One of the joys of reading is that there is always more to be discovered. Earlier this week my mum messaged me to ask if I had ever heard of Alfred Wainwright, and if not, that I would probably like his work. She’d heard him mentioned in a TV show she was watching and sent me a link to his Wikipedia entry without further context.

I had never heard of Wainwright, which seems odd given my recurrent interest in nature writing. Wainwright, as I soon discovered, is well known for having written a long list of guides to the Lake District. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t previously know of him. I’ve never been to the Lake District (although, now having read The Eastern Fells, I do want to go there) and as I discovered when I started reading one of his first books, it is not nature writing in the traditional sense.

Wainwright’s books are in many respects conventional travel guides. They mostly stick to facts – “this path is rocky” – with only occasional glimpses of opinion – “this path is dangerous in mist”. There’s no lyrical waxing about the beauty of the landscape or its effect on the author. In fact, Wainwright as a person is curiously absent from the book. Rather than using the landcape as a backdrop to the human condition, as a lot of nature writers do, he allows nature to take centre stage.

At the same time, The Eastern Fells feels much more personal than other travel guides I’ve come across.Wainwright illustrates his account of the Lake District with hand-drawn maps and illustrations. He was clearly a gifted artist with an incredible attention to detail. Every rock, little stream and collapsing wall are carefully described and assessed. I’m a keen walker and have several favourite routes but I’m not sure I could describe any of them in as much detail.

Although the writing is factual and aimed at guiding the reader safely and pleasantly through what Wainwright refers to as “Lakeland”, humour and emotion occasionally creep into his descriptions. “Walkers with a degree of agility will not find the step too difficult to climb,” Wainwright writes, “if the right foot is used first, the right foot in this case being the left. There is no dignity in the proceeding, either up or down.” He was also clearly a loner with little interest in a certain type of fellow walker who fails to appreciate the beauty of their surroundings. “The direct climb up Middle Dodd is only for pedestrians suffering from a surplus of energy: they will get rid of it on this treadmill,” he remarks drily when describing a path he himself does not seem particularly impressed with.

Only in the afterword does he allow himself to show some emotion. “I was to find then, and it has been so ever since,” he writes, “a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains – and a tranquil mind upon reaching their summits, as though I had escaped from the disappointments and unkindnesses of life and emerged above them into a new world, a better world.” Although my own walks predominantly take place in Norfolk – a place notoriously lacking in mountains – I can relate to this. No better way to recover from the blues than a brisk nature walk, in my case near a beach or salt marsh.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of Wainwright’s work – he wrote many more guidebooks, all of which are still in print – and feeling that his work would be even more enjoyable after a visit to the landscape he loved so much, I’m seriously considering a trip to Lakeland. For now, I’m planning to delve deeper into his oeuvre and explore his descriptions of a wild, but “better” world.

Photo by Jake Colling on Unsplash