Climbing Days by Dan Richards | The Story of Dorothy Pilley | Book Review | Faber & Faber

 

I've read Dan Richards a few years ago; specifically, his 2019 book, Outpost. For some reason, at the time, it didn't make a huge impression on me, though I found the book enjoyable enough. Dan also collaborated with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood on Holloways, into which I've never taken the plunge. (Yet, anyway.) Don't ask me why. I'm sure we all get those books that are constantly on the list, but for some reason or other are just never bought, never read. It's almost like you believe you don't need to read it to know it (which is a false assumption, obviously).

I wasn't even going to review Climbing Days; I didn't take notes throughout (hence this flapping review). But whether it's the book itself, or a combination of the book and timing, it swept me along so fast that I finished it in just a few days, and enjoyed it immensely.

In Climbing Days, Dan goes in search of the history of his great-great-aunt, Dorothy Pilley: a pioneer woman mountaineer, and a pioneer mountaineer in her own right. With her linguist-cum-mountaineer husband, endearingly referred to as I.A.R., they find their happiness in the mountains of the UK, Switzerland and beyond, and spend the best part of their lives doing so. They travel the world in search of great ascents and traverses, making life-long connections with guides and locals and communities everywhere. 

Dan has never met Dorothy, being as they are separated by a generation, so he speaks to living relatives and friends who share their recollections, and trawls through letters and diaries in dusty archives to get to know Dorothy as a person. He also follows in her footsteps, in the Alps, in Wales, in the Lake District and even in Spain. In doing so, he manages to evoke a complete person by the end of the book: as readers, we feel as invested in his discoveries as he is. 

And how wonderful that someone as deserving of fame as Dorothy is being pulled from the shadows to place her firmly in the forefront of public consciousness! Her most well-known achievement, making a first ascent of the North ridge of the Dent Blanche, makes her a very important figure in the history of mountaineering; and if that wasn't enough, her incredible love for the mountains and adventure is something to aspire to. During a time where being a housewife was all that was expected of women, she firmly refused to be classified; she wore a skirt over her knickerbockers just until she reached the start of her ascent, neatly tucking them in her backpack as soon as it was decent to do so. And even after a car accident damaged her hip to the extent where she couldn't climb mountains any more, she still found ingenious ways to be able to enjoy them - whether that's a horse or a chaise, she would make it up there.

Throughout the book, Dan finds a good balance between asserting his point of view and letting the histories speak for themselves. It is refreshing to see how humbly he writes: he candidly admits to things he doesn't know, and as mistakes happen in the mountains - as they so often do - he doesn't shy away from them either. Although during short intervals he dips into the lyrical descriptive to the extent that I can't understand every word, he maintains a musicality that is enjoyable in itself. He is incredibly evocative though, without needing long descriptions, and paints vivid pictures of frozen landscapes and cloud-crowned hills. And, there's no other way to say it: he is funny. He has a cheery persona and doesn't take things too seriously, and that makes for entertaining reading indeed - especially in a genre where authors often fight to the death to pretend they are well-versed in anything and everything.

I loved the book and, surprisingly, I even loved the appendices. Included, amongst obituaries, is an essay by I.A.R. titled 'The Lure of High Mountaineering', and far from the dry treatise I expected to read, it is a powerful reflection on why people climb mountains. I recognised plenty of similarities with why I like bouldering: there is the careful planning; the joy of feeling your experience take hold; the physical challenge combined with the mental. 'To go lightly up a rock wall,' he writes, 'when the only hold is the friction of the forearm pressing against the sides of a vertical crack while the feet push gently yet firmly upon roughness not much bigger than a thumbnail is an achievement which allows a good deal of innocent self-flattery to develop.' The essay leaves your head reeling, suddenly craving the mountains, the beyond.

This book found me when I needed it most: when a lack of inspiration was taking a freezing chokehold. And now, in two weeks' time, I am making my own pilgrimage, following in Dan's footsteps to the Lake District. He has managed to awaken my dormant love for adventure, and I am extremely grateful. 

As for the amazing Dorothy, her book (confusingly also called Climbing Days) is getting a reissue this year from Canongate, and I am very much looking forward to reading it.

Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication | Arik Kershenbaum | Book Review | Viking

 

[Review originally published on Bookmunch: View Post]

In the 1920s and ‘30s, Nobel Prize-winning Nico Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch began an investigation into the foraging habits of honeybees. The most important of these was the honeybee ‘dance’: von Frisch eventually succeeded in decoding this ‘language’, deducing that bees flew in a special pattern and performed specific movements upon finding nectar in a flower, helping to lead other bees to the nectar.

Their contributions to ethology – the science of animal behaviour – elevated the field into the popular consciousness, and helped lift the veil on human exceptionalism that was prevalent in all animal experiments until the 20th century.

Arik Kershenbaum’s new book, Why Animals Talk, is an in-depth exploration of animal communication, taking six case studies to investigate various components of language to discuss some fundamental questions. Before we even consider the why, we consider the fact: do animals talk? Is communication the same as language? And if so, do they communicate like we do? Do they have things to say beyond what we know?

Our tendency to anthropomorphise animals means we hope we can eventually just ‘translate’ animal language into ours. This type of thinking can lead us to genuinely believe dolphins are telepathic, or that chimpanzees simply prefer not to talk to us. In effect, what Kershenbaum highlights is that the various, distinct ways that animals organise their societies are all pillars of language, even if the concept is a vague one: ‘It is definitely not the case that dolphins don’t build machines because they don’t have a language. Rather, they don’t have a language because they don’t need to build machines. That is the point of this book.’

