As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

Finished April 23

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee

This memoir covers from the summer of 1934 to late 1936. 19-year-old Laurie has never left the area of England he grew up in before this time, but he sets off on foot from his home in the Cotswolds heading for London. He has never seen the sea and so decides to go via Southampton, adding about 100 miles to his journey. As he walks he either eats what he has brought with him, what he finds on the land, or what he is given by those he passes by or stays with. He is not the only one on the road, and he at one point he travels with a long-term wanderer named Alf. I have to say that this reminded me of a homeless man I was once acquainted with, also named Alf, and made a connection to this fleeting glimpse of a person. Laurie finds a room in London and a job working construction and trying out various entertainments in the city. After nearly a year, when the building project he is one comes to an end, he realizes that he is free to go anywhere and he buys a one way ticket on a ship to Viga, Spain.

In Spain, he resumes his walking, stopping and playing his fiddle in the streets for what money people are willing to give. He has rudimentary Spanish, and lots of curiosity and he meets a wide variety of people from other travellers to locals from all walks of life. The heat he encounters is one thing he is unprepared for, and he finds himself suffering badly at times. 

We follow him as he goes to Valladolid, on to Madrid, and then to Toledo, stopping for varying lengths of time depending on how people react to his music and where he can afford to stay. He continues south, crossing the mountains into Andalusia stopping in Seville and then going down to the coast. After a brief visit to Gibraltar, he goes on along the coast, ending up in the town of Castillo. He had planned to go further, but at this point the Spanish Civil War breaks out in the area, and he finds himself going to ground there with the townspeople. Soon after, a British warship stops and offers a way out for him and the British writer who has been living there.

There is an epilogue that comes six months later when he finds himself once again at the Spanish border, looking to help those he grew to care about in his journey.

This is a very personal story, that gives a real sense of the world of the time, and the places and people that he met along the way. He wrote it more than three decades after the events contained in the book, with an eye to the bigger picture he didn't see at the time, so one gets a sense of the looming unrest, but it doesn't overtake his personal story. 

An enlightening read with a real sense of place and time. The language is beautifully descriptive. 

The Wildwater Walking Club

Finished September 4

The Wildwater Walking Club by Claire Cook

This novel follows Noreen (Nora) Kelly from the morning after she takes a buyout from her job in Boston. She's worked for Balancing Act Shoes for the past eighteen years, most recently as Senior Manager of Brand Identity, and they'd recently been taken over by another company. The manager in the buyout company who convinced her to take the buyout was a man she'd recently been involved with, and she discovers quickly that he has now dumped her. In response, one of her final acts is to use her employee discount to buy up a bunch of shoes in her size.

And she begins to walk. 

First, one her own, walking the paths of her neighbourhood. Then with her next door neighbour Tess, the mother of a teen daughter and a primary school teacher. They soon add another woman, Rosie, the owner of a nearby lavender farm. As the women walk, and talk, and figure out their futures, they grow closer a real friendships are forged. 

Nora also goes to some meetings included in her buyout package, with a firm called Fresh Horizons. There, she meets others going through a significant life change, and makes a friend. 

When her mother comes for a visit from Florida, more connections are made, and Nora finds herself finding a new purpose.

This book is a reminder that there is a life beyond work, and a need within us all for true friendship. 

I liked Nora and her attitude, the rooster named Rod Stewart and his zeal for breakfast cereal, and the clothesline plotline. 

Raven, Rabbit, Deer

Finished November 4

Raven, Rabbit Deer by Sue Farrell Holler, illustrated by Jennifer Faria

This picture book is a beauty. The author grew up in Cape Breton, has lived in the NWT, and now lives in Grande Prairie, Alberta. The illustrators lives in Ontario and drew inspiration for the grandfather in the story from her own much loved maternal great-uncle. This process of creating this book has helped her learn more about her cultural heritage as a member of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation.

I loved how the end papers showed the three animals of the title, showed the tracks they make, and gave their names in Ojibwemowin with a pronunciation guide. 

