A review by emilyinherhead
Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abbs

adventurous informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

In Windswept, Annabel Abbs writes about several walking women, some of whom were famous for other reasons (like Georgia O’Keeffe, or Daphne du Maurier), but all of whom have been excluded from the history of hiking and wilderness exploration. Abbs retraces these women’s steps as faithfully as possible, walking beside rivers, up mountains, and through villages, while attempting to feel what they might have felt as they navigated similar routes many years ago. She, like them, is working through issues in her own life as she walks, one of which is figuring out what it will mean and who she will be when all of her children have grown up and left home.

The truth is, being on one’s own is not the same as being alone, or being lonely. Being on one’s own is a confronting of oneself. And if we don’t confront ourselves, how do we stop clinging to the habits of our past? How do we change, progress, develop? How do we become? (122)

Reading this book on the heels of Ben Shattuck’s Six Walks was an interesting experience, as Six Walks focuses on Thoreau, a famous white male author whose walking was well-documented and well-known. In contrast, Abbs writes extensively about women who have been left out of this sort of narrative, women who walked despite lacking the freedom, safety, and privilege afforded to someone like Thoreau on account of his gender.

Like Shattuck, though, Abbs does a beautiful and seamless job of integrating her own personal experiences and musings with the histories and writings of the trailblazers she is following. Her descriptions of scenery and atmosphere are evocative and poetic. I felt like I was there too, breathing in the fresh air, feeling it wash my mind and body clean. 

There’s something about walking in green space that enables us to exist in the moment in a way nothing else does. Not even meditation. The combination of movement and landscape affects our brain in extraordinary ways. Not only do we become less anxious, less prone to brooding, less vulnerable to negative emotions, but we also gain an enhanced ability to focus on what’s around us. Psychologists call this attention: we are less distracted, better able to exist in the here and now. (33)

This book taught me a lot about a few writers and artists I was already familiar with, and made me want to look up the work of others that were new to me. It also really inspired me to go for a hike, as soon as possible.