Across the Territories: Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa

An initial mapping of this book might say that it goes from the Orkneys to Polynesia via Scandinavia and the Baltic regions, the Iberian peninsula, and North America. But Kenneth White's method is impossible to sum up: the thing is to get out on the road with him. Along with, for example, three Quebeckers from the St Lawrence river-country through the forest and along the coast of Maine, or with an eleven-century Jewish poet across Spain. Other chapters will take the reader to the haunts of migrating cranes in Sweden, the misty margins of Portugal, across the plains of Poland, into the Atlas mountains, or along the coast of Norway into the Lofotens. The book ends on the atoll of Rangiroa in the Tuamotu archipelago, on a shore of dark jagged coral, wild bird cries and empty sea. The result of the whole complex process is an acutely increased sensation of life, a vastly enlarged experience of the world.