Country lines — Ridgeline issue 002

I’m enjoying Craig Mod’s new weekly newsletter on walking, Ridgeline.

Two favourite bits from the latest issue (emphasis mine):

Rewalking grounds the walker, allows the walker more noticing. I’ve done bits of the Kumano a half-dozen times now. But to call them the same route is a disservice to nature — they’re never the same (and I don’t mean in the metaphysical sense), certainly season by season, but also year by year.

The path shifts. Not a lot, just enough to be new. But not new enough to need to ask. And so slowly, it becomes a tiny country of your own.

I started reading Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch last night. Mead celebrates how a book, through reading and rereading, can become a part of us. Mod’s point—one I share, and practice through a series of familiar walking routes—is that walking and rewalking a particular path can do the same for us as reading and rereading a book.

(Choosing two favourite bits from such a short newsletter means that basically all of it is my favourite—this is true and I have no regrets. If you’re interested, check out the biographical issue 001 and consider subscribing.)