A new book, coming to you week by week

In the wake of The Salt Path farce, I've decided to use Substack to share my work in progress. All feedback welcome!

But first, an explainer

The name of this newsletter has been the same for about a year now. A nature memoir. Pretty straightforward. I write about how I feel about my life and what happens within it through the prism of nature. It might be a brief swim in a river. A long walk over the moors. Or time spent desperately trying to prevent my pea plants from being destroyed by voracious cabbage whites. It’s not meant to signify much beyond that. There is no ‘journey’ here. Just some ideas jotted down for my own pleasure and, hopefully, yours.

But in the weeks since the whole Raynor Winn/Salt Path saga I’ve really given a lot of thought as to what that name really means. And I’ve come to the conclusion that in this context that it a) means what I’ve outlined above and b) means a book that explores that intersection of nature and life and how a writer regards that interaction.

As someone who has written what could be dismissively called a nature memoir with a redemption arc (I go swimming, my anxiety gets better, sort of, but not quite - please buy here, thanking you) the coverage has been part breathless ‘hot take’ from those who don’t actually write these books and just want to gob off about them for clicks/to get a freelance pay cheque from a degraded arts section, and part wider thesis on what it means for those of us who care about our writing and don’t wish to weave, in the words of Larry David, a web of lies, deceit and bullshit.

In the Derwent at Chatsworth, mining my life for material, July 2025 © Joe Minihane

Unsurprisingly, the latter interests me more, especially now I no longer use social media. From my position as a relative bottom feeder here, there’s a tendency to conflate all such books into one space. To suggest The Outrun is in any way similar to The Salt Path is, to my well trained eye, palpably absurd, leaving aside the fact that one is a literary tour de force. But from the outside in, it’s pretty clear that already risk averse publishers are going to turn away from such memoirs, largely as it’s viewed as impossible to sell nuance within this, or any, space. There are brilliant writers at work in this genre who may or may not ‘do the numbers’ but are rightly critically lauded for what they bring to it. Polly Atkin. The aforementioned Amy Liptrot. And Jessica Lee, to name three.

But what of new names or those of us seeking to publish after large gaps? I know the answer, and it’s not promising. I like the idea of ‘nature memoir’ being a broad church where people from all backgrounds and with all kinds of ideas are welcomed and nurtured. Not every book will connect or hit home with every reader, and nor should it. What’s key is that a strong relationship to the truth always helps. As is being comfortable with the idea of nature’s indifference and the fact that such ‘cures’ are the reserve of AI written press releases and ‘wellness’ obsessives. Nature is not a panacea, but it can offer us help at times of struggle without ever providing complete and long lasting succour.

With this in mind, I have been loath to share too much of what I was working on at the start of 2025 for fear that doing so would prevent its publication in the future. That such an event is now made even less likely by what I’ll politely call Winn’s indiscretions (slide into my DMs for what I really think), as well as my own struggles to get out there and go into bat for my writing, means I’ve decided to bite the bullet and share my work in progress here on Substack. It’s messy, it’s not finished, some of it has already seen the light of day, and the concept is a little off as I’ve spent the past few months working on other stuff. As of today, I’ll share 1,000 a words or so every week, which should take us up to Christmas. There may be more after. What I really want is feedback. Good, uncomfortable, critical. I’ll take it all. I don’t mind. Yes, it’s a nature memoir. But one without easy answers. Because easy answers don’t exist even if they make good copy and bestsellers. For now I’m calling it Blowing Hot and Cold. The first section can be found below. Please let me know what you think.

***

My head is seemingly on fire. The hairs on my neck stand to attention, more out of utter shock than anything else. My ears feel as if they have been singed. In the darkness of the eaves, all I can see through the rising steam is a tall man wearing a felt hat at the top of a set of wooden steps, ladling water into a stove that is as tall as he is.

As the steam hisses and rises, my body resembles a tidal wave. Water pours forth from every pore. It drips from my eyebrows and pools around my feet. I feel drained and yet elated. As it dissipates, through the solitary window I can see the midsummer sun glinting off of the Baltic Sea. I should really cool down, but I cannot bring myself to do so. The high is too great, the inability to move insurmountable. I stay rooted.

In the far corner, a voice breaks the silence.

“Go on Leonard. A bit more.”

