Pathfinding

The desire to walk is something that defines us as human beings. Walking brings not only joy and connection but freedom: the freedom to decide when and where to put one foot in front of the other; the freedom to rely solely on ourselves and our bodies. But what happens to this freedom when we become mothers?

In the wake of having her own children, walker and writer Kerri Andrews determines to undertake a series of journeys on foot to explore the complex interconnections that have long existed between motherhood and walking. Along each path, she explores the stories of long-neglected historical mother-walkers, enmeshing our lives with theirs. On the eighteenth-century cliffs of Norway and Sweden we meet Mary Wollstonecraft, striding out as she contemplates the fate awaiting her infant daughter in a misogynistic society. We join Ellen Weeton in the patriarchal nineteenth-century, walking miles upon miles for a slim chance to see the daughter from whom she has been unwillingly and cruelly separated. And we walk alongside Kate Chopin and the heroines of her novels at the start of the twentieth century as they try to step into new, less restrictive, lives.

There have been countless mothers since who have found solace or escape in walking, and some of them join Kerri as she traverses urban, rural and increasingly mountainous landscapes. Together, they explore the complicated ground of motherhood today – our post-partum bodies and minds, our ambition, rage and hope – crisscrossing the book with new and future paths into mother-becoming.

Melding history, landscape writing and memoir, Pathfinding brings to light stories of walking and motherhood that have long been neglected or hidden away. Here are our fore-mothers who once pursued power and pleasure through their feet; here is an invitation to mothers today to claim that same liberation for ourselves.