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Martyn Murray was finding modern life, with all its restrictions
and controls, suffocating. Following years of soul-searching, his
father's death triggered him into opening the old logbooks and
charts to retrace the sailing trips they had once shared together.
He determined to revisit those waters and bring home the freedom of
the seas. Falling in love with an old ketch in Ireland, he bought
and restored her enough to sail back to Scotland. Over the next two
summers he cruised Scotland's Western Isles, with one goal: to
reach St Kilda - the remotest part of the British Isles, 40 miles
from the Outer Hebrides. During his cruising he considered the
islanders and their sense of freedom - often restricted by absentee
landlords and officialdom. He riled against bureaucracy and
commercial enterprise restricting the yachtsman's ability to roam
free. For parts of his journey he was joined by the beguiling Kyla;
a rare, independent spirit who both excited and frustrated Martyn.
But much of Martyn's voyaging was undertaken alone, encountering a
variety of places, situations and characters along the way. He
attempted his long-awaited sail out to St Kilda through the teeth
of a storm, believing that achieving this feat would bring him the
freedom and clarity that he craved. What he came up against was far
more testing and turbulent than the tides and gales of the North
Atlantic. As he sailed back to the mainland things fell into place:
a sense of achievement in completing the arduous voyage alone, but
- most of all - an understanding of who he is, clarity on his
relationship with Kyla and a real sense of his own freedom.
The Storm Leopard is an alchemic blend of travel and nature writing
that explores the primary dilemma of the 21st century - the
conflict of modern lifestyles with the natural environment. This is
an account of the author's journey from the Cape to the Serengeti
Plains and his search for an answer to the Old Timer, a Kenyan who
foretold the end of the wild. Martyn decided on one more trip, but
this time without an agenda, without a timetable and without
preconceptions: with no purpose other than to know, to feel and to
understand. The book is filled with insights of African elephants
and antelope, and with portraits of a natural world inhabited by
Bushmen, game wardens and scientists. Running through it is an
outspoken and highly ethical regard for humankind's relationship
with nature. From his first contact with Bushman rock art in the
Western Cape, the author is drawn into a spiritual journey as he
grapples with the quandary of balancing our lifestyles with
protecting the environment. His travelling companion, Stu, a fellow
scientist and arch cynic, is nettled by this lack of rationality.
Marooned together in their 4A--4, the friction, humour and hardship
of their journey carry the reader across the continent from one
adventure to another, to the final revelation atop an isolated
kopje in the heart of the Serengeti Plains. The Storm Leopard is a
unique book that emanates from the author's passionate affair with
nature and many years of experience in the field as an ecologist
and consultant in conservation - nothing deals with today's
environmental issues in the same way.
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