The young boy in the story indicates that he wants to go for an outdoor adventure by bringing his boots to his grandfather, and the two go for a walk in the wintery world outside, where they spot the animals, see what kinds of tracks the different animals make and really observe the world around them by engaging with it. They also make their own tracks in the snow, and walk a special way to climb a small hill. I really liked the way they looked at the tracks and connected them to things children might be familiar with such as car tires, food, and twigs. 

Once back home, the two work together to set up their snack of milk and cookies, and then cuddle by the fire. A perfect ending to such an active adventure!

The drawings were great, with expressive faces and simple and colourful images of the world. A great book for the coming season.

Wandering Home

Finished January 16
Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape by Bill McKibben

This memoir covers a short period in the the author's life, a couple of weeks one summer where he walked from his home in Vermont (very near one of Robert Frost's homes) to a previous home in the New York state Adirondacks.
Along the way, he walks some of the time alone, and some of the time with friends from the area. He writes about the landscape he is moving through, the weather, the environmental issues, the social issues, the history of these places, and his own connections, memories, and impressions of these places.
There is a map at the front, showing his path for this trip. The people he visits and travels with include other authors, other environmentalists, historians, farmers, gardeners, vintners, beekeepers, river rafters, and historians. All the them have connections to the last themselves, and are in touch with nature and its wonder.
A book to savour, and one that makes you both hopeful and eager to go out and explore nature yourself.

The Road is How

Finished August 6
The Road is How: A Prairie Pilgrimage through Nature, Desire, and Soul by Trevor Herriot

This book is the story of a journey, both physical and mental. It all starts with Herriot falling from a ladder doing home repairs. Reading a book during his recovery, he is convinced that he needs to do a journey in the form of a long walk. A native friend of his tells him that walking is a good idea, but that he needs to first go sit on a hill while fasting and figure out why he wants to go for a walk.
Herriot does this, and comes out of it with a few things. One is his imbalance in terms of personal relationships. He wants to understand his high level of desire, finding meaning in the relationship between a man and a woman in his own life, and grow up in terms of relationships. Second is that he wants to reawaken his spiritual side, and go with purpose toward what comes next in his life. Third is that he needed to look inside himself to things that needed changing. After thinking about it, and recognizing his strong connection with nature, especially with birdlife, he determines to walk from his home in Regina to his cabin about forty miles east of the city.
He knows he will have a make a few detours from a straight path, but he will go as straight as he can, along roads, road allowances, and fence lines. Along the way he notices his surroundings, the subtle changes in landscape, the animals, birds, and people he encounters. He also reflects, on his relationship with his wife Karen, on his strong sexual desires, on his feelings toward women generally, on the birds and their environment that he has advocated for, on his male bonding experiences, on his connections with nature.
At times I found his musings too nebulous to be meaningful to me as a reader, but this is his story, and he needs to express himself in the way that makes sense to him. His journey is interesting, and he does seem to get something from it, and that is what really matters.

