The Sacred Combe
A Search for Humanity's Heartland
1st Edition
Published on 14. January 2016
256 pages
978-1-4729-1404-0 (ISBN)
Description
Reflections on the natural world and our place within it from one of our finest natural history writers - nature writing at its very best.
We've all got one. A secret, special place. Hidden. Enclosed. A little greener and more fertile than the world outside. Here the birds are slightly more exotic, slightly more confiding, the grass greener and the fruit sweeter. To know such a place, to love such a place, is part of being human.
Sometimes it's a place of myth, like the Garden of Eden. Sometimes it exists in fictional form, like Narnia or Shangri-La. Sometimes it comes in memories of a golden day in childhood, or in a glorious, doomed love affair. Sometimes it's a real place that we daren't go back to, for fear that it - or we - had changed.
And just occasionally it's a real place. A place where you leave a small piece of your heart and return as often as you can so as not to lose it. It's a place of privilege.
Simon Barnes found such a place when he woke in his first morning in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia to find elephants eating the roof of his hut. It was a homecoming, and he has been faithful to that passion ever since. Here he has known peace, danger, discomfort, fear and a profound sense of oneness with the Valley, with all nature and with the world. With the Valley he found completion.
This book explores the special places of the mind and the world, with special reference to the Luangwa Valley and the glorious support of the Valley's great artist, Pam Carr. It's a book about the quest for paradise, and the eternal human search to find such a paradise everywhere.
We've all got one. A secret, special place. Hidden. Enclosed. A little greener and more fertile than the world outside. Here the birds are slightly more exotic, slightly more confiding, the grass greener and the fruit sweeter. To know such a place, to love such a place, is part of being human.
Sometimes it's a place of myth, like the Garden of Eden. Sometimes it exists in fictional form, like Narnia or Shangri-La. Sometimes it comes in memories of a golden day in childhood, or in a glorious, doomed love affair. Sometimes it's a real place that we daren't go back to, for fear that it - or we - had changed.
And just occasionally it's a real place. A place where you leave a small piece of your heart and return as often as you can so as not to lose it. It's a place of privilege.
Simon Barnes found such a place when he woke in his first morning in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia to find elephants eating the roof of his hut. It was a homecoming, and he has been faithful to that passion ever since. Here he has known peace, danger, discomfort, fear and a profound sense of oneness with the Valley, with all nature and with the world. With the Valley he found completion.
This book explores the special places of the mind and the world, with special reference to the Luangwa Valley and the glorious support of the Valley's great artist, Pam Carr. It's a book about the quest for paradise, and the eternal human search to find such a paradise everywhere.
Reviews / Votes
This episodic journey into the wilds of Devonshire, Africa and memory - the edenic spaces where species fleetingly coexist - is studded with descriptive jewels. * Nature * Few articulate the joy of watching - no, the joy of simply being with - wildlife like Simon Barnes, lyrical and prosaic in the same breath ... A delightful curiosity. * BBC Wildlife * Full of brief, digestible and often-personal nuggets - centred on the Luangwa Valley in Zambia - and makes for breezy, bright-eyed reading. * Wanderlust * These chapters are littered and bejewelled with eco factoids, fascinating and irreverent. * The Times Saturday Review * This episodic journey into the wilds of Devonshire, Africa and memory - the endemic spaces where species fleetingly coexist - is studded with descriptive jewels. * Nature * His attitude to the great outdoors is similarly eclectic, combining the impish humour of an enlightened Buddhist with a fierce intelligence and superb observational skills. * Mail on Sunday * The Sacred Combe is partly a hymn to his own spiritual home, partly a meditation on the qualities that go to make such places. * Daily Telegraph * [Barnes'] new book finds him as comfortable in the company of Africa's exotic fauna as with the little brown birds on his lawn back home in Norfolk... Barnes makes you yearn for Africa. * Daily Mail *More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Digital)
ISBN-13
978-1-4729-1404-0 (9781472914040)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2017
Bloomsbury Natural History
€32.39
Article exhausted; check different version
Book
01/2016
Bloomsbury Natural History
€38.59
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Person
Simon Barnes is, without question, one of Britain's finest natural history writers. The multi-award-winning former chief sportswriter at The Times, for whom he also wrote two columns on wildlife, his 20-odd books include three novels, and the best-selling How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher. He lives in Norfolk with his family and four horses, beside a marsh.