Interestingly, it turns out quite a lot of animals use syntax (or at the very least, their communication is organised by some kind of logic). Generally, it seems the development of language is more often than not governed by evolutionary logic and pressures: the more complex a society the animal lives in, the more requirements they have to communicate complex messages. Wolves howl for specific reasons (though one of these reasons is for pure pleasure and peer pressure, which I love); chimpanzees have an ability to conceal the truth.

The case studies included are surprising and varied. Some, we expect to be included, such as the chimpanzee or the dolphin. Others, like the wolf or the hyrax (a small animal not dissimilar in looks to the quokka) are perhaps more intriguing. Yet as one proceeds with the chapters, key similarities become apparent. This conclusion of the chapter on chimps could apply to any of them: ‘They have what they need: no more, no less. No matter how similar to us, their communication is not “like ours” – it’s precisely “like theirs”. As it should be.’

For the most part written with the casual reader in mind (except perhaps the final chapter on humans, which delves deep into linguistics), Kershenbaum provides more questions than answers – which I like to think is the best approach for any investigation into what he calls a ‘relatively young science’. Nevertheless, this idea is cemented: that language is a complex concept, and that we all communicate differently. The many questions raised demonstrate just how varied, exciting and complicated animal societies are, and while we as humans exist in our bubbles, hundreds of thousands of smaller, independent societies exist out there in jungles, on mountain tops, in forests and in oceans, almost completely unknown to us, existing and functioning in their own way.

Though it raises more questions than gives answers, Kershenbaum’s book is a great adventure in animal behaviour and linguistics. One mustn’t be disheartened: ‘We can still talk to animals, it’s within us,’ he writes. ‘It’s just a  different kind of talking from the one we think we know.’

Crow Country | Mark Cocker | Book Review | Jonathan Cape | Vintage | Nature Writing

 

I picked up my copy of Crow Country by Mark Cocker in an antiques shop in Brighton while there house sitting back in October. Inside, I found two publicity clippings about the book, as well as an old, green (!) leather bookmark from Salzburg. It added something to the magic of the copy I held – noting also that the edition was bound in see-through plastic to protect the dustjacket. It makes one wonder, if someone put this much thought into preserving the book and its marks in the press, why part with it? And to whom did my copy belong?

Besides the many physical treasures inside, this turned out to be a book genuinely worth preserving. I actually haven't read 'nature' books for a while. I don't know if it's me being out of the loop, or the sheer number of new nature books appearing at all times. Perhaps it is also due to being distracted by easy fiction during my injury and also the 60+ books on the backlist of Notting Hill Editions that I want to get through. Point being, this was a refreshing and exciting return to the genre.

'Watching those rooks in their planetary-like revolutions above the trees stirred the very foundations of my birding self, and life has never been quite the same since.'

And so begins an adventure into the secret life of rooks: Mark Cocker is an avid birder and naturalist who, having moved into the vicinity of the Yare Valley, becomes fascinated with the huge rookeries surrounding his home. Day by day, for over six years, he watches the rooks gather at dusk to roost, and separate again in the morning. He looks at them from all angles: that of the naturalist, the folklorist, the curious tourist, the insider. He gets to know the rooks intimately, becomes attuned to their daily habits, and witnesses some truly amazing sights – such as thousands of rooks coming together overhead.

The joy of this book is in the applying of that most enjoyable traditions of nature writing: getting to know one's immediate surroundings inside out. Cocker writes beautifully about the history of the Yare, the green fields that were once sea, painting film-like visual images of sediment settling and becoming flint, the disappearence of the water, the appearance of the arable fields that are so flat, so empty – yet he finds enjoyment in them. This is something we can all take away from reading Crow Country: that no area is too grey, too urban, too empty to completely lack interest. Nature always finds a way, be it in a mushroom growing on a city bin, an owl hooting outside my window on a busy road, or pigeons preening high up in the trees above the bustle (all of which I've recently had the pleasure to notice and enjoy, thanks to this book).

And yes, rooks: another family of birds that gets overlooked due to overfamiliarity, like the poor pigeons I always feel the need to defend from being deemed pests. 'Don't be put off by any sense of familiarity,' Cocker writes. 'Rooks are enveloped in a glorious sky-cloak of mystery. They're not what you think they are.' And as you turn the pages, hundreds of mysteries unfold about these beautiful, black birds. (Though admittedly, I still couldn't tell a jackdaw from a rook if I saw one.)

I hope you've noticed 'sky-cloak of mystery', or enjoy his description of a robin as 'a tiny breeze-ruffled brook of notes'. Cocker takes special care with his writing, carving words until they're shaped just so, without ever tipping into the cliché. To keep doing so for over 200 pages is an art form, and to read him is pure delight. It isn't all sentimental descriptions either: he presents the perfect combination of personal reflection and extensive reference work, so that one learns and enjoys simultaneously.

'Don't be put off by any sense of familiarity. Rooks are enveloped in a glorious sky-cloak of mystery. They're not what you think they are.' 

One of the highlights of the book for me is the penultimate chapter that is an exploration of curiosity. Cocker makes a case, a plea for passion, questioning why cool detachment is the norm, and why we single out and ridicule those with a dedicated passion for something (be it 'rooking', acting, the Beatles or any other obsession). He argues that to be curious, to investigate is an essential part of being human, and biophilia – a love of life or living things – can give meaning to life when none seems obvious. It's nice to see that in some corners of the world, emotion and feeling are still valued. It's what makes us human, isn't it?

Personally, Crow Country didn't just bring back joy in reading good nature writing: it also brought back my curiosity. Having moved to a new home recently, I feel inspired to get out and get to know the birds and the trees and forest walks that are on my doorstep. It makes me want to witness the natural wonder of a rookery's dusk gathering, falling silent before flying up again and eventually settling together in the depths of the trees. I'm even listening out for my local rooks and jackdaws now, hoping I can follow them one of these days to their evening resting place.

Treasures found in Crow Country