Journeys

Philip Chambers gathers accounts of his experiences of the natural world, some from before the pandemic and some from during it. The collection mixes memoir passages, short stories, poems and e-mails. Its pieces are linked as reflective narratives that sometimes follow a clear line and sometimes fracture, and they draw freely on literature, music, art and film.

Rather than building a logical argument, the book follows associations and imaginative detours. Sensory encounters with the outdoors can draw the mind deeper into the landscape or send it somewhere else entirely. Chambers treats walking as the thing that creates the path, so the destinations are often unknown and the outcomes uncertain. The process of wandering matters more here than any final result, and the writing assembles fragments into a reflective patchwork rather than reaching firm conclusions.

Music has a central place, both as something heard within nature and as an art form in its own right. Myths and legends attached to particular landscapes appear alongside imaginative conceits built around the mouth and the scallop shell, and concepts such as the pilgrim and the eclipse. The collection moves from "A Dream of Islands" to "Elysian Lockdown", and empathy runs through it as its guiding concern.