If you feel like you’ve lost your way, amid the mountain narrative, Kerri Andrews’ Pathfinding: On Walking, Motherhood and Freedom may help you to place yourself once again.
In Pathfinding, Kerri Andrews takes us on a journey through the quagmire of post-natal depression as she finds her way back into the mountains – starting with short walks in the woods with friends as she processes new priorities – and building to her longheld ambition of walking the West Highland Way.
Main image: Black Rock Cottage sits before Buachaille Etive Mòr, just off the West Highland Way | Credit: Shutterstock
From a practical standpoint, I found the book’s account of the West Highland Way – a trail on many backpackers’ radars which, at an average of six to seven days’ walk, still evades most of us – particularly insightful. Andrews faces the difficulties of this oft-underestimated trek head on.
In the Gypsy Glen at Peebles. Credit: Joanna Coates
Indeed, honesty is a theme that meanders through Andrew’s work. Her nature writing is evocative and poetic but remains rooted in reality. She admits lacking the necessary vocabulary to adequately describe the vibrancy of that new Spring green. Yet, Andrews documents the most minute details of the human experience outdoors right down to the way in which her pupils dilate and contract in dappled woodland light.
It is a short book – a nod, I imagine, to the precious yet limited free time of the mothers among her readership – but it packs in much beauty, from Lakeland to the Highlands and the Southern Uplands.
As an academic and author of Wanderings: A history of women walking (2020), we’d expect Andrews to invite other voices into the narrative. True to form, Pathfinding tells the oft-neglected stories of other ‘mother-walkers’ through time, from Mary Wollstonecraft and Ellen Weeton to Kate Chopin.
On the ridge at Beinn a’Bheithir. Credit: Ewan Tait
An admission now: I am not a mother and therefore, am in no position to ‘review’ Andrews’ words. What I will say, as someone with the biological potential of childbearing, is this. In Pathfinding, I have found many an answer to (perhaps prying) questions about childbearing and rearing I have asked my own friends, my own mother, and received replies shrouded in half-truths imposed on women by a society that breeds shame. In that sense, I feel Andrews has given a gift; a path to more open dialogue.
However, you do not need to identify as a woman, mother, caregiver, or guardian to enjoy Pathfinding. Andrews’ words shimmer off the page most viscerally in chapters that tackle emotions which any walker will know: fear, ambition and anger. A compelling account of trail temper – during which Andrews describes ‘walking the anger off’ and feeling the catharsis as fury slowly, slowly seeps into the ground through her stomping boots – caused me to laugh out loud in relieved recognition.
Ultimately, this is a book about a love of walking – in high places of wanderlust, lowlands to allow for healing, or simply for the joy of getting outside. It holds space for ego, turmoil, unconditional love, marital conflict, the peaks and troughs of the human psyche and, above all, our spectacular landscape.
If you feel like you’ve lost your way, amid the mountain narrative, Pathfinding may help you to place yourself once again.
Pathfinding: On Walking, Motherhood and Freedom is published by Elliott & Thompson (hardback, £16.99).
When contributors to The Great Outdoors aren’t out walking, some like to relax with a good book. Read their outdoor book reviews and discover your next adventurous bedtime story.