On Looking

Finished July 31
On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz

This book began with the author realizing that she wasn't seeing her surroundings in many ways when she took walks in her neighbourhood. She began thinking about what she was missing, and sought out different people with different backgrounds, expertise, and interests to help her see her surroundings in different ways. She wanted to know what she was missing.
First she deliberately took a walk in her neighbourhood, taking notes on what she was noticing and her insights about those things. Some of the subsequent walks are in her own city of New York, but others are in the other cities, more convenient to the experts that she walked with.
Her first walk was with her toddler son, as she tried to let him guide the walk as much as possible and took note of what captured his interest, sometimes asking him questions to draw out what he was feeling or what appealed to him. She found, of course, that his perspective was different than hers, being closer to the ground and thus seeing things at that level more immediately. He was attracted to colours, shapes, and textures, wanting to experience his surroundings with fingers, feet, and sometimes his tongue.He noticed sounds and looked for their origins. He is fascinated with the new, things that weren't there on his last walk. He greeted and talked to objects along the route as if they were living creatures. He points, he stares, especially at people who seem unusual to him. He used a lot of nonverbal communication, gesturing and facial expressions. He was fascinated with his own shadow and the shadows of other things.
Her next walk was with a geologist, a man who often environmental outings within the city. She learns to recognize the different stones in the city, both those used in buildings and those in natural elements. She sees the fossil history in the stones and learns to recognize the signs of tools that were used in shaping the stones.
Next up is a typographer, a man who knows his fonts and the history of signage. This noticing looks at form and function, and seeing not only what signs look good, but why. Noticing the details of signage and recognizing mass-produced as opposed to hand-done. To see letters done artfully with thought to their purpose and placement and those done without.
She then walks with a friend who is an illustrator. They venture into open doors, stood on street corners, sat on benches. Her friend is a collector of the ordinary, drawing pictures of objects that take the ordinary and make them unique. They interacted with other people they encountered. Instead of just looking, they interacted with objects and people along their route, veering off when something caught their interest.
The next series of walks concentrated more on the animate. First, with a field naturalist specializing in insects and other invertebrates. Horowitz learned to recognize the signs of insect presence, to identify the traces that insects leave behind. This was another walk that veered off when something caught their interest nearby, on walls, in tree pits, on the leaves of trees and bushes, in dumpsters.
She then walks with a wildlife scientist, looking for signs of urban wildlife. From raccoons, rats, and squirrels to starlings, pigeons, and other birds, many animals live in cities. They adjust themselves to their environment, using tall buildings like cliff-faces, becoming active at night when humans are less active, finding paths between areas, and developing nooks and crannies as homes. Once they start looking they notice more signs of animal presence.
Her next walk is with a man who specializes in the use of urban space. He watches how people behave in spaces, how things like street furniture, sidewalk vendors and shop windows can slow people down. To him a good urban experience is one that encourages you to slow down and loiter. He studies the movement of people, how they move in groups, how people move when they meet others as they walk, the subtle dance of movement between strangers. She learns that there are three simple rules most of use abide by: avoid bumping into others, while staying comfortably close; follow whoever is in front of you; and keep up with those next to you. The rules boil down to avoidance, alignment and attraction, and explain the movement of groups not just in people but also other creatures. Without consciously realizing it, we all watch others and react to their movements. We slip and slide as we move past others coming towards us, we notice where others are moving towards and move to avoid their path, The advent of mobile devices has had an impact on this and they notice that too. People concentrating on devices don't participate in this dance, and create disruptions in movement. They notice divisions on the street, sidewalks, curbs, and other visible differences that influence how people move through an environment.
Her next companion is a doctor skilled in the practice of diagnosis by visual inspection. As they walk, he notes the slight differences in how people carry themselves, how they move, that are signs as to illnesses or physical injuries. He has worked with medical students, teaching them to really look at their patients to get clues as to who they are and what is important to them. They look at gait, the way clothing hangs, physical characteristics, smell, and sound.
She takes a walk with a blind woman, learning how she uses her other senses to help tell her what is around her. She can sense the movement of air to tell when she reaches an open space such as a street corner, and uses objects that she touches to orient herself in her surroundings. She uses her cane to tell her something about the tactile nature of the surface she is moving towards, and the sound of the taps to determine all surrounding surfaces.
Walking with a sound designer, she notes the difference between sound and noise. He talks about the differences between small sounds like tire noise that tell you whether the pavement is wet or dry. She learns how echoes reinforce sounds, and how different environments affect sounds in different ways. She learns how she physically feels some sounds, especially deeper rumbles.
She takes a walk with a dog to observe how it explores its environment, much of it based on smell. She noticed how the dog licked its nose to better sense upcoming smells, and how it started at the edge of smells, working inward.
For all of her walks she does additional research into the subject speciality, into the history of different inputs, into the science of it all.
This is a book that will change the way you take your own walks, at least for a while, as you open yourself up to new experiences.

