Listening to the Wind - Paperback

by Tim Robinson (Author)

Here is Connemara, experienced at a walker's pace. From cartographer Tim Robinson comes the second title in the Seedbank series, a breathtakingly intimate exploration of one beloved place's geography, ecology, and history.

We begin with the earth right in front of his boots, as Robinson unveils swaths of fiontarnach--fall leaf decay. We peer from the edge of the cliff where Robinson's house stands on rickety stilts. We closely examine an overgrown patch of heather, a flush of sphagnum moss. And so, footstep by footstep, moment by moment, Robinson takes readers deep into this storied Irish landscape, from the "quibbling, contentious terrain" of Bogland to the shorelines of Inis Ní to the towering peaks of Twelve Pins.

Just as wild and essential as the countryside itself are its colorful characters, friends and legends and neighbors alike: a skeletal, story-filled sheep farmer; an engineer who builds bridges, both physical and metaphorical; a playboy prince and cricket champion; and an enterprising botanist who meets an unexpected demise. Within a landscape lie all other things, and Robinson rejoices in the universal magic of becoming one with such a place, joining with "[t]he sound of the past, the language we breathe, and our frontage onto the natural world."

Situated at the intersection of mapmaking and mythmaking, Listening to the Wind is at once learned and intimate, elegiac and magnificent--an exceptionally rich "book about one place which is also about the whole world" (Robert Macfarlane).

Author Biography

Tim Robinson (1935-2020) studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked for many years as a teacher and visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna, and London. In 1972 he moved to the Aran Islands and in 1986 his first book, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, was published to great acclaim. The second volume, Stones of Aran: Labyrinth, appeared in 1995. His Connemara trilogy began in 2006 with Listening to the Wind, which won the Irish Book Award for Nonfiction, and continued with The Last Pool of Darkness and finally A Little Gaelic Kingdom.