Content
1 The Valley
2 A Hoopoe
3 Some Famous Elephants
4 The Leopard and Her Child
5 Riding Through the Glen
6 Some other Boyhood Identities
7 An Enchanted Combe
8 The Rift
9 Love Dawns
10 Pig in the Middle
11 Some African Animals that Can Kill You
12 A Walk
13 Some Turds
14 Edenever
15 A Patient Man
16 Ask Alice
17 A Brave Man
18 Mammals Sighted in North Luangwa National Park
19 Paradise within Paradise
20 Rio By the Sea-oh
21 Big Boy and Little Boy
22 Mchenja
23 Book-list
24 Some Bob Stories
25 Cross Lady
26 The Lion Dream
27 A Fool in Wales
28 That Near-death Thing
29 Bucket List Ideas
30 Lost Innocence
31 Walls of the Combe
32 Giraffe Crossing
33 Jill and Jewel
34 Delicate Savagery
35 Sensitive Types
36 Manhattan White
37 Secret Sacred Monsters
38 Some Famous British Big Cats
39 Being Prey
40 Nsefu
41 Morning
42 A Good Old Lovey-up
43 Lovely Leah
44 Doing the Knowledge
45 How We Destroyed Eden
46 The Sin of Pride
47 Ring a Dong Dillo
48 The Spotlight Kid
49 Wild Centaurettes
50 The Suicide Month
51 Climate of the Luangwa Valley
52 Tourism
53 Three Lists of Five
54 Uncle Monty's Cat
55 Banished from Paradise
56 Nothing Wasted
57 Pretty Woman
58 Rain
59 A New Brain
60 Fight or Flight
61 Crocodile Fears
62 Are there Werewolves Still for Tea
63 Death and All That
64 Blood etc.
65 A Manly Tear
66 The Unenchanted Combe
67 Cranes of the World
68 Crowning Glory
69 All One
70 Wet, Wetter, Wettest
71 Giving Blood
72 My Family
73 A Tribute in a Tributary
74 Fear in the Air
75 The Emerald Season
76 Not-seeing season
77 Caracal
78 Whydah Still and Whydah
79 The Eureka Bird
80 Listening to the Land
81 The Golden Age
82 A Sacred Combe in Redditch
83 A Cathedral
84 Vermin
85 The Curse of Specialness
86 Last Footpring
87 A Twitcher at Large
88 Combe Together
89 Cetti's
90 First Day of Spring
91 The Great Comback
92 Bugles in the Sky
93 The Fawn
94 Doggedness
95 The Old Hippy
96 A Banquet
97 Being Quite Wise
98 Phoenix on Speed
99 Fired with Joy
100 Pillars of Wisdom
101 Storm
Acknowledgements
2 A Hoopoe
3 Some Famous Elephants
4 The Leopard and Her Child
5 Riding Through the Glen
6 Some other Boyhood Identities
7 An Enchanted Combe
8 The Rift
9 Love Dawns
10 Pig in the Middle
11 Some African Animals that Can Kill You
12 A Walk
13 Some Turds
14 Edenever
15 A Patient Man
16 Ask Alice
17 A Brave Man
18 Mammals Sighted in North Luangwa National Park
19 Paradise within Paradise
20 Rio By the Sea-oh
21 Big Boy and Little Boy
22 Mchenja
23 Book-list
24 Some Bob Stories
25 Cross Lady
26 The Lion Dream
27 A Fool in Wales
28 That Near-death Thing
29 Bucket List Ideas
30 Lost Innocence
31 Walls of the Combe
32 Giraffe Crossing
33 Jill and Jewel
34 Delicate Savagery
35 Sensitive Types
36 Manhattan White
37 Secret Sacred Monsters
38 Some Famous British Big Cats
39 Being Prey
40 Nsefu
41 Morning
42 A Good Old Lovey-up
43 Lovely Leah
44 Doing the Knowledge
45 How We Destroyed Eden
46 The Sin of Pride
47 Ring a Dong Dillo
48 The Spotlight Kid
49 Wild Centaurettes
50 The Suicide Month
51 Climate of the Luangwa Valley
52 Tourism
53 Three Lists of Five
54 Uncle Monty's Cat
55 Banished from Paradise
56 Nothing Wasted
57 Pretty Woman
58 Rain
59 A New Brain
60 Fight or Flight
61 Crocodile Fears
62 Are there Werewolves Still for Tea
63 Death and All That
64 Blood etc.
65 A Manly Tear
66 The Unenchanted Combe
67 Cranes of the World
68 Crowning Glory
69 All One
70 Wet, Wetter, Wettest
71 Giving Blood
72 My Family
73 A Tribute in a Tributary
74 Fear in the Air
75 The Emerald Season
76 Not-seeing season
77 Caracal
78 Whydah Still and Whydah
79 The Eureka Bird
80 Listening to the Land
81 The Golden Age
82 A Sacred Combe in Redditch
83 A Cathedral
84 Vermin
85 The Curse of Specialness
86 Last Footpring
87 A Twitcher at Large
88 Combe Together
89 Cetti's
90 First Day of Spring
91 The Great Comback
92 Bugles in the Sky
93 The Fawn
94 Doggedness
95 The Old Hippy
96 A Banquet
97 Being Quite Wise
98 Phoenix on Speed
99 Fired with Joy
100 Pillars of Wisdom
101 Storm
Acknowledgements
