2016
2 stars is stretching it a little unfortunately. I liked reading Barnes' newspaper columns on wildlife, but when he puts them together in a book, somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts. This book is just that, mainly a diary of his days spent in Luangwa Zambia, his self-professed favorite place in the world, mixed in with seemingly random chapters on books he has read, places in England that are semi-wild and his own backyard wildlife observations. With the easy availability of full color nature films set in Africa, written descriptions of scenery just does not quite cut it, and after a few chapters it becomes a tad tiresome as there are few genuinely exciting encounters with the megafauna. Yes, it's an enjoyable life to be able to wander around the African bush for a living, and to be well off enough to own horses on a farm with access to wetland and a forest back 'home'. We get it already.
September 7, 2016
Inspiring and uplifting; a tribute to both the rare, exceptional and sacred wild places of the world and those little common patches of green in our daily lives, those tiny postage-stamp wildernesses that we escape to, whether it's a secluded park, a local wood or our own back gardens.
January 5, 2021
OK, Simon Barnes Always gets 5 stars!
In this book, he describes his passionate love for the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. Here he has found a way of looking at nature which spills over into his watching in East Anglia, and indeed anywhere he finds himself - crying "look, a cuckoo" in the middle of the bowler's run-up as Simon was about to bat! (Fortunately, the opposing team were the RSPB, so they appreciated the spot).
We are taught to walk on the wild side, among sleepy lions and grazing elephants, even though most safaris never leave their vehicles. We learn about carmine bee-eaters and tsetse flies as well as the Big Five animals that most go on safari to see. And as with all of Simon's writing, his deep, deep love of all nature fills us with enthusiasm for what he sees. If only we could all jump on a plane to the Luangwa Valley right now . . .
In this book, he describes his passionate love for the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. Here he has found a way of looking at nature which spills over into his watching in East Anglia, and indeed anywhere he finds himself - crying "look, a cuckoo" in the middle of the bowler's run-up as Simon was about to bat! (Fortunately, the opposing team were the RSPB, so they appreciated the spot).
We are taught to walk on the wild side, among sleepy lions and grazing elephants, even though most safaris never leave their vehicles. We learn about carmine bee-eaters and tsetse flies as well as the Big Five animals that most go on safari to see. And as with all of Simon's writing, his deep, deep love of all nature fills us with enthusiasm for what he sees. If only we could all jump on a plane to the Luangwa Valley right now . . .
July 20, 2018
This book really spoke to me because I have had some similar (though far more limited) experiences in the beautiful South Luangwa of Zambia. On my first night there, I was also awakened by a loud noise and, pulling open the curtains, found myself eye-to-eye with an elephant. Moments like those change a person, forever.
March 13, 2020
An absolute treat!
This beautiful book is a vacation in Africa. Wallow in it or take small sips, made easy by many short chapters. Barnes takes you into the wild and let's you feel reborn, more than memoir or travelogue. This is more like a journal than anything other kind of writing, but unexpected lyrical and erudite. A surprising joy to read.
This beautiful book is a vacation in Africa. Wallow in it or take small sips, made easy by many short chapters. Barnes takes you into the wild and let's you feel reborn, more than memoir or travelogue. This is more like a journal than anything other kind of writing, but unexpected lyrical and erudite. A surprising joy to read.
December 1, 2019
Beautiful from start to finish. Like Barnes I spend time Africa and the UK and take time out to soak up nature. Simon describes the sacred wild places and the natural temples of our world and minds. an inspiration to seek out the quiet places where the real world still exists and be at one.
December 20, 2022
Snippets of life lived near nature. Very atmospheric.
February 20, 2025
One of the books that makes me want to go to Africa!
September 6, 2016
Simon Barnes’s new book is a very readable collection of stories, memories and short essays on places that are important to him – all with a strong link to the natural world. I enjoyed reading them. And I enjoyed the illustrations by Pam Guhrs-Carr too.
I wasn’t completely convinced that the book deserved the handicap of the subtitle ‘A search for humanity’s heartland’ though it was also something of a relief that the book wasn’t that pretentious. We are offered the thought that we all have a special place which is secret and special, hidden and enclosed and that to love such a place is part of being human. I doubt it actually. I’m pretty sure George Osborne doesn’t have one – if he does I wonder what it looks like. Are its birds ‘slightly more exotic, slightly more confiding’? And is ‘the grass greener and the fruit sweeter’? No, and that’s the trouble, some wouldn’t recognise a sacred combe if they stumbled across one: and if they did, they’d probably build a supermarket on it.
But Simon Barnes does get nature in a deep and passionate way, and he writes about it with both knowledge and feeling, and he writes with clarity and humour too.
Do you know the song of the Willow Warbler – no, really know it? And have you walked too close to lions or stamped muddy footprints over the carpet because you had to hurry to get your binoculars to look at Cranes flying over? Have you sat and watched a pack of African Wild Dogs at home as some set off for a hunt? If you have, or if you can imagine doing these things and know that they would be important to your life, then you will like this book, I believe.
