It’s May and I’m descending a mountain in the Glen Shiel area of the Highlands. It’s a place I know well and hill I’ve climbed several times only an hour’s drive from my home in the Highland capital of Inverness. Those burdened by a desire to catalogue everything and know which hill it is will want to know if it’s a Munro and which route I went up. Frankly I don’t know and I don’t care. Let’s just say if you drive over to the glen from the west it’s the first hill you come to on the right and I went up the easiest way. It has a name but I can’t remember it.

My total disregard for the niceties of geography has come from a realisation it took me along time to make, it really doesn’t matter. The fact is I was out on a hill. I wasn’t sat in a chair working, as I am right now. My legs were aching, my heart was pumping and my mind was free from worry. The hills do that. Somehow there’s a connection between aching legs and feeling good about yourself.

You can’t sweat and worry at the same time.

My big news is that my book Sky Dance, a novel about two hill walkers who decide to stand up to the establishment is now available to pre-order.  Limited edition hard back copies are available as unique gifts all these copies are signed and there will only ever be 250 produced.  Get your order in by clicking HERE

A lot of writers have made the same connection and I thought I’d take a look at some of the best books I’ve found about how getting out and simply walking can heal you. One new book that’s really worth a read is Sarah Jane Douglas’ book Just Another Mountain.

In 1997, at the age of 24, Sarah lost her mother to breast cancer. Alone and adrift in the world, she very nearly gave up hope – but she’d made a promise to her mother that she would keep going no matter what. So she turned to the beautiful, dangerous, forbidding mountains of her native Scotland.
By walking in her mother’s footsteps, she learns to accept her own troubled past, finding the strength to overcome her grief – and, ultimately, to carry on in the face of her own diagnosis twenty years later.
Searingly honest and utterly relatable, bringing the exhilarating triumphs and challenges of mountain walking to life with wit, charm and raw candour, Just Another Mountain is a story of hope and redemption, of a mother and a daughter, and of how we can learn both to live and to love. Sometimes, all you can do is put one foot in front of the other and just keep walking.

As Sarah Jane says.
“Loads of people get horrible diagnoses all the time so really it isn’t anything special or extraordinary that I found myself with membership to the cancer club. To be honest, I’d been expecting it, but the news was still received like a swift kick to the balls. For me, the hardest thing to get my head around was the fact that twenty years earlier I’d held my own mum’s hand when breast cancer stole her life from mine. It had taken me most of my adulthood to recover from her loss … Faced with my diagnosis, there was only one thing I could do, the thing I’d come to rely on so much these last few years. I had to put one foot in front of the other, and just keep walking. ”

I can understand something of Sarah Jane’s experience as my father died just over three years ago. He was in his 90th year. He had been healthy for all those years and had achieved his ambition of remaining in his home and living independently until the last few weeks of his life. His death was by no means a tragedy rather it was a triumph but still I felt his loss acutely and I too turned to the remote hills to find some consolation, you can read more about my experiences in my previous blog Requiem in Sutherland.

Another book about walking I really enjoyed was Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild.

She was only 26 when her mother died and thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America and to do it alone. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise – a promise of piecing together a life that lay shattered at her feet.

In the book she talks about going to equip herself for this huge undertaking of walking the Pacific Crest Trail. She knew nothing about long-distance walking and so the store she went to took the opportunity to sell her loads of useless expensive gear that she was only able to shed with the help of fellow walkers weeks into the trail. After losing most of her toenails she just struggled on and eventually found a kind of peace that she had not previously experienced.

I don’t think you have to walk over a thousand miles, as Cheryl did, you can just go for a walk in the park and you’ll feel better. To me it’s not just the exercise it’s the contact with nature.
Another great walking book is Keith Foskett’s High and Low where he found walking helped him to overcome depression.

An amusing and life-affirming travel memoir, concluding with tips for managing depressive episodes.
Keith Foskett refused to let his dark mood define his limitations. Unknowingly suffering with depression, he took to hiking the wilds of Scotland to face the inner demons that threatened to gnaw him to the bone. From the craggy Highlands of the Cape Wrath Trail and West Highland Way, to the canals criss-crossing the low country, 600 miles of unforgiving hiking terrain called his name.

Keith repositioned his compass to what really matters in life. As laughter became his travelling companion, he discovered that when dealing with emotional baggage, it’s best to pack light. Pushing his mind and body past breaking point, his journey could set a brave new course for coping with depression.
Battling ferocious weather, the ubiquitous Scottish midge, strange-sounding local delicacies and substandard TV sets, this is one man’s battle to conquer the wilds of Scotland, and his own psychological demons.

This blog about big walks helping people to reaffirm their lives wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Bill Bryson’s book Walk in the Woods. Bryson and his friend attempt to tackle the PCT. They are both unfit and unprepared. Bryson decide to make the walk when he discovered that the footpath only a few hundred yards from his home was the great PCT. As they walk Bryson’s friend battles his alcoholism and they encounter bears, rattlesnakes ferocious torrents along the way. Bryson’s humour is never far away and this is an entertaining and inspiring read. There is even a film if you’d rather see Robert Redford plodding through the woods than read Bryson’s account. I enjoyed the film despite the fact that both hikers spend the entire film with their walking poles neatly strapped to their packs never once thinking to use them as walking aids preferring them to be dead weight.

But who am I to argue with Robert Redford.