Leonard, the man on the steps, obliges. The water hisses off the stones once more, the steam rises again and the process starts all over. Leonard, six foot tall, a felt hat on his head, his moustache wet and his face gleaming, returns to the bench and settles down. Silence. Searing heat. And some form of salvation in the air, although from what and why exactly remains unclear. My mind is empty now, heat the only thing that penetrates my pores. The tidal wave has become a flood. I am soaked. Cleansed, pure, devoid of anything but the presence of now.

It’s only when Leonard stands to leave the wooden sauna that I do too, along with the two others who are sitting with us high above the stove in this wooden temple to scorching wellbeing. We blink into the evening and take a few short strides across the sunbathing deck and into the cool embrace of the water. Pines line the shores of the horizon. A hulking cruiseliner slides across the bay, its bow wave promising to arrive with us in short order. The Baltic isn’t cold, around 20ºC. It’s early June and the heat of the day refuses to shift. The seabed is rocky, slick, slippery. It demands you swim and so I oblige. The warmth of the sauna lives within me, deep inside my core. My heart is alight and burns brightly. I am not giddy, I am grounded, despite my body being buoyed up by salt water. I have washed myself of everything that poured out of me and now I am ready again.

The process repeats itself around half a dozen times over what must be around 90 minutes. This small island, Lonna, is just 20 minutes from Helsinki Harbour, and holds within it a kind of magic, an ability to heal which is open to all. On this side of the island, you cannot get any sense of a major capital city being in the vicinity. I have no watch on. My phone is stashed in my bag which is locked away in a bijou changing room. I am disconnected and fully alive to all possibilities.

Lonna stands as testament to what for the Finns is an everyday ritual. Here, sauna isn’t something you do in a grubby space stashed in the corner of a sports centre changing room. It is a part of daily life, as common as complaining about everything but doing nothing about it in the UK. Yet sauna has tangible benefits for your health and wellbeing, unlike moaning all the time.

The facts are well worn but they bear repeating. The extremes of hot and cold are known to lower inflammation, in turn meaning sauna can help ease the symptoms of anxiety and depression. The boost to circulation from regular practice means improved physical health too, with tangible impacts on heart health. Women gave birth in saunas due to their sterile and safe environment. Bodies were cleaned and prepared for burial within their sacred inners too. And the social aspect, where people come together in a state of total undress, is known to combat loneliness. The fact Lonna was once home to that a munitions store, where you can still see the train tracks used to heave mines out towards the water and waiting boats, makes it even more special. To me, it’s a sign that you can make anything beautiful with time and inspiration.

After Leonard had set me on fire one last time, I kicked my heels on the deck, white towel wrapped around my shoulders, ice cold beer in hand.

Sitting next to me was Andre. In his early 20s and with the perfect grasp of English which seemingly all Helsinki natives seem to have, we fell into a conversation that quickly turned to sauna’s healing powers.

“Coming here saved my life,” says Andre. It’s matter of fact in tone, which makes it all the more meaningful.

“I was having a really bad time last year, but coming to the sauna and then swimming or plunging afterwards made me feel more like myself. It made me calmer and gave me much greater perspective.”

He tells me he goes to saunas around the city four or five times a week. It’s not a big deal, he explains. It’s just part of daily life.

For over a decade I’ve espoused the pleasures and possibilities of the cold. Bitter water’s power to restore is better known in the UK compared with mixing it with extreme heat. I have long known that even the shortest dip in a cold outdoor body of water can reset my nervous system and give me that infinitesimal feeling, zooming out so far that I can see myself as merely a speck on the surface of the Earth. There is beauty in that, a spirituality to which I am drawn to.

Mix it with the blistering warmth of a sauna in an outdoor setting, though, and it goes deeper. The chill is removed quickly, but the sense of oneness and the strength of one’s own soul is somehow even greater. As you alternate between hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold, a transformation happens. Where your awareness of everybody else grows and your ability to meet people on level terms is heightened. Throw in a feeling of serenity and that is powerful stuff.

Back on Lonna, I spent the evening eating locally caught arctic chard and sipping icy white wine. The midnight sun kissed the tops of the pines on the centre of the island and as the boat made its way back to the city, I felt as if I was bringing part of this paradise with me.