Paper Tiger

In the past several years I have noticed certain tendencies amongst the nonfiction books I like to read; topics or themes that come up again and again. One of those, perhaps unsurprisingly, happens to be walking (I’ve even created a “walking” tag on my Storygraph account to keep track of it). I thought I’d share a few of the books I’ve really enjoyed, am currently reading, and have plans to read that all focus on this theme in one way or another. This group of books does reflect my own preferences and biases, so you might notice that all five of these books are by UK-based authors and editors, for instance, and the walks described are largely also focused on the UK.

(I should also mention, in the event that any of these appeal to you, that I purchased all but one of these books from the Daughter of a Shepherd online shop. Rachel consistently stocks some of the most interesting books for folks interested in craft, textiles, and the ways in which nature, agriculture, and textile production are all interlinked. It’s always a good mail day when a DoaS order arrives.)

Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews

I read this book several years ago now and I think it’s the one that clued me into the importance of walking in my life. It was spring of 2021, a year into the Covid pandemic, a period marked by many solitary walks on my part. In this book, Andrews shares snippets of the lives and the work of ten female writers spanning three centuries for whom walking was “essential to their sense of themselves as women, writers and people.” I think reading about these ten women prompted me to think about the connection between walking and writing in a new way. While I have long considered myself a writer, I was in the second year of my PhD at the time and beginning to work on the writing that formed my dissertation, which meant engaging with writing in new and different (and often more challenging) ways.

Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison

While I tend to be a fair weather walker these days, there’s something to be said for a walk in the rain. This book is what it says on the tin: Harrison writes about four different walks in the rain, at different times of year and different parts of the UK (Wicken Fen in January, Shropshire in April, the Darent Valley in August, and Dartmoor in October). She writes about the way that rain transforms the landscape, and how walking when it’s raining allows one to notice this transformation. For my own part, being very often a solitary walker, I have to admit I enjoy how a rainy walk can make me feel like I have the path/park/city to myself, depending on where I’m walking (and my rainy walks in Montreal were some of my favorites when we lived there for that very reason).

The Electricity of Every Living Thing by Katherine May

This is a book about more than just walking, although May does set out to walk the South West Coast Path, England’s longest National Trail (at 630 miles) which follows the coast from Somerset, through Devon and around Cornwall, to Dorset. I was unaware of the SWCP before reading this book and I’m so happy to learn about it – I would love to walk some of it someday. Aside from the walking, May’s other focus in this book is her realization and subsequent diagnosis of autism, and the confusing but ultimately positive process of coming to terms with that. The walking is part of the process. I’d previously read May’s other books Wintering and Enchantment and I love May’s writing, so this one was a pleasure to read.

On the subject of the South West Coast Path, if you happen to follow Katie Green (of the Green Bean Podcast) or Kat Chapman on YouTube you may have seen that they started a video series last year as they and their friend Rupa embarked on the first stage of a long-term plan to walk the whole path. You can find the playlist of the 6 videos of 2024’s walks on YouTube here.

The Observant Walker: Wild Food, Nature and Hidden Treasures on the Pathways of Britain by John Wright

I’m in the middle of this one at the moment, a book that features eight different walks around the UK through a variety of different landscapes. I really enjoyed John Wright’s A Natural History of the Hedgerow and I’m enjoying this one too. The idea behind the walks shared by Wright in this book is to go slow and notice; in his own words from the introduction, the aim is “to look closely at the things that make each terrain unique and interesting, and to name, examine and describe those things, those organisms, that are passed by as commonplace yet unknown, of no superficial interest, but which are nevertheless profoundly fascinating once considered with an observant eye.” This quite often means plants and fungi in practice, John Wright being a forager, but his descriptions are not limited to those things. While the type of walk Wright describes in these eight walks is not my usual approach to walking as a rule, I do appreciate the reminder to go slow and notice things, and that is something I have tried to do more of on my walks in the past several years.

Way Makers: An anthology of women’s writing about walking edited by Kerri Andrews

This anthology is edited by Kerri Andrews, author of Wanderers mentioned above. It’s sitting in my to-be-read pile at the moment, but given how much Wanderers helped shaped the way I think about walking today, it seemed worth including here. I’m looking forward to it for the range of different women authors and types of writing included in it: snippets of diaries, letters, fiction, and essays.