The Luangwa Valley with its large cats, elephants and exotic birds is Barnes’s sacred combe.
This review first appeared on my blog on 14 February 2016 http://markavery.info/2016/02/14/sund...
I wasn’t completely convinced that the book deserved the handicap of the subtitle ‘A search for humanity’s heartland’ though it was also something of a relief that the book wasn’t that pretentious. We are offered the thought that we all have a special place which is secret and special, hidden and enclosed and that to love such a place is part of being human. I doubt it actually. I’m pretty sure George Osborne doesn’t have one – if he does I wonder what it looks like. Are its birds ‘slightly more exotic, slightly more confiding’? And is ‘the grass greener and the fruit sweeter’? No, and that’s the trouble, some wouldn’t recognise a sacred combe if they stumbled across one: and if they did, they’d probably build a supermarket on it.
But Simon Barnes does get nature in a deep and passionate way, and he writes about it with both knowledge and feeling, and he writes with clarity and humour too.
Do you know the song of the Willow Warbler – no, really know it? And have you walked too close to lions or stamped muddy footprints over the carpet because you had to hurry to get your binoculars to look at Cranes flying over? Have you sat and watched a pack of African Wild Dogs at home as some set off for a hunt? If you have, or if you can imagine doing these things and know that they would be important to your life, then you will like this book, I believe.
The Luangwa Valley with its large cats, elephants and exotic birds is Barnes’s sacred combe.
This review first appeared on my blog on 14 February 2016 http://markavery.info/2016/02/14/sund...
February 18, 2016
There's quite a mixture of things in this book, bundled into a collage of short chapters, such that I expect a great deal of different people will enjoy reading it - whether all in one go (like me!) or in little titbits.
The heart of "The Sacred Combe" is Barne's argument that all humans desire and need a paradise of nature, whatever form this exists or is imagined in. It can be a patch of leftover land clinging on to the edge of suburbia (I would be very surprised if Barnes has not already read or does not intend to read Common Ground by Rob Cowen!), a steep lush cleft in Wales, or a vast, megafauna-filled valley in Zambia. Like George Monbiot argued in Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life, the wild world provides a sustenance that nothing else in our modern world can.
Barne flits over to the UK occasionally, but mostly he revels in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. He writes of particular events, or particular species, or particular animals or people. There's no chronology or thematic order that I can discern, but there's a real pleasure in that - never knowing what the next chapter will enlighten you with! This book is about how the wild has changed Simon Barnes, but it's also highly informative about the natural world. For me personally, I've been inspired to get better at identifying birdsong. And of course, I desperately want to go to Luangwa now.
There is anger in this book too, for how could there not be in a book about nature? The Luangwa appears to be a particularly well-protected area (thanks in no small part to tsetse flies!), with the exception of the extermination of its rhinos. But Barnes laments humanity's global campaign of destruction, and puts forward a powerful argument for the importance of wildlife tourism to wild places. A lot of people scoff at the concept of "eco tourism", but the hard cold fact is that if those with the money to visit such places didn't visit, it would be practically impossible to convince local people and governments not to consume them instead.
The heart of "The Sacred Combe" is Barne's argument that all humans desire and need a paradise of nature, whatever form this exists or is imagined in. It can be a patch of leftover land clinging on to the edge of suburbia (I would be very surprised if Barnes has not already read or does not intend to read Common Ground by Rob Cowen!), a steep lush cleft in Wales, or a vast, megafauna-filled valley in Zambia. Like George Monbiot argued in Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life, the wild world provides a sustenance that nothing else in our modern world can.
Barne flits over to the UK occasionally, but mostly he revels in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. He writes of particular events, or particular species, or particular animals or people. There's no chronology or thematic order that I can discern, but there's a real pleasure in that - never knowing what the next chapter will enlighten you with! This book is about how the wild has changed Simon Barnes, but it's also highly informative about the natural world. For me personally, I've been inspired to get better at identifying birdsong. And of course, I desperately want to go to Luangwa now.
There is anger in this book too, for how could there not be in a book about nature? The Luangwa appears to be a particularly well-protected area (thanks in no small part to tsetse flies!), with the exception of the extermination of its rhinos. But Barnes laments humanity's global campaign of destruction, and puts forward a powerful argument for the importance of wildlife tourism to wild places. A lot of people scoff at the concept of "eco tourism", but the hard cold fact is that if those with the money to visit such places didn't visit, it would be practically impossible to convince local people and governments not to consume them instead.
March 3, 2016
Another tasty offering from Simon Barnes, who generously shares his love of all things wild. A marvellous book to dip into, especially if you need reminding about the exquisite wonder of nature in all its diversity. Hugely enjoyable accounts of his time exploring the wildlife in Luangwa, as well as nearer to home. The boundaries merge and we are transported to the real world.
February 6, 2016
This is the first of Simon's books I have read but will be reading more. Facinating book which introduces you to local and distant wildlife. Beautiful, sensitive and forces you outside to experience wildlife in its natural form even in the rain.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews