This Is This

Here’s an extract from The Singing Wilderness, by Sigurd F. Olsen, who writes about nature with a humility and reverence than inspires the same.

You can buy it here in the UK and here in the US.

Apologies and congratulations if you live elsewhere, you’d be able to look it up faster than me if you want to buy the book. And while I’m on the subject, I think it’s cool that this site has readers in China, Singapore, New Zealand, Borneo, Australia, (I shit you not:) Guam, Egypt, Israel and even Scotland.

That’s not me showing off, that’s YOU showing off. Look at you. All Guam. With your Borneos.

Can I say something?

The story.

The Singing Wilderness is divided into four sections, one for each season, and each of those broken down into chapters about on one aspect of nature. I chose The Way Of A Canoe from the Summer section, and it’s beautiful.

To be honest, I’ve never even read the whole book through, although I’ve had it for ten years. I dip into it and get taken away. Since it’s confession time, I’ve never been to the region he’s writing about; the North American backwaters around Lake Superior.

But if someone can turn a phrase about paddling a canoe and write about “the swirls, the smooth, slick sweeps and the vees that point the way above the breaks“, then I’ll read it.

I hosted the audio in Soundclick, which means you can stream it and download it if you want and upload it to your i-thing whosnames and take it with you. You may have to register to do this but it takes less than a minute and you’ll be able to download future midweekers at a single click. I’m registered with Soundclick myself and I don’t think I get any spam from them, so they’re pretty good.

Enjoy.

The Singing Wilderness

Play high-quality audio

Play low-quality audio (recommended for dial-up modem)

Download the MP3

Also on This Is This
I didn’t even think about my choice of wording before I said it. My friend just looked at me.
I am such a knob-end sometimes.
Read this post...

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 7:21 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.