Collecting snails
Walk across the U.K., any way you like
Mountains have never been The Thing that draws me into the outdoors. Whenever I see t-shirts or posters that invoke that old John Muir chestnut about how mountains are calling—and how we must answer the call—I know that I’m more likely to let the phone ring. If you’ve ever experienced the wonder of a ribbon-like dirt path leading through a ferny glen, the thrill of stepping onto a bog bridge that bobs in the peat muck, or a hidden path that snakes between buildings in a commercial area of town, you know that hauling ass to the summits is far from the only doorway to Nirvana.
And yet, so much of our outdoor recreation culture is shaped by the idea that scaling the mountains and trekking across the most remote and superlatively beautiful lands are the aspirations that all hikers should build toward. There’s a kind of lichen-crusted machismo fueling this idea, and it’s vocalized through phrases like “peak bagging” or terms that underscore individualistic strength and accomplishment. When was the last time you heard someone talk about "visiting a mountain” as opposed to “climbing” or “conquering” a mountain? I’m not saying that flexing in the mirror is inherently wrong when it comes to hiking and outdoor adventuring. But these days, it feels like a lot of us who enjoy and promote outdoor recreation are doing a little too much flexing. And the reason why this concerns me is because it can have an indirect gatekeeping effect.
Imagine if cooking culture—which has grown and diversified so much over these last few decades—primarily trained the spotlight on dishes that require a lot of culinary muscle, like Beef Wellington or Fugu sashimi. Consider the implication that easier or more cost-effective dishes such as coconut milk veggie curry yielded lesser kinds of gratification and skill. Would you cook, if this were the culture? I probably wouldn’t.
But we can have it both ways. We can celebrate recreational accomplishments of all shapes and sizes; recognizing their differences without propagating a hierarchy of achievements. This is how cooking culture has evolved, and this week, I would like to introduce you to a remarkable grassroots initiative that offers a glimpse of what a similar evolution might look like in outdoor recreation. It’s an initiative that makes a gargantuan concept—walking across an entire country!—feel improbably accessible, inclusive, and refreshingly free of the strongman vibes. And it’s known as Slow Ways.
