At the Water's Edge: A Walk in the Wild

by John Lister-Kaye

For the last thirty years John Lister-Kaye has taken the same circular walk from his home deep in a Scottish glen up to a small hill loch. Each day brings a new observation or an unexpected encounter - a fragile spider's web, an osprey struggling to lift a trout from the water or a woodcock exquisitely camouflaged on her nest - and every day, on his return home, he records his thoughts in a journal. Drawing on this lifetime of close observation, At The Water's Edge encourages us to look again at the nature around us, to discover its wildness for ourselves and to respect and protect it.

Genres: Nature, Scotland, Nonfiction, Natural History, Wildlife, Memoir, Environment

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Sir John Philip Lister Lister-Kaye, 8th Baronet, OBE (b. 1946) is an English naturalist, conservationist, author who is owner and director of the Aigas Field Centre, among other business interests. He is married with four children and has lived in the Highlands of Scotland since 1969.

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was six years old, my parents subscribed for a year to the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club for me. One of the books that came in the mail was The Far Frontier. It was about a boy who was signed up by his parents to accompany an early naturalist in an exploration of the American wilderness in the 1700's. I've often thought if I had been born when there were still easily discovered new species of birds and wildlife, then being an explorer and naturalist would have been a fine thing.

Given that, I was quite surprised as I began reading At the Water's Edge: A Personal Quest for Wildness, by Sir John Lister-Kaye to find there are still people today who can say their profession is "Naturalist." Lister-Kaye isn't exploring new territory and discovering new species, but he is working to learn more about the wildlife all around us and discovering more about the relationship between humankind and the birds and animals we share the earth with.

The book describes Lister-Kaye's frequent walks around Aigas Loch, a small lake near his home in northwest Scotland. He describes the changes he sees in flora and fauna as the days progress through a year, from winter through spring, summer, autumn, and back to winter again. As he observes the wildness all around, he attempts to make a connection with the wildness inside himself. By doing so, he hopes to communicate to his readers the need to connect our own wildness to nature, wherever we are, and to better understand how we might conserve that nature for our future.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lister-Kaye's descriptions of his walks, and often wished I could be there beside him to share all that he was seeing, hearing, and even smelling. I read this book on Kindle, and rated it at 4 stars on Goodreads. I am interested in reading an earlier book by Sir Lister-Kaye, Song of the Rolling Earth, which gives more insight into his personal life and the history of the Aigas Nature Reserve.

[Brian Robbins · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was given to me as a Christmas present, and sadly proved a great disappointment. Looking at the cover when I unwrapped it, I should have been sufficiently warned - on the jacket was written "Wonderful" a quote from none other than that Barbie doll of natural history TV, Kate Humble.

The 2 stars was based entirely on the personal observations of scenery & animals that were sadly too few in number. Had it not been for these, the book would have been given a resounding 1 star.

Lister-Kaye should have been satisfied with being a mediocre version of Gilbert White. Sadly he wasn't. He would insist on including attempts at science background which he seemed ill-equipped to provide. For instance, his 4 & a half page potted history of the evolutionary process from start to contemporary times, read as convincingly, informatively and interestingly as the worst kind of primary school text-books of the 1950s.

He stubbornly set up a single theme of competition as the only basis of any activity in life & played his single stringed instrument on the one note ad nauseum.

I would recommend the book for those wishing to balance a chair which has one leg 2-3cm shorter than the others, or for those wanting to make a hobby of papier-mache sculpture, but who are having problems sourcing suitable raw materials.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the past three decades Lister Kaye has followed the same route from his home to a small loch and observer the things that he sees, from the constant turn of the seasons, to the drama of the lives of the wildlife that is played out every day.

This repetition means that his observations of the things he sees around him are sharp, and he picks up on subtle changes and other things that would be missed on irregular trips. When possible the walks are undertaken at dawn, which in this part of Scotland can be at 2.30am at the hight of summer.

I like his writing style; the detail that he packs in means that you are sharing the views, the ever changing weather and the unfolding lives of the creatures he encounters. Sadly he has the tendency to wander off subject a bit, not that it is all bad, but I preferred the wildlife journal. On balance good, may look at some of his other books.

[Sophy H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant example of nature writing here.

