Adam Foulds on the book he turns to when he wants to get away from people

THE PEREGRINE J.A. BAKER

Sometimes the only therapy one needs is to get away from people, out of their clammy, complicated dramas, away from ego and noisy talk and even the claims of affection. In the 1960s, J.A. Baker, a librarian from Chelmsford, undertook solitary walks out into the flatlands of Essex and eastern England to watch peregrine falcons and to leave the human world behind:

‘I have always longed to be a part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water; to return to the town as a stranger. ’

These walks took place one autumn, through the purifying austerities of winter, to the following spring. The larger part of the book is the journal of this period, day after day, alone, watching and walking in long trances of observation. The repetition with variation becomes hypnotic. This is part of the book’s immersive quality, something that is immediately evident in its opening section, a short essay about the biology of peregrine falcons. The writing is as hallucinatory as it is objective, at once scientific and almost shamanistic as the reader is compelled to enter the being of another animal, its body and perceptions:

‘The peregrine’s view of the land is like the yachtsman’s view of the shore as he sails into the long estuaries. A wake of water recedes behind him, the wake of the pierced horizon glides back on either side. Like the seafarer, the peregrine lives in a pouring-away world of no attachment, a world of wakes and tilting, of sinking planes of land and water. ’

J.A. Baker’s The Peregrine (1967), 2005 paperback edition published by New York Review Books.

Here, imaginatively, one is released from the state of being human at all. I am struck, as I type this now, by the Buddhist overtones to the phrase ‘world of no attachment’ . This seems entirely appropriate to the book’s meditative quality, its eager, Zen-like absorption in the present moment. As much as the book’s language is extraordinary – and it is a great achievement of prose style – it is not so for its own sake. It is purposeful. It is to see: ‘Turning through a hedge-gap, I surprised a wren. It trembled on its perch in an agony of hesitation, not knowing whether to fly or not, its mind in a stutter, splitting up with fear. I went quickly past, and it relaxed, and sang. ’

This is poetry in the very best sense of the word, the language fresh and precise, the rhythm of the writing controlled and expressive. As in the poetry of Ted Hughes, the natural world Baker describes is violent, thrilling, always changing, always present. Like Hughes, Baker often makes shocking word choices in order to create images that are strange, charged and completely convincing in their arrest of appearance: ‘Jackdaws charred the green slopes to the north with black. ’

Or here, in one of the many descriptions of flight in The Peregrine : ‘He glided over stubble, and a wave of sparrows dashed itself into a hedge. For a second, the hawk’s wings danced in pursuit, flicking lithe and high in a cluster of frenzied beats that freeze in memory to the shape of antlers. ’

That wave of sparrows dashing itself out of sight, those rapid aerial movements crystallising in a single recollected shape. Writing doesn’t get more entranced or entrancing than this.

Little is known about Baker and personally I don’t want to know any more. I am happy to be with him out there, in silence, watching, forgetting myself, and finally, when I’ve finished rereading, to return with him ‘to the town as a stranger’ . not so for its own sake. It is purposeful. It is to see: ‘Turning through a hedge-gap, I surprised a wren. It trembled on its perch in an agony of hesitation, not knowing whether to fly or not, its mind in a stutter, splitting up with fear. I went quickly past, and it relaxed, and sang. ’ the word, the language fresh and precise, the rhythm of the writing controlled and expressive.

As in the poetry of Ted Hughes, the natural world Baker describes is violent, thrilling, always changing, always present. Like Hughes, Baker often makes shocking word choices in order to create images that are strange, charged and completely convincing in their arrest of appearance: ‘Jackdaws charred the green slopes to the north with black. ’ descriptions of flight in ‘He glided over stubble, and a wave of sparrows dashed itself into a hedge. For a second, the hawk’s wings danced in pursuit, flicking lithe and high in a cluster