Globetrotting: Writers Walk the World

Fifty writers recount their journeys by foot in this delightful compendium from anthologist Minshull (Where My Feet Fall). Spanning 500 years and seven continents, the contributors range from Christopher Columbus, who ventures through the Bahamian jungle in 1492, rhapsodizing over unfamiliar vegetation and “flocks of parrots conceal[ing] the sun,” to Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, who captures how walking can make the familiar beautifully strange (“The very ground on which the moonlight falls is my landed property, but the moonlight tells me that... my territory is an illusion”). Elsewhere, historian Sarah H. Bradford highlights the spiritual resonances of traveling by foot, writing how Harriet Tubman ferried slaves to freedom “by naive cunning or by God given wisdom,” ever “conscious of an invisible pillar of cloud by day, and fire by night, under the guidance of which she journeyed or rested.” While selections favor white male explorers—including Charles Darwin, René Caillié, and Roald Amundsen—Minshull takes care to feature excerpts from Palestinian human rights activist Raja Shehadeh, who writes of a “liberating” trek through the hills of A’yn Qenya, Palestine, two years after Israeli soldiers “[came] through these hills as conquerors,” and novelist Helen Garner, who finds meaning and beauty in a daily stroll through her “undistinguished and beloved Melbourne suburb.” Hikers, explorers, and those seeking contemplative journeys will be inspired. (Apr.)