From the author of the highly acclaimed Seasons tetralogy, nominated for several awards including the Wainwright Prize, and acknowledged amongst the top UK nature writers; the much-loved Lake District is the jewel in our scenery crown, yet few serious nature writers have turned their attention here; perhaps none with such a focused eye; a new way of seeing one of the UK's most 'seen' landscapes.

The Lake District is one of our busiest national parks. Many people believe that wildness is long gone from the fells, lakes, tarns and becks, yet, within its boundaries, Jim Crumley sets out to prove them wrong – to find “a new way of seeing and writing about this most seen and written about of landscapes". With a naturalist’s eye and a poet’s instinct he is drawn to Lakeland’s turned-aside places where nature still thrives, from low-lying shores to a high mountain oakwood that’s not even on the map. Through backwaters and backwoods, Crumley traces this captivating land’s place in the evolution of global conservation and pleads the case for a far-reaching reappraisal of all of Lakeland’s wildness.