My dual-timeline novel, Smoke on the Wind, is set in the Scottish Highlands where two women walk the same long path in separate times, each with her son, each carrying the extra weight of past trauma and fear of her future. One is running from a murder accusation; one is running from secrets. Neither expects to find they are connected in a way that defies logic but makes all the difference.
Walking is something that I never gave much thought to until I read the books listed below, which inspired me to lace up my shoes and get outside. In each, I came to learn that walking is a celebration of being alive and connected to the world, on our own terms. Walking links us to people who walked the same paths before us and who will come after us. For women, walking can even be an act of defiance and liberation. Although going for a long walk seems so simple, it can be life-changing.
I chose to set my novel on my favorite long-distance trail, Scotland’s West Highland Way, to illustrate this point and to inspire a love of walking in others. Just as a juicy plot of a novel pulls readers to turn the page, the promise of stunning scenery or a place of historical importance around the next bend or in the next town pulls a walker forward and drowns out all soreness and fatigue.
Here are five books by women and about women who have walked hundreds (or thousands) of miles and whose stories inspired my own walking obsession to the point that I had to set my latest novel on a long-distance trail. I hope they inspire you, too.
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Wild was the first account I’d ever read of a woman hiking solo on a long-distance trail, the Pacific Crest Trail. Until this book, I didn’t even know such a thing was possible. Wild answered logistical questions about walking for months and safety questions about hiking solo, and it inspired me to get out there and see more of this amazing world we live in that can only be reached on foot. Even more, it taught me that I don’t have to wait around for anyone else to go with me.
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Like Wild, The Salt Path is a memoir of a woman walking a long-distance trail. This time, Raynor and her husband, Moth, are walking the South West Coast Path in England. They are homeless, and Moth has a degenerative disease that has no treatment or hope for recovery. Winn’s descriptions of the beauty of the coast, the ugliness and preciousness of humans, and the sweetness of fighting for hope touched me deeply and inspired me to pay attention to the details around me, and to listen more to the people with me on the walk of life. I’d also recommend both of Winn’s subsequent books, The Wild Silence and Landlines.
Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews
This book really brings home the fact that the majority of writing about walking is about men walking, and yet women have always been there, walking and thinking and writing about it. In sharing the stories of women walkers in the last 300 years, Andrews reminds us that walking can be an ultimate act of defiance against those who are working to suppress us, and walking can be the thing that leads us to find ourselves.
Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abbs-Streets
In Windswept, we follow Abbs as she recovers from a head injury and vows to never again take for granted her ability to walk. She looks at all the writing about walking and wonders where the women were. Were they stuck at home cooking and child-rearing to enable their men to go out and explore the world and write about it? Interwoven with her own story are the stories of important women in history who defied expectations and walked for inspiration, consolation and liberation, and they walked with “infinitely more bravery, audacity and complexity than their famous male counterparts.”
Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 by Dorothy Wordsworth
Although her brother William was famous for his writing and poetry, Dorothy Wordsworth was just as talented and interested in the world around her. Any publishing aspirations she might have had, however, were limited by her gender. This book is a reprint of the journal she kept while traveling with her brother through Scotland, by pony cart but also on foot. She unflinchingly records what she sees and the people she meets, in a way that brings everything to life. Her observations are a perfect demonstration of the joys of slow travel: meeting interesting people, seeing the tiniest details that faster travel misses, and immersing all five senses in a place.
