📚 The Peregrine

The peregrine’s view of the land is like the yachtsman’s view of the shore as he sails into the long estuaries. A wake of water recedes behind him, the wake of the pierced horizon glides back on either side. Like the seafarer, the peregrine lives in a pouring-away world of no attachment, a world of wakes and tilting, of sinking planes of land and water. We who are anchored and earthbound cannot envisage this freedom of the eye. The peregrine sees and remembers patterns we do not know exist: the neat squares of orchard and woodland, the endlessly varying quadrilateral shapes of fields. He finds his way across the land by a succession of remembered symmetries.

Author: J.A. Baker
Published: William Collins, 1967, 50th annivesary edition published 2017
Review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/15/the-peregrine-by-ja-baker-nature-writing
https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/05/09/baker-peregrine/

A foundational work of British nature writing in the 20th century – and one that I only found out about this year (2026).