I think often what I found most rewarding was not just, you know, going out for a walk, but time when I was actually in the landscape either immersing myself physically, by swimming in the sea, through the winter, or doing something like building the drystone walls. This time in the wee house on the island was where I had the space to figure out what was going on with myself, how I’d ended up with an alcohol problem and in rehab and all that but also what helped me out of that was getting to know the island, the people and the culture and the coastline and the birds and the changes of the sea. It’s set mainly during the time I lived on the small island of Papay and that’s also when I was writing the book. If the book is quite visceral, it’s because it was written at the same time as I was going through it, often from daily diaries that I keep. Rather than it being a philosophy I set out with, it was more something that I came to see the truth of through my own experiences. The phrase ‘the nature cure’ springs to mind-is that something you believe in? Your bestselling first book, The Outrun, follows your story of recovery from alcoholism in Orkney, it’s a blend of memoir and nature writing: a very visceral sort of nature writing. Foreign Policy & International Relations.
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