To Travel Hopefully

Finished January 18
To Travel Hopefully: Footsteps in the French Cévennes by Christopher Rush

This memoir is about the time in Rush's life when he was dealing with massive grief. It is done in 3 sections. The first section, The Road to the Cévennes, is about the dying of Chris's wife Patricia in the summer and early fall of 1993, and about his reactions to both the dying and the death over the next several months. Patricia died far too young, and her illness was avoided until beyond redemption. Chris's two children, Catriona and Jonathan were 16 and 11. Chris' grief took its toll on them in addition to their own grief as they lost their mother.
Part two, Between Two Lives, looks at what brought Chris from this, and his connection to the writer Robert Louis Stevenson. Inspired by Stevenson's life changing journey by donkey detailed in his book, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, Chris plans out a similar journey, following as closely as possible in Stevenson's footsteps.
The third part, In the Cévennes, tells of Chris' journey. He hires, rather than purchases, a donkey named Anatole, recommended for this trek by the owner Monsieur Lac, and is coached in the proper handling and treatment of the donkey. He equips himself for the journey in a similar fashion to Stevenson, and follows his route as closely as possible. This is a difficult walk, through rough terrain, through much inclement weather, and Chris sleeps some nights out in the open, not always according to plan. His journey is physically demanding, but also emotionally and mentally challenging and Chris comes through it a changed man.
The writing is florid, and frank. He does not shy away from his experiences, whether uplifting or embarrassing. He is open about his feelings, his outbursts and his resentments, in a way few of us are willing to lay out for public view.
One of my favourite passages is from a man that Chris meets at a monastery he stays at enroute, who tells him

"Don't get stuck in the past, he went on to advise me. Or the future. That's the trouble with human beings. We're an illogical lot. Animals are more logical, though it's the logic of instinctive innocence. They don't wander about in times that don't belong to them, like we do. We're always running away blindly from the only time that does properly belong to us: the present. But the present is never the end we have in mind, with the result that we never actually live but simply hope to live, dream about life. It's perfectly logical too, you see. When a man is forever planning how to be happy, it stands to reason that he will never actually be so. Take my advice, my friend, be happy: live your life now, not tomorrow." 

This is an inspiring read and one that inspires the reader to reflect.

A Walk Along the Wall

Finished December 20

A Walk Along the Wall: A Journey Along Hadrian's Wall by Hunter Davies

This book recounts Davies experience walking the length of Hadrian's Wall from east to west over the course of several months, and was first published in 1974. Davies talks about his own observations and experiences along his journey, but also gives us history, not only of the wall, its significance and construction, but also other history that relates to the areas he traverses. He talks to a lot of people along the way, some enthusiasts of the wall, some indifferent, and some antagonistic to its existence and popularity. 

He discusses the unknowns of its history as well, and when things aren't clear offers up the differing theories around each issue. 

I learned some things about the history of this area of Britain and the Roman occupation, about the daily life of the people during that time, and about the religious life of the soldiers, who were drawn from all over the Roman Empire. Very interesting.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Finished September 16
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

I've been reading this novel slowly, trying to prolong it as I was enjoying it so much. Harold Fry is a retired salesman for a brewery. He lives a quiet life with his wife Maureen, until one day he receives a letter from a former colleague, Queenie Hennessy. The letter indicates that Queenie is dying of cancer, and Harold isn't sure how to respond. He finally writes a quick note, shoves it in an envelope, and walks out to the postbox. But inexplicably, he doesn't stop there, deciding to go to the next one, and then the next one, and he just keeps walking. He finally realizes that he is walking to Queenie, across most of Britain, a task he is woefully unprepared for. He keeps calling and sending postcards to Maureen, telling her of his progress, and meets a variety of characters, most of whom assist him in his journey. Maureen, at home, also goes through a change as she deals with her husband's unexpected pilgrimage, looking at her own life and the things she has done and said.
Ultimately, it is a story of their marriage, their struggles and the gulf that has grown between them and the events that are now an opportunity for them to bridge that gulf.
The writing is wonderful. We get a sense of Harold's past as we see his mother "She was young, with a peony-bud mouth and a husband who had seemed a good idea before the war and a bad one after it." We see how he learned at a young age "to appear absent even when present".
As he finds himself walking, he finds he is both revisiting his past and really noticing the world around him. He muses "maybe you saw even more that the land when you got out of the car and used your feet." Harold has more revelations as his journey continues. "He saw that when a person becomes estranged from the things they know, and is a passerby, strange things take on a new significance."
A story of a man's life, his struggle to do the right things, to say the right things, coming from a past where he wasn't taught how to do any of it. This is an amazing book, well worth the read.