The Hard Way

For the last three years or so, I’ve been reading books by women writers, particularly non-fiction, rather than male ones, in order to have a more rounded perspective on the world. Alice Roberts rather than Dan Snow. Olivia Laing rather than Charlie Porter. Bettany Hughes rather than Michael Woods. The Hard Way is the latest in a fresh vein of women in the wild but the first to place it into the rude context that women endure, that a woman’s role in society is private and indoors as opposed to that of a man who can be public and outdoors. As an obvious example, Walker explores how women’s cooking is inside, in the kitchen, but men take charge of the barbecue because it”s outdoors and therefore men’s work.

Walker talks about safety work, how a woman needs to protect herself if she’s about to beard the wild outdoors, the natural world, the unknown, in ways that men (read that as cis, white men) don’t. On her walks along ancient roads, she’s stopped twice by policemen in cars, as if a woman on her own out walking in the countryside in broad daylight is against social norm. She also illustrates what is left behind by male writers who write about their walking, namely their spouses, their children, their humdrum daily cares. Not one male writer whom she discusses acknowledges that they are only free to gallivant across the bucolic English countryside because there is a woman keeping the home fires burning, and most of them unwillingly so.

Walker also includes women who walked and wrote about their walking, and I cannot wait to get to Walker’s spiritual ancestors. Walker herself is a fantastically visceral and honest writer: she sets off on her first walk in an attempt to regain her younger fearlessness, but she hits her own walls and uncertainties. God knows I often don’t want to go out running when the weather turns for the worst, and although I can’t imagine how Walker feels as a woman simply wanting to walk in a world that daunts that desire, she makes it abundantly clear that it’s difficult and complicated and that there are no simple answers.

Except one: from her frustrations she has started Make Space For Girls, and that’s another story to be told.

As for The Hard Way, Walker’s almost alchemical book distils history, feminism, walking, the natural world and her fierce love for the outdoors into a journey of its own, that almost, but not quite, could be an alternative to the real thing.

A thumping good four and a half stars, rounded up to five.

In this book, Susannah Walker takes us on the walks to nature’s pathways, patriarchy’s gatekeeping, a journey in time, and when doing so, she encourages us to do our own walking.

Walking is political. There is nothing bad about voluntary walking.
If you like books that get across any message or information with a good and genuine narrative, this is lovely.

The writing style is good too. 4/5