Oliver Balch
Cabin Fever
Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth
By Dan Richards
Canongate 324pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
Cabin life can arouse contrary passions. Some love it: the quiet, the solitude, the immersion in nature. Others think they love it, only to discover a contrary reality once they turn the latch and take up residence. Writers are supposed to fall into the first category, nature writers all the more so. Sheds, cabins, bivouacs, hideaways of any kind: these are the ‘ascetic creative crucibles’ from which deep insights emerge and artistic masterpieces are born. Think Walden or Train Dreams, two books with cabin life at their heart. Both these works excite the imagination of the travel writer and outdoors advocate Dan Richards. He is drawn to cabin life by the romanticism of being alone in the wilderness, by the promise of clarity, by the ‘cerebral clearing’ that awaits at the world’s furthest frontiers.
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