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Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life by W.H. Hudson is a luminous naturalist memoir that transports readers to the Argentine pampas of the 1850s, where the author spent his extraordinary childhood. This 19th century autobiography, written when Hudson was seventy six, vibrates with youthful wonder as it reconstructs his formative years amid the untamed landscapes and colonial outposts of South America. The narrative unfolds through Hudson's dual lenses: the wide eyed boy discovering the pampas' teeming wildlife (from ovenbirds to pumas), and the seasoned naturalist reflecting on how these encounters shaped his life's work. Vignettes alternate between ecological observations like his account of riding through locust plagues and colonial life portraits: gaucho knife fights, British expatriate eccentricities, and indigenous horse tamers. A pivotal chapter details Hudson's near fatal childhood illness that awakened his preternatural sensitivity to nature's voices. What elevates this beyond typical nature writing is Hudson's unsentimental yet poetic style. His description of watching a flock of plovers "moving like a gray cloud" demonstrates the precise observation that later influenced conservationists. The memoir's second half darkens as Hudson witnesses the pampas' transformation by European settlers an early ecological lament that makes this a foundational text in environmental literature.
