Campfire Questions with Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop

We recently had an opportunity to catch up with Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop, intrepid Wilderness expeditioner and educator. Jamie also somehow finds time to run an impressive string of entrepreneurial projects making a real difference. These include Offscreened which takes young people to the Middle East on cultural interchange, iNomad which is all about communicating discovery and last but most certainly not least Digital Explorer which you can learn more about if you keep reading.

Here's what we asked, and what he said:

• You’re an expeditioner with plenty of Wilderness experience – could you tell us a bit more about that and also who or what inspired you to get out there (I’m thinking of the mentor you mention but go as broad as you like)

I was very lucky to be let loose in the Scottish highlands as a child. As a family we went up to the Cairngorms every year and it was amazing to roam for miles around and not see another person. I first learnt about wilderness and nature during these trips. When I was a teenager I had the fortune to go on a two week Outward Bound type holiday led by Richard Waite. Richard invited me back for the following two years to help out with other trips. In terms of bringing the wilderness to young people, I would say that he was a definite mentor, and it is thanks to him that I am now leading youth expeditions. Heinrich Harrer is also to blame. I read Seven Years in Tibet whilst ill when I was fourteen. I had roamed Tibet and the Himalaya for years in my mind, before I finally got there aged eighteen. Six trips later and they still bowl me over – they are awesome in the true sense of the word and contain a deep spiritual essence.

• On the entrepreneurial side you have three great projects on the go – do you use anything you learnt in Wilderness to deal with the sometimes more city-based challenges one faces as an entrepreneur?

When the going gets tough, I find myself reaching back to expeditions. Having a mental toolkit of head down, 5,000 metres up, head-throbbing pain, difficulty breathing, snow in the face and visibility down to a few yards makes a late night or two much easier. On expedition you get up every morning and put your mind and body through it all again. You’re tired, muscles ache, fingers are numb and you just get on with it. I think expeditions really give you two important qualities as an entrepreneur – determination and courage. I don’t have a head for heights and so Himalayan expeditions are something of a mind over fear over body juggling act. When I am fearful of taking a plunge in business, it is never as bad as telling myself that I won’t fall off. The consequences of a slip in business are never as bad as they are in the hills.

• You somehow also find time to teach – any advice for teachers?

I think I could do with a lot of advice from my colleagues. I am surrounded every day at school by such wonderfully committed and talented teachers it humbles me. I think that I would have some advice for the people who are a bit higher up in the educational food-chain. It would be nice to see some real financial commitment (and extra time) to help teachers equip the young people of the UK properly for life in a globalised world and inspire a greater sense of environmental guardianship. I would love to have the time and funds to introduce all my pupils to a wild place.

• Specifically for the work you do with building skills for Google Earth – any advice for our trails alumni?

Google Earth is the best platform I know for presenting journeys. A 3-D earth that spins and zooms and tilts – magic! In terms of building skills, I have been training educators and expeditioners for about a year (and have trained over 100 people now). I have put all the resources that I have developed on http://digitalexplorer.co.uk/google-earth/. If anyone who reads this needs more help then get in touch or come on a course.

• Last but not least, have you got some book recommendations for our readers?

I am really enjoying ‘Wild’ by Jay Griffiths at the moment. It is an evocative ode to the wilderness that is fast disappearing in the world and within ourselves. Her language is beautiful and has a rich earthy flavour. The other book I enjoyed recently was Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Mountains of the Mind’. In terms of the Himalaya, there are two wonderful books ‘Snow Leopard’ by Peter Matthiessen and ‘A Journey in Ladakh’ by Andrew Harvey.

Great insights and as for Google Earth - We're hoping to get together a workshop for our Trails Alumni on this subject drawing on Jamie's superb Digital Explorer materials.

Review round-up: The Wild Places

The two most recent reviews:

New Statesman: Every city-dweller knows the sensation of feeling imprisoned within an urban world of brick and glass. Sometimes it's triggered by a jam-packed thoroughfare in a shopping precinct. Often it is heralded by a crowded train carriage deep underground.
But the next time you find yourself mired in dark thoughts about the soul-blanching impositions of city life, walk straight into the nearest bookshop and buy a copy of Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places, his erudite and exquisitely written follow-up to his acclaimed debut, Mountains of the Mind. The book is balm for the most acute metropolitan malaise. Read the full review in The New Statesman

The Economist: LIKE a medieval holy man, or modern hippie, Robert Macfarlane sets out for the remote parts of the northern and western British isles, sea-sprayed islands, craggy mountains and great bog plains. He wants to experience wildness. There is not an icy pool he will not plunge into or tree he would not climb. He picks up shards of roughened granite and smooth flints and turns them in his hand. He says: “We have in many ways forgotten what the world feels like.” - Full review in the Economist

Also, reviewed earlier in:

• The Guardian
• The Independent
• New Scientist
• Prospect Magazine
• Scotland on Sunday
• The Telegraph
• The Times

Our earlier coverage:

• Campfire Questions with Cameron McNeish
• Extract from Robert Macfarlane's new book

Campfire Questions with Cameron McNeish

We wired Cameron McNeish, Wilderness speaker, editor of TGO Magazine and WFUK Trustee, to hear a bit more about what's going on in his end of the UK.

