The Last Wilderness: A Journey into Silence

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In the rough bounds of the Scottish Highlands, Neil Ansell walks out towards the most remote parts of Britain, seeking the particular hush of being in nature alone. These walks hold solitude not as escape, but as a way of finding a place within the living world, with weather, light, and ground as steady company.

He writes about what it means to be alone as part of nature, rather than standing apart from it, and how attention changes when there is no one else to share it with. Set against this is a quiet accounting of the landscape itself, altered over time, and of his own shifting senses. As his hearing loss deepens, the calls of birds he has known for years begin to fall away, leaving gaps where familiarity once lived.

The walks continue, shaped by what remains, and by what is no longer there.