The journeys in this book are tales of adventure on foot and by canoe through some of the last wild places in Scotland. Each journey is haunted by the ghost of another writer—Neil Gunn, Iain Thomson, Rowena Farre—who has left behind the trace of his or her own experience of these isolated hills, glens, streams, or lochs. Traveling in time as well as space, Mike Cawthorne gains a new perspective on burning contemporary issues such as land ownership, renewable energy, conservation, and depopulation. On one level these are exciting and lyrical evocations of wild walks and nature in the raw; on another level they explore the meaning of Scotland's surviving wilderness to wanderers in the past and its vital importance in the present day.