THE WILD SILENCE

A moving follow-up to the author’s 2018 memoir, The Salt Path.

Winn resumes her narrative a year after she and her husband, Moth, completed a 630-mile walk along England’s South West Coast Path, a passage through homelessness forced by their eviction from a family home of 20 years. After finding a small rental in the Cornish village of Polruan and living off limited funds, Winn looked for work, and Moth continued in his quest to earn his academic degree, hoping to teach despite the impediment of a “terminal neurodegenerative disease.” As Moth’s life became more sedentary, the faltering of his body and mind accelerated. Winn believed that the only thing that would arrest the deterioration was the same physical exertion and intense immersion in the wild that helped before. Restive and isolated, she needed the stillness of “wild silence” just as desperately. Curiously, Winn does not even mention her writing process until nearly 100 pages into the book, when she recounts how The Salt Path was written and how it changed their lives. The author also revisits her childhood, the death of her mother, the couple’s risky attempt to revive a ruined farm, and her giddy early days with Moth. Winn has developed a reputation for powerful writing on the natural world. Her descriptions are highly visual, often poetic. There are passages so perfectly apt, melancholy, or achingly lovely that you want to stop and live inside the text, though occasionally she loses control and begins to romanticize. Yet Winn’s talent is undeniable, as is her capacity to locate the profound amid the din of modern life. We see her embrace change, from self-imposed isolation and total emotional reliance on Moth to embracing new possibilities.

A memorable celebration of a “silent enmeshing of lives lived in unison,” a potent marriage of heart and mind.