ART OF WALKING

Walking is the most basic form of travel. Its gift is movement through a shifting landscape, where what is seen, remembered and storied feeds both real and imagined worlds.

As a child I went camping with my parents and began independent walking at 16. Before I came to Australia, my hiking had grown into rock and mountain climbing in England, Scotland, Wales, the Alps and Canada. I came to Australia when I discovered that my love of walking could be shared.

We, Keith and me, attempted to climb Mulkila as part of an international climbing expedition. At 6517m (21,380ft), Mulkila is the highest peak in the Lahaul-Spiti province of the Himachel Pradesh in the Indian Himalayas.  We didn’t summit, but got to about 20,000 ft, when the pressure of effort and pull of life felt seriously out of balance.

Since then, we have bushwalked, skied and canoed in different parts of Australia. With longer trips for mountain climbing and trekking in New Zealand, Nepal and Bhutan and the US. In recent years, we’ve become hooked on long-distance through hikes in Australia, Europe and Britain. Our first Camino experience was in 2024, walking about 300 kms over three weeks along the Camino del Norte to Santiago de Compostela.