For increasing numbers of people the word 'wilderness' evokes a symbolic landscape that is wild and spiritually uplifting, a place that is free of the excesses of mankind and instead is home to a diverse range of animals, birds, plants and landforms. The native people of Australia refer to it as 'beyond the black stump' - the land that begins where the tarmac stops.
For over 35 years writer and broadcaster Cameron McNeish has frequently hitched his pack onto his back and eased himself over that line, leaving behind the structures of civilisation to find refreshment and fulfilment.

Through his books and television programmes Cameron McNeish is recognised as Britain's best known advocate for wilderness. He considers himself an evangelist for the wild places of the world - mountains, deserts, remote coastlines and forests - anywhere that lies 'beyond the black stump'.

The Wilderness World of Cameron McNeish takes the reader on a journey to some of those wild places: climbing one of North America's most dangerous volcanoes; traversing the mountains of France and Switzerland; following the Spanish sun in the Sierra de Aitana and learning wilderness philosophy from the writings of John Muir, the father of America's national parks. Thirty shorter essays on the mountains of Scotland form the bedrock from which his wilderness philosophy has been bom.

There are wildlife encounters too, from the tiny snow bunting of the high Cairngorms to the black bears of Yosemite, and lessons to be learned from those who went before us - our ancestors, whoever they were, who understood that there was something more essential about the land, something that curiously still seems to escape us.
 

The Wilderness World of Cameron McNeish offers the reader a unique opportunity to travel with one of Britain's most popular outdoor commentators on his quest for understanding.