Here's the Q&A:

• You recently wrote on the TGO blog about 'The Wild Places', the new book by Robert Macfarlane – Could you tell us a little bit more about why our readers should check it out. Also, could you maybe give us an insight into what you discussed with Robert in your forthcoming podcast interview with him?

Many folk will be familiar with Robert Macfarlane's book 'Mountains of the Mind'. It was published to wide critical acclaim a few years ago.

His new book, The Wild Places, was published earlier this month. Rather than focus on the kind of person who climbs mountains Rob has placed the spotlight on the landscape itself. In that sense it's the kind of book that Americans tend to write much better than we do, people like Barry Lopez, Edward Hoagland, Ed Abbey and Annie Dillard, not to forget, of course, the earlier writers like Muir, Emerson and Thoreau. In the UK we have a good legacy in mountaineering literature - We also have a reasonable legacy in "nature" or "wildlife" writing - I can think of people like Gavin Maxwell and Frank Fraser Darling, although today's wildlife writers are but a pale copy of these people.

Very few people, with possibly the exception of WH Murray and Jim Perrin, and perhaps one or two others, have ever written evocatively about our relationship with wild places, and why such landscapes are important to us, spiritually and emotionally, not to forget any bio-vidersity role they have.

I discussed these issues with Rob and also a little about his background - his grandfather, who lives in the Scottish highlands, was a very enthusiastic mountaineer and is a superb botanist. Rob was brought up in these traditions. We also discussed the need for writers like Rob to remind readers that wild places are a dwindling commodity, and that it is incumbent on all of us to protect them.

• What are the main lessons you’ve taken away from both book and interview?

Robert very gently reminded me of my own role as a conservationist.

In particular he shared a thought that very much resonated with me. He told me he'd had some criticism from natural history scientists and academics who claimed that he focused too much on the emotional/spiritual side of the great outdoors, rather than work to a stricter scientific analysis.

That thought reminded me of a conversation I once had with the late WH Murray, whose first book, 'Mountaineering in Scotland', had been returned to him by a prospective publisher because it was “too spiritual.”

I’m very aware of such criticism, much of which comes from academia and science-based naturalists. It’s as though the emotional, spiritual or experiential side of the outdoors is almost worthless and yet such emotions, I would suggest, are inherent in all of us.

They are, as the wilderness poet Gary Snyder once said: "perenially within us, dormant as a hard-shelled seed, awaiting the fire or flood that awakens it again." Perhaps we can be the fire or flood that has that affect on people?

• Is it right that you’re thinking of doing more video – and if so, where will our readers be able to find it?

I've made a couple of DVDs - The Wasdale Round and The Howgills, for a company called Striding Edge, run by my old friend Eric Robson. I'm also making a series of Wild Walks for a BBC Scotland monthly programme called the Adventure Show. That series will eventually appear on a DVD.

I've also been pretty involved in making audio podcasts for my own website at cameronmcneish.co.uk and for my magazine's website at tgomagazine.co.uk so it seems logical to move on from those audio podcasts to video podcasts. I've just bought a pro video camera and have been working hard trying to master the video editing software so hopefully, within the next 2 or 3 weeks, we'll have videos running on both websites.

• Now you’re a wild places not to mention wilderness speaker in your own right – where would we be able to hear you this autumn?

Yes, the lecture season is just about to start and I'm off to the Isle of Arran for the Arran Walking Festival at the end of this month. That'll be followed with a talk in New Galloway, the Inverness Book Festival, two lectures for the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in Dunfermline and Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival. On top of that lot I'm giving the annual Snowdonia Society lecture in Bangor and I've been honoured to be asked to give the annual Wainwright Lecture on this the centenary of Wainwright's birth. All the dates and venues are on my website.

• Give us a couple of top autumn reads that’ll broaden our mind.

Well, you must read Robert Macfarlane's book, The Wild Places and I would urge anyone to look out the books of an American/Welsh writer called Colin Fletcher.

Colin died earlier this year but his book, The Man Who Walked Through Time, is the finest outdoor book I've ever read. It's about the first on-foot traverse of the Grand Canyon before it was flooded.

Read it and it will open your mind to the amazing geological timespan that formed one of the world's natural wonders, the Grand Canyon.

Thanks Cameron - and best of luck with that hectic schedule!

A couple of quick extra links not covered above:

• Wasdale clip (WMV format, 2.5MB)
• The Howgill Fells clip (WMV format, 7.9mb)
• BBC Scotland Outdoors