Drawing from more than forty years of experience as an outdoorsman, and probably the world's best-known long distance hiker who also writes, Chris Townsend describes the landscapes and wildlife, the walkers and climbers, and the authors who have influenced him in this lucid and beautiful book. Writing from his home in the heart of the Cairngorms, a Scottish mountain range, he discusses the wild, its importance to civilization, and how we cannot do without it.