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Wallace Heim writes, with thanks to Dee Heddon
What book would you take for a walk…?
In 1794, John Hucks and Samuel Taylor Coleridge walked to North Wales. Hucks carried with him the poems of Thomas Churchyard.
In 1802, Coleridge walked through Cumberland, carrying with him ‘a shirt, a cravat, two pairs of stockings, tea, sugar, pens and paper, his night-cap, and a book of German poetry wrapped in green oilskin.’ He apparently read the Book of Revelations in Buttermere.
In 1818, John Keats travelled the Lake District and up to Scotland with his friend Charles Brown. Keats’ carried Dante’s Divine Comedy, Brown the works of John Milton.
In 2012, during August and September, Dee Heddon and Misha Myers are joining the Sideways Festival, walking from the west to the east of Belgium. For the length of the walk, they will carry a walking library – rucksacks filled with books that are good to take on a walk. The library will support a peripatetic reading and writing group.
Dee and Misha are in the process of building the library. So far, they will be carrying Werner Herzog’s Of Walking in Ice, Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain, Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost and more.
They welcome suggestions of books to take on a walk, including details of books taken on a walk by illustrious walkers/writers.
Email suggestions to Dee Heddon.
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ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.The Directory has been live since 2000.