In 2010, Philip Marsden, whom Giles Foden has called "one of our most thoughtful travel writers," moved with his family to a rundown farmhouse in the countryside in Cornwall. From the moment he arrived, Marsden found himself fascinated by the landscape around him, and, in particular, by the traces of human history--and of the human relationship to the land--that could be seen all around him. Wanting to experience the idea more fully, he set out to walk across Cornwall, to the evocatively named Land's End.

Rising Ground is a record of that journey, but it is also so much more: a...