Gripped

Waymaking

Edited by Helen Mort, Claire Carter, Heather Dawe and Camilla Barnard Vertebrate Press

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There’s a sense that we only really know who we are when we’ve left the confines of urban life, often when we feel the weight of a pack on our backs or the tiredness of miles on our legs. Is there a common female experience to be claimed by the prose, poetry, and visual art in Waymaking? No, say the editors. Are there voices to be read that capture the diversity of women’s experience­rs in the mountains? Yes. They’ve given us an anthology with high production values to make their case.

If there’s a message to all of us that seek fulfilment in outdoor adventure, it’s to push towards the less obvious. Put on your headlamp and head out to the crag when others are heading in. Avoid bucket-list items by seeing them as the industrial­ization of the natural world that they are. Don’t fear solitude all that much – after all, you may forget about the role that you’ve assigned yourself. Waymaking has a literary aesthetic that puts it closer to travel writing than straight-up climbing narratives. There’s a clear sense that there’s always some sort of inner journey involved as we head out into the outdoor unknown. A yet more ambitious volume would include accounts from a much more global perspectiv­e, which would extend the spirit of diversity.—tom Valis

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