GUIDEBOOK
David Lintern
Scottish Wild Country Backpacking
Scottish Wild Country Backpacking was this year ’ s winner of the Guidbook award . Here David explains how the book came about , and why choosing the title for a book can be less than straightforward …
Just before Christmas 2018 , an email entitled ‘ proposal ’ dropped into my inbox . Cicerone author Peter Edwards had a book on the simmer ring and wondered if I might help . The remit was ‘ routes off the beaten track with at least one night out ’. I was keen , but it had come at quite a busy time and the deadline loomed large . I suggested Peter widen the circle again , and with his blessing , invited first time guidebook writer ( but very definitely not firsttime writer !) Stefan Durkacz into the fold .
After Cicerone gave us the thumbs up , a spreadsheet of routes and ideas followed quite quickly . Clearly Peter had a head start , but both Stefan and I were able to contribute things we ’ d already done , and a list of places and routes we ’ d like to explore further . Perhaps the best thing about the project was this sense of pooling strengths and resources . Each contributor bought individual interests and aptitudes : Peter is known for his explorations of coastal areas , and the Hebrides in particular , Stefan has a great eye for an interesting line and a love of historic trails and tracks , and I am especially interested in the links between natural and cultural history . I appreciated the objectivity of my co-conspirators as well , in making sure we had good coverage across the Highlands and Islands , and in sense checking introductory information , a job we shared . Early on , I expressed a reservation about the working title : Scottish Wilderness Backpacking . An interest in hillwalking and the outdoors had slowly led me into more serious journalism work covering Scottish environmental stories on deer overpopulation , beaver reintroductions , and rewilding , and that in turn made me aware of the issues around depopulation and social inequity which present barriers to ecological reparation . I was still to learn about ‘ intersectional environmentalism ’, Black Lives Matter was still in the future , but I followed American environmental news studiously and knew that indigenous peoples and academics were starting to take back cultural ownership of public lands in the States . I put it to Peter that ' wilderness ' may be a modernist fiction that was harmful for us to perpetuate .
We didn ’ t get hung up on the semantics of the title again until later , but these issues did inform the thinking early on , and I ended up penning the section of the book that
14 outdoor focus / winter 2023