10 Outdoor Books to Get You Through February
Between the 16th December 2014 and the 12th January 2015, I read 16 books. Yup. Sixteen. And one of them was well over 1,000 pages.
This wasn't some literary challenge, rather, I was in my own sort of lockdown (you know, before lockdown sold out and become popular). I was sailing double-handed across the Atlantic ocean and the weather was, more or less, very good. Being on watch for 12 hours a day in settled weather and one ship spotted in 28 days gave me a lot of time to fill with books.
This February, lockdown is feeling an awful more locked down than perhaps it did in the first one last spring. February is a dark month in the UK, often lacking the clear blue skies of December and the frosty mornings of January. February is aggressively wet and the clouds sit heavy between us and the sun's half-arsed effort.
So we can only go out once a day for exercise (hard if you're working, wet if you aren't). I imagine that you might be spending more time inside than every before and I also imagine that that magical, whirring brain of yours needs something more than the 1000th scroll of Twitter to occupy it.
In an effort to help you out, I've written a list of 10 books that I think will lift your mind and clear away the mental clouds in lieu of having any control over the real ones. These are all books on place writing, with that place mostly being the great outdoors.
If you have your own suggestions, please do leave them in the comments below. Atrociously, nobody can read everything, so recommendations are gold dust.
1. Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw by Will Ferguson
I visited Canada in 2016 and found myself in the bookshop in Whistler, looking for something new to read. I came across the local travel section and picked up this book because a) the title is outstanding and b) it won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.
Ferguson is a Canadian but what is a Canadian exactly? In a land of vast, historic immigration, just what is it that makes somebody a Canadian? The book is made up of a series of hilarious and fascinating essays, written as he travels all over the country in search of the answer.
2. Feet of Clay by Ffyona Campbell
I read this first when I was a child, working my way through my mother's bookshelves in lieu of much else to do on wet weekends. Ffyona Campbell walked around the world over the course of a decade, starting when she was just a teenager.
Feet of Clay covers her expedition across Australia, which took 95 days and covered 3,200 miles. An incredible, unbelievable achievement, this book absolutely gripped me and made me realise what was possible in the world.
3. The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
The Outrun is a story of addiction recovery intertwined with stunning nature writing. Liptrot left her London life and returned to her home archipelago of Orkney to live on her parents' farm. Fleeing alcoholism and everything that comes from that, she spends her days roaming the wild landscape.
This is a brutally honest book and the human side of it in inseparable from the nature. The descriptions of Orkney are astounding.
4. 21st Century Yokel by Tom Cox
I found this book after reading a supremely funny Tweet by the author and wanting to find out more about the person behind it. About a week later, I laid my hands on a copy of his then-latest book, 21st Century Yokel. It's place writing if any type could be put upon it, although that place could be anywhere from Dartmoor to his parents' house.
The writing is funny, whimsical, serious, silly, beautiful and constantly surprising. It's about a life lived rambling about the countryside and finding more sense in the rural than anywhere else.
5. Walking Home by Simon Armitage
I grew up staring at English anthologies containing Simon Armitage and it wasn't until my partner listened to a radio show interviewing the poet laureate that I his work crept back into my mind.
Not poetry (as such), Walking Home is a book of travel writing, following Armitage as he walks the Pennine Way long-distance footpath. He reads poetry in the evenings so small audiences and spends a lot of time grumbling about how difficult walking transpires to be. He sets off in the same way Bryson set off on the Appalachian Trail, ill-prepared.
The book is wonderfully written, funny and might stop you from romanticising long walks as you start out of the window during lockdown take 1000.
6. Waterlog by Roger Deakin
If you've already read this book, re-read it. It deserves multiple perusals. Waterlog is a classic and charts Deakin's swimming adventure across England.
Describing the feeling of swimming in rivers and lakes, Deakin's writing makes you feel like you're being gently submerged by the text. It's a fantastically serene book to read.
7. Maiden Voyage by Tania Aebi
Tania Aebi was hanging out with the wrong kind of people in her late teens and her father wanted to pull her out of it. So he did what any self-respecting father of a teenager would do, he bought her a brand new Contessa 26 and sent her sailing solo around the world.
Having sailed across the Atlantic a couple of times double-handed in my twenties, I cannot even begin to imagine how Aebi managed. I read the book near the start of my 20,000 mile voyage and I'm still in awe of her achievements. This book is brilliant, inspiring, honest and might make you sell up and buy a boat.
Hey, at least they're probably cheap at the moment.
8. Wilderness Essays by John Muir
One of the greatest nature writers, if you need to be transported away then John Muir is the author to reach for. The Wilderness Essays cover some of the US's most extraordinary landscapes, from Yellowstone to Alaska.
Muir's love of the great outdoors is so obvious that it's hard to tear your eyes away.
9. Wildwood by Roger Deakin
Yes I know this is the second Deakin on this list but what you gonna do about it eh? Well, read it, I hope.
This blissful book is packed with essays about what is perhaps Deakin's great love; the world of trees. He talks, researches and seeks them out with such adoration that it's impossible not to love these majestic plants all the more for reading it.
10. Previous Convictions by A. A. Gill
I don't know about you, but A. A. Gill is the writer I turn to whenever I'm feeling out of sorts. He's superbly funny, acerbic, observation and is a fantastic storyteller. This is a collection of some of his travel writing.
His essays are so brilliantly written than you can't do that half-worrying-half-reading thing where your eyes are skimming the page but your mind is on the news. No, this is absorbing. And all the better for it.