Here’s something we’ve all done: you’re about to take a picture of a landscape, when you realize there’s an electrical pylon showing. No big deal, you frame the picture in such a way that the jarring detail doesn’t appear in it. We are refusing to see the the true panorama all around us, with its roads, sub-divisions and multiples traces of industrial civilization.

Ecological literature, which sings the praises of the great open spaces and encounters with wild animals, contributes to maintaining our illusion that we live in the heart of unspoiled nature. But that world no longer exists, or only in zones circumscribed by humans, i.e. nature preserves. Many of the landscapes of our childhood are already gone.

This essay dares to take on the inconvenient questions that we can no longer ignore: in the age of global warming and the Anthropocene, what sensorial and emotional bonds can we weave with our environment? What kinds of pleasure and awe can we still find in it? Can we revive landscapes that have slipped away?

By leading us around the world, from the Baltic Sea to Lake Titicaca, via Taiwan, the Tiputa Pass and the hills of Burgundy, this book opens our eyes to damaged nature. Its lucidity is all the more necessary in that rather than bringing on apathy or sadness, it spurs us to get involved.