ISBN: 0-88739-437-X
260 pp.
Size: 4.5 x 7
Pub Date: 7/2001
Paperback Reprint
Price: $14.95
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Idle Days in Patagonia
W. H. Hudson
Even more than his classic novel Green Mansions, this book is thought by many to be W.H. Hudson's finest work. It is the forerunner and, to a great extent, inspiration for such highly regarded recent travel adventures as Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia and Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonia Express. In a voice as pure and unaffected as the then-unpolluted wilds he traversed, the author narrates an extraordinary expedition across the stark, wind-ravaged southern cone of South America.
The water, which flows from the Andes across a continent of stone and gravel, is wonderfully pure, in color a clear sea-green. So green does it look to the eye in some lights that when dipped up in a glass vessel one marvels to see it changed, no longer green, but crystal as dew or rain drop...it is a miracle, a manifestation of the intelligent life and power that is in all things.
The little birds are bolder and come in crowds, peering curiously from every twig, chirping and twittering with occasional explosions of shrill derisive laughter. I feel myself blushing all over my face; their jeering remarks become intolerable, and owl-like, I fly from their persecutions to hide myself in a close thicket.
Bio: W.H. HUDSON wrote The Purple Land, Birds and Man, Tales of the Pampas, Far Away and Long Ago, and The Book of a Naturalist.
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