Into The Peatlands
By Robin A. Crawford £12.99 BIRLINN
THIS is a journey that touches the innermost heart of a two-fold culture, of a way of life for both nature and people. The heartbeat you hear as you turn the pages is the pulse of the passage of time.
The nature of the journey is encapsulated in the sentence, “To leave the firm, solid land of ‘normal’ and venture out onto the moor is to cross a threshold and pass into a liminal world.”
Mostly, the landscape is Lewis, and the central character of the journey is peat. Peat as fuel, yes, but also as social cohesion, as a treasury and guardian of tradition, as a life force. Peat as a preserver of Massey Ferguson tractors of the 1950s and ’60s because, “if the main activity is driving out over boggy moor, then lightweight is what you want”.
Peat as the characterful component of certain malt whiskies, including the author’s Islay favourites.
There is a passage of Neil Gunn he quotes on the subject of how the presence of soot from a peat fire chimney contributed to the tasting notes of a 104-yearold dram that is worth the price of the book alone.
Then there is the architecture of the peat stack and explanations from sundry peat stackers about why they stack the way they do.
The whole is a beautifully thoughtful exploration of the unlikeliest of subjects, from a writer whose connection with and deep respect for Lewis and its people, informs every page.
One last telling sample: “Peat has that retentive quality. In the digging of it out of the moor you see its timeline stretching back over thousands of years, from fresh buds sprouting on the living turf through the older vegetation down into the roots; the gradation of tone and colour from ochres to umber to chocolate and rich black-brown marking the passing of centuries and millennia of sphagnum – tiny individual lives making up a huge community compressed by time.”
If you’ve ever cursed your way across a Hebridean peat bog, this is the book that will put the scent of a well-stacked peat fire in your nose and the taste of Bowmore malt in the back of your throat. And you know how good that feels. Jim Crumley
A beautifully thoughtful exploration”