Lister-Kaye literally invokes the spirit of where he lives, explores, observes and ruminates. I felt transported along with him, smelling the musky odour of deer, finding badger trails, watching foxes scarper from the "dreaded human"!

Lister-Kaye provokes a thoughtfulness about nature, makes us ponder what it is about nature that we are attracted to.

Great nature and (perhaps unintentional and accidental) philosophy writing.

Definitely a 5 star book.

[Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional writer. It’s amazing one can make prose sound poetic. Even the sentences are so effortlessly rhythmic. His dramatic soliloquy leaves me on tenterhooks to the point where I’m holding my breath as he proceeds to describe his careful placement of footsteps in pursuit of finding the mighty stag. (Wouldn’t mind choosing Lister-Kaye over any thriller novel ANY day). No regrets! As usual, loved the message.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

After having read A Dun Cow Rib and enjoyed it. I was looking forward to At the Waters Edge. Whilst there is no doubt John Lister Kaye is a brilliant observer of of wildlife. I did struggle with this book. His narrative is almost poetic but at times rather dull. I finished the book through determination rather total enjoyment.

[Grandmaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful!

[Jody Nicholson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really lovely chapters, bit equally some really dull ones.

[Kathleen]

Enjoyed the book but I am normally a fast reader and quickly discovered I needed to slow down. This book needs to be savored and visions of nature need to be planted in one's brain.

[Towton1461 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well worth a read , written by someone who clearly loves and understands the beauty of the natural world…

[Marilyn J. Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sir Lister-Kaye elaborates about his love of nature, which goes back to his childhood, as well as how he came to find his home in the highlands and what terrible shape it was in.

[Bec · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Regulation has polluted my whiskey"

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fell in love with this book. It won me over by degrees. At first I thought it a quaint but inconsequential journal of a writer's observations of wildlife near his home - okay okay, that's exactly what it is - but the more I read, the more I grew to realise it is also something very special.

Each chapter follows a similar structure - generally an insight into a wildlife encounter from Lister-Kaye's journal, a wider-ranging account of other sightings of the same or related animals or the season, and some musings on an environmental topic (usually to do with mankind's impact on nature).

Lister-Kaye has a remarkable gift for bringing very specific details about animals' appearance or behaviour to life on the page.

His choice of words is perfect.

For instance, he says that when whooper swans arrive in the Highlands on migration they "seem to be dragging winter with them from the far north." I love that turn of phrase "dragging winter with them" as if their pure white is a herald of migrating snow.

Or here he is describing the song of the robin:

"With a message, with a challenge, with a tilt at the world, with passion, with pleadings, with longing, with a lullaby, with grace and hope, with the blood of thorns, with anguish, triumph and exaltation, they tinkle and trill the irrepressible robin psalm to the first bright lances of day."

It's verbose yes, and comes with a heavy dose of anthropomorphism, but to me - and I wager to anyone who has really and truly listened to a robin singing its heart out - it is spot on. I mean, I genuinely couldn't imagine reading a better evocation of the feeling behind a robin's song.

Every chapter is full of this. It's rich, sumptuous writing, made from great affection for and welcome immersion in the wild, and yet all grounded in fairly everyday sightings of nature that anyone (given half the chance and a bit of time) could experience for themselves.

I think this is why I found it so wonderful.

If this book had been about lions and elephants I might have found it a bit irrelevant (surely watching BBC's Africa would bring me closer to those). But every encounter described by Lister-Kaye is something I've either experienced myself in the UK or could reasonably hope to at some point in my life. Goshawks hunting, woodcock roding, pine martens scavenging, red deer rutting, hooded crows plotting - I'll store these and Lister-Kaye's beautiful descriptions of them away for future (I hope) recognition.

As well as the passages of individual animals, this book contains many well-written diversions on the seasons and on natural history. I got to know about the short powerful Highland spring, the light-filled Highland summer and the seven-month long Highland winter. I learnt about the origins of mammals and birds and their intricate relationship with flowers.

And none of this is written through rose-tinted spectacles. Lister-Kaye keeps our eyes wide open to the brutality of nature - the self-interested aggression with which all creatures lay 'claim' to their patch. The accounts of 'hoodies' predating a sick lamb and the battle between a kestrel and a slow worm are highly graphic. A central message of the book is that humans are no different: "Here we all are, from the amoeba to Einstein, munching each other in glorious sunlight for all we are worth."

