Read in 2020 - 16: Thinking On My Feet

Thinking On My Feet

Kate Humble

One of my blogging friends (some of you know his blog quite well) and I share a love of walking. We walk every chance we get, we write about our walks on our blogs and show pictures of them. It is therefore hardly surprising that he enjoyed "Thinking On My Feet" and posted this review back in March.

I commented on the review, believing it was my kind of book. And I was right!

It was the kind of book you look forward to returning to every night before going to sleep. It was the kind of book you are torn between reading on, and pacing it so that it lasts longer. It was the kind of book that made me smile, nod, and kept me engaged throughout.

The book is neatly set up like a diary, starting on January 1st and covering a whole year's worth of walks, hikes and runs. Many are close to home, some are much further afield. Some are strenuous, others gentle; there are short and long walks and hikes (one lasts for nine days). The places, the weather and the climate are just as varied; from New York City to Kenya, from fields and woodland behind the farm in Wales were the author lives to a carribean island; she encounters anything from snow to drenching rain to friendly sunshine and tropical heat.

For many of the walks, Kate is alone with just her dogs; others are with her husband, a friend, a small group of friends or someone she is meeting in the line of her work.

No matter what, though, all those walks have in common that there is something liberating about them; as the subtitle of the book says, the small joy of putting one foot in front of another.

This quote from the end of the preamble sums it up nicely:

Walking is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own two feet, you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.

Looking back at the few books I have read so far this year, I am tempted to say this is my favourite read of 2020. Of course, there have been other great books that stand out; the Leonardo da Vinci biography comes to mind as well as the novel about the Brontes. But Kate Humble's thoughts about walking are so similar to my own that it is a very special book for me. I can imagine picking it up again in a few years, reading it over the course of a year like a diary.

Until reading this book, I didn't know anything about Kate Humble. If you want to learn more about her and her work, you can find her on wikipedia and at www.katehumble.com.

Thank you, Neil, for this wonderful book!