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Kenn returns to the Highlands of his youth, back to the river which
has haunted his dreams since boyhood. Determined to walk all the
way back to its source, Kenn embarks on a journey that will lead
him deep into the wilderness of his own heart. Profound and moving,
Highland River is a stirring tale of what is lost and what endures,
and the unexpected ways we can be renewed.
Although Neil M. Gunn is well-known as one of Scotland's foremost
writers of the 20th century, he is less well-known as a perceptive
and meditative essayist who wrote on a variety of subjects - from
landscape, nature and the sea to literature, politics and matters
of the spirit. Written in parallel with his novels, these essays
contain many of the ideas and speculations that inform them. In
this collection the focus is on landscape and the stimulus it
provides for a journey of an enquiring mind from the observation of
everyday life to a state of self-realisation. The essays mark the
route. For example, in The French Fishing Smack there is a sense of
freedom that only the sea can give; in The First Salmon a primal
sense of adventure captivates; The Heron's Legs cannot but engender
a sense of wonder and Light is a signal that the inner journey of
the spirit has all but ended. Products of the uneasy and uncertain
1930s, the Second World War and the Cold War, the essays lead not
only to a more imaginative and enlightened way of looking at life
in troubled times but also to a greater understanding of the mind
of this profoundly thoughtful writer. They can be understood as a
miniature biography of the writer himself in terms of being a
series of moments of revelation and delight experienced during
walks in the countryside, fishing expeditions and chance encounters
with people and books. Covering 40 years of the writer's life, the
essays show that the ideas derived from them evolve rather than
change; there is always a sense of movement. In the later essays it
is the smallest social entity of all, the human psyche, that
fascinates Gunn and becomes the essential ingredient in the search
for self-enlightenment. Encounters with Zen Buddhism and other
disciplines and philosophies were to reassure him that he had been
moving in the right direction throughout his life.
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