The parts of Lister-Kaye's writing I didn't enjoy so much is when he gets overtly political.

I understand why he does it - he cares deeply about the environment and is angry at mankind's wanton destruction of it. He wants to make sure his book serves a purpose. (There is a telling comment in the postscript where he reveals that his daughter scribbled on a draft of the book: "Dad, I really enjoyed this, but what is it about?")

As a result he intermittently rails against man and modern life. There's a key passage where he uses a sullen schoolgirl he had encountered called Sammy as a emblem for ignorant, materialistic consumer culture (I paraphrase) and goes off on what can only be described as a rant. He even calls into doubt liberalism and democracy. Elsewhere he complains that he can't stand going into shops apart from "proper, old-fashioned, small, country-town ironmongers" and he sees an appointment with an IT consultant as ruining his morning.

He can sound like a world-weary misanthropic recluse.

Personally I think his journal makes the argument for nature perfectly well without the proselytising. So it's fortunate these passages are usually short (often mere asides) and I could just whizz through and get back to the good stuff.

And the good stuff really is superb. I haven't enjoyed a book this much for a while.

So what did I learn? That "to loiter, to stand still for a few minutes, is always wise and often productive." I'll be redoubling my efforts to get out and about with nature thanks to Lister-Kaye's writing. I'll also certainly be picking up another of his books in the near future.

[Andrew Fish · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's an odd coincidence that I received both this and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris as presents for the same Christmas. Because, whilst superficially these may appear to be entirely different animals, closer examination reveals them to be not entirely dissimilar. They are, rather, the town mouse and the country mouse of self-indulgent faux intellectualism.

In its favour, this volume isn't as badly written as the Paris tome: it is at least broadly consistent with its cover blurb - although this is largely because said blurb is pretty vague - and it only includes one significant namedrop - and that actually comes across as relevant.

The book is about one man's experience of wildlife and one man's views of man's relationship to the wild, which could mean more or less anything. What it isn't is a celebration of nature: there are descriptions of natural occurrences, but these occur sporadically and where they appear tend to be overdressed in forced poetical language with overly extended chains of simile seemingly intended to mask the lack of substantive observation. And, despite his criticism of people who enjoy wildlife without understanding it, his appreciation is clearly coloured by his sympathies toward farming, so that hooded crows (which occasionally predate livestock) are treated as evil, whilst wildcats (which don't) are handled as if they were some kind of natural El Dorado. One would imagine that if, as this author claims, one values wildness above all else, the odd lost sheep would be an acceptable price to pay for biodiversity. Besides, sheep are hardly wild animals, so why do they rate higher in value than their predators?

But this book, like so many written in the modern paroxysm of eco-guilt, is a mass of contradiction. How else would you describe a work in which one minute he is delighting in taking home a stunned Goshawk and the next is deliberating about whether to reconceal a hibernating hedgehog he has uncovered as it might be "interfering with nature." To one minute be revelling in the joy of encountering wildlife in Kenya or Iceland then in the next breath denigrating eco-tourism or the use of aircraft can only be described as hypocritical. In fact it's almost as hypocritical as criticising sustainable forestry in a book made of paper. Throughout the book Industrial society is used as a shorthand for misanthropy, the author clearly coming across as someone who thinks the world would be better with fewer people (and presumably those few being mostly like him).

