Ways to Say Goodbye

This is not a book about the end of the world - it's about the start of a new one.

Melting glaciers. Crumbling coasts. Vanishing seas. The feeling that our world is coming to an end has led to a rise in 'ecological grief' and prompted a wave of last-chance tourists and environmental mourners. From funeral cairns built for a dying glacier in the Swiss Alps, to selfies taken at the disappearing Aral Sea, pilgrims, both religious and secular, are making journeys to find meaningful ways to say goodbye.

But as one world ends, another begins. In Ways to Say Goodbye, Nick Hunt asks what first chances lay ahead? In the Siberian Arctic, the collapsing permafrost is revealing prehistoric remains that haven't seen daylight for millennia; off the coast of Iceland, a new island is emerging.

Travelling across continents, through mountains, forests, deserts, coasts and cities, Nick Hunt captures our landscapes in flux. He explores what it means to live in a world that is undergoing vertiginous change, and offers a way we can keep our balance as the ground shifts beneath our feet.