These three travelogues are different from the ones I’ve considered in previous series. They don’t tell about a single journey down a river or across a land. They tell about a number of trips that share a common theme. The Old Ways comprises sixteen chapters, each chronicling one of Macfarlane’s excursions on an ancient footpath or sea lane. For example, in Chapter 4 (“Silt), he’s on an off-shore path called the Broomway. In Chapter 7 (“Peat”), he walks Manus’s path on the Isle of Lewis. In Chapter 11 (“Roots”), he’s in Spain, walking a branch-line of the Camino de Santiago. The chapters flow chronologically, starting with a walk along the Icknield Way in May, 2009.
Chapter 15 (“Ghost”) is an exception. It doesn’t chronicle a Macfarlane journey. It’s a fascinating account of the poet Edward Thomas’s last days before he’s killed in the Battle of Arras, April 9, 1917. Thomas is the book’s guiding spirit. Macfarlane says of him, “He ghosted my journeys and urged me on.”
One structural feature of The Old Ways that I relish is the summary of narrative elements at the beginning of each chapter. They’re gorgeous abstract assemblages. Here, for example, is the summary of Chapter 3 (“Chalk”):
An exultation of skylarks – Solid geology – Chalk dreams – The earliest paths – Departure – The accident – Bone for chalk – Path as direction of the spirit – Apocalypse & lockdown – A skylark’s eggs – Blind roads & shadow sites – Aerial photography as resurrection – The long-barrow sleeping place – Trench art – A ghost sense of stride – The wallabies of Buckinghamshire – An illusion of infinity – Late-day light – A strange collection of votaries.
Those are all ingredients of Chapter 3. You’d wonder how Macfarlane makes such an extraordinary assortment cohere, but he does. “The accident” refers to a mishap he experiences early in his travel as he sets out to explore the ancient chalk path known as the Icknield Way. Here’s what happened:
I was cycling downhill along the Roman road, near the Iron Age ring-fort, when the accident happened. Happy to be on the move, I let the bicycle gather speed. The rutted path became rougher, my wheels juddered and bounced, I hit a hunk of hard soil the size of a fist, the front wheel bucked and twisted through ninety degrees, the bike folded in upon itself and I crashed onto it, the end of the left handlebar driving hard into my chest.
This could’ve been a serious accident, ending not only Macfarlane’s journey that day, but his ensuing travels as well and this very book we’re reading. Fortunately, Macfarlane’s injuries aren’t as severe as he first thought; he manages to carry on. “So I cycled on to Linton, slowly,” he writes. “A warning, I thought superstitiously, had been issued to me: that the going would not be easy, and that romanticism would be quickly punished.”
Roger Deakin’s Waterlog is structured in the form of a journal. Like The Old Ways, it unfolds chronologically. Each of its thirty-six chapters is dated, except for the introduction and the conclusion. Deakin’s swimming journey begins April 23, 1997, in the Scilly Isles, and ends eighteen months later in Suffolk. In between, he swims in Hampshire, Cambridge, Norfolk, Wales, Worcestershire, Dartmoor, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Argyll, Jura, Northumberland, Essex, Kent, Somerset, London, and many other places as well.
I love the journal format. To me, it’s the form most suited to conveying a journey’s sequential flow through time and space. It’s also quite straightforward – no fancy flashbacks or flashforwards. As Deakin says in Chapter 1 (“The Moat”), “Like the endless cycle of the rain, I would begin and end the journey in my moat, setting out in spring and swimming through the year. I would keep a log of impressions and events as I went.” That’s exactly what he does, in detail after marvelous detail. Here, for example, he tells about descending the Hell Gill gorge:
Courage up, I returned to the turbulent rim of the gorge and did what I knew might be an unwise thing. I couldn’t help it. I began to slide into the mouth of the abyss itself. I found myself in the first of a series of smooth limestone cups four or five feet in diameter and anything between three and five feet deep, stepped at an acute angle down a flooded gulley of hollowed limestone that spiralled into the unknown. In the low light, the smooth, wet walls were a beautiful aquamarine, their shining surface intricately pock-marked like the surface of the moon. All my instincts were to hold on, but to what? The ice and the water had polished everything perfectly. The torrent continually sought to sweep me with it, and so I slithered and climbed down Hell Gill’s dim, glistening insides, through a succession of cold baths, in one long primal scream.
That’s just one of Waterlog’s many vivid set pieces – descriptions of Deakin’s experiences as he swims his way through the British Isles.
In terms of structure, Osborne’s The Wet and the Dry is quite a cocktail – part travelogue, part memoir, part meditation. It comprises fifteen chapters, many of which are set in the Middle East. But there are also chapters that delve into Osborne’s personal history (“England, Your England,” “The Little Water,” “Bars in a Man’s Life”). And there’s a chapter (“The Pure Light of High Summer”) that discusses the Greek god Dionysus – god of intoxication. The structure is more thematic than chronological. The theme is drinking – a drinker’s journey through time and place.
For me, the most memorable aspect of that theme is Osborne’s search for bars in dry or semi-dry countries such as Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt. For example, in Chapter 8 (“New Year’s in Muscat”), he and his girlfriend Elena desperately scour Oman for a bottle of champagne to celebrate New Year’s Eve. They come up empty. In the end, they settle for watermelon juice. Osborne writes,
Elena had calmed a little, and when she had accepted the idea that we would not be drinking a bottle of champagne, she felt less hysterical, and we sipped the watermelon juices and waited. A great calm, suddenly. Midnight, and nothing happened. Everyone kept talking, eating, and smoking, and no one even looked up. We kissed and wondered if we had miscalculated the time. The orgy of midnight never happened.
In Chapter 10 (“My Sweet Islamabad”), Osborne is in Islamabad, one of the most dangerous, alcohol-hostile cities in the world. He decides he wants to have a drink there. He goes to a bar called Rumors in the Marriott Hotel, site of a brutal suicide truck bomb attack on September 20, 2008. Osborne comments, “No one doubted that the Marriott’s famous bar and it’s long-standing association with alcohol were one reason it was hit so viciously.” Osborne puts us squarely there in the Marriott as he makes his way to the bar:
I was taken there by a bellboy. Down an immensely lonely corridor, down a flight of stairs, turning left at a desolate landing with a lone chandelier, and down another flight of steps. At the bottom, like an S&M club buried under the sidewalk, was the neon for Rumors and the doors of the bar, shielded by security cameras designed to pick up errant Pakistanis. “This is bar,” the boy whispered firmly, pointing up to the door.
I went in, expecting a riotous speakeasy filled with drunken CIA men and off-duty Marines perhaps abetted, I was hoping, by a smattering of loose Pakistani Hindu women. But no such luck. There was, as always, no one there. I took in the fabric walls, the fringed seats, the two pool tables, and the foosball, as well as the dartboard next to a plasma TV playing an episode of the British sitcom EastEnders. It was a very British and homey pub. A barman in a waistcoat stood at his post cleaning beer glasses and watching me with great interest. He was Muslim, and it took him little time to joyfully admit that he had never tasted the nectar of Satan even once.
Osborne goes on to say that the bartender “made a mean gin and tonic.” The two men converse. Suddenly the power goes out. Osborne writes, “The barman lit a ghostly match, and we stared at each other across the bar in total darkness. Monday night at Islamabad’s hottest spot. He managed a fatalistic smile.” I savor this scene. Osborne’s search for bars is a form of quest that shapes the book’s narrative.
My next post in this series will be on action.
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