In the end, there's something disquieting about a book written by someone who clearly doesn't have to commute to work every day and has the luxury instead to potter around his own private land criticising a world full of people who are just doing what they have to do for the sake of some kind of life beyond mere existence. For those who feel a passion for wildlife doesn't require masses of guilt, I'd recommend reading Simon Barnes or Rory Mcgrath. If you're simply after a stick to beat yourself with, the one that's been pulped and turned into this book will probably do.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book for the humble and curious—if you can still view nature and your place in the world that way. Lister-Kaye's aim is to inspire or provoke readers to a greater awareness and awe of the natural world and, along with those feelings, a sense of guilt and concern for our accelerating destruction of it. I picked this up because of its Scottish Highlands setting and the impression the cover copy gave that Lister-Kaye has written a sort of walker's journal, describing the same morning walk into the hills and glens near his home, every day the same yet with immeasurably varied details. A bit like my own repetitive yet varied morning dog walks, though a Pittsburgh neighborhood hardly resembles a highland loch. At the Water's Edge is what I was led to believe and more, a collection of wide-ranging and probing essays on the meaning of wildness, the competition of species, the interventions of humans, the significance personal and ecological of particular creatures like pine martens, goshawks, red deer, whooper swans, weasels, hooded crows. As a naturalist, Lister-Kaye seems a Renaissance man: a scientist, tour guide, author, outspoken critic of both destructive practices and ineffectual environmental policies, an educator. The writing is gorgeous, though some might find it maybe a bit overwrought at times, a bit erudite at others. I see some negative reviews here: one complains that "the story [?] was spoiled by a lot of words that I had to look up"! Others very helpfully analyze Lister-Kaye's "hypocrisy," always a serious charge but probably one (too) easy to levy against anyone writing about Nature, capital or small n. Yes, it's the corpses of former trees we hold in our hands as we read about the destruction of forests. Or do these conscientious critics only read e-books, which of course are not the product of any despoiling of the natural world? (They work by magic.) Lister-Kaye is pro-reforestation, in fact. Although he defends deer hunting on philosophical and ecological grounds, he does oppose unregulated hunting and fishing. But frankly I dismiss these criticisms (of having a big vocabulary and not taking the right political—or apolitical—tone) because Lister-Kaye's writing is determinedly rich and justifiably polemical. He's poetic without being romantic, learned without being pedantic, jargony, or condescending.

[Andree Sanborn · Rating 5 out of 5]

NOTE: This edition of the book is for the Kindle edition. The edition is not correctly edited. It should say Kindle Edition and not Paperback.)

I did not like the first two chapters of the book but chapter three changed my mind. A constant theme of the energy of the sun and the origin of life is skillfully presented in the third chapter and Lister-Kaye returns to it constantly in the book. The chapter is done so well that I may use it in school for my classes one day. The author's stated theme is wilderness but I debate whether he presented that as artfully as he did the sun's power to give life.

The language of the book is lovely and my Kindle has dozens and dozens of highlights for vocabulary and beauty descriptions. I have also added many books to my "to-read" list that were mentioned. The natural observations were fewer than I am used to reading in nature books. The political discussion could have been deleted (but that would have betrayed the author's spirit) and I would have been delighted. But there is a point of view in this book that is unique and worth reading. I am glad I prevailed.

[Eric W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the tradition of many nature writers, this book is more a collection of essays than one work organized around a central theme. Well, maybe the theme was how the change in the environment is affecting one naturalist's corner of the world. Either way, I found it thought-provoking for its journey for me mentally to a part of the world I've never seen and yet was filled with things I found familiar. I also enjoyed his clear-eyed perspective on nature's terrible beauty. While Lister-Kaye finds solace in nature, he also emphasizes how much of it is organized around staking one's claim to the resources around it and how there are always winners and losers of these in essence battles. And he doesn't shy away from the idea that in lots of cases its simply good fortune that allows one to survive while another fails. It was good to get a clear-eyed science and fact based view of a world I've seen all my life but never saw in this way.

[Lauri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had a very special appeal to me, having just been at the Aigas Nature Center in the Scottish Highlands, which is the home of the author. I am glad I waited until after my visit to read this. I could just picture Sir John walking around the loch, with his walking stick and one of two favorite dogs. Sir John is a world-renowned naturalist. He's written many books on nature and the environment. I am looking forward to reading more.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of three nature writers I love to read - Robert Macfarlane, Gerald Durrell. This book is a quick schooling in botany, ornithology, appreciating nature and wildlife, conservation, entomology, zoology, ichthyology, geology,

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic book, which opens your eyes to the nature around you and makes you want to explore just to try and get the feeling of being emensed in the 'wilderness'

[John Ingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some wonderfully lyrical observations and encounters backed up with some interesting ecological explanations and reflections on the natural world as a whole and humans' place within it.

[Wilma Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a read to get you thinking about nature. Very relaxing. It makes you look more closely when you are out for walks.