Gerald Wilkinson

Would to heaven the USA had a book like this! In Britain, as in America, nothing remains of the original forest that followed the last Ice Ages. Woodland is now only eight percent of the land, although it still constitutes the largest part of Britain's inland countryside that is close to being a natural habitat. Many small woods in the south and east of Britain can be traced back to medieval times and consist of native trees. The 400 walks detailed in this book are grouped geographically: England (south-west, south-east, central, north), Wales & the Marches, and Scotland. Color photographs illustrate each walk, along with large-scale (1:50,000) maps of the British Ordnance Survey. Each walk is described in a highly impressionistic style, to the extent that one has the strong sense that Wilkinson simply transcribed his field notes directly into print with no editorial effort whatsoever. Sometimes this provides a fairly charming effect as when, in the Coombe Valley Woods, "in the empty lower valley where the small trees begin, a boy sat on a gate, alone and motionless in the wind and sun." Much more often, it results in convoluted and ungrammatical constructions, so that there is at least one howler on every page. Let's treat all that with benign indulgence, however, because Mr. Wilkinson has offered us both beauty and utility between two covers. If anyone is aware of anything similar for America, I'd appreciate a note!… (mais)