In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors

(Hardback)

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A trail-blazing book about women's fights to access the great outdoors - and a very personal book about how running through the landscape helped the author in her journey from bereavement back to a sense of belonging A trail-blazing book about women's fights to access the great outdoors - and a very personal book about how running through the landscape helped the author in her journey from bereavement back to a sense of belonging 'Heartfelt, passionate, infuriating and often devastating, this book will inspire you to fight for your right to tread your own path' CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ, author of Invisible Women When Rachel loses five family members in five months, grief magnifies other absences. Running across moors and mountains used to help her feel at home in her body and the world, but now she becomes painfully aware of her inability to run without being cat-called or followed by strange men, or to walk alone at night without fear. Her eyes are opened to injustices facing women in sport, from men who push her off paths during races, to male bias in competition regulations, kit and media coverage. The outdoors becomes a place of danger, sharpening her sense of the grief women experience - every day, everywhere - for lack of freedom. Rachel goes in search of a new family- the foremothers who blazed a trail at the dawn of outdoor sport. She discovers Lizzie Le Blond, a courageous Anglo-Irishwoman who scaled the Alps in woollen skirts, photographed fearless women climbing, skating and tobogganing at breakneck speeds, and founded the Ladies' Alpine Club, defying men who wanted the mountains to themselves. Yet after such groundbreaking progress in the late 1800s, a backlash drove women out of sports and public space. Are we now living through a similar reversal in women's rights or an era of unprecedented liberty Telling Lizzie's story alongside her own, Rachel runs her way from bereavement to belonging, in a world that feels hostile to women. On the way she's inspired by the tenacious women, past and present, who insist that breaking boundaries outdoors is, and always has been, in her nature.

Reviews

[A] deeply impressive, humane synthesis of scholarship, memoir and rallying cry for women and girls to exercise their right to a place in the world -- Alex Clark * Guardian *Book of the Day* *
Heartfelt, passionate, infuriating and often devastating, this book will inspire you to fight for your right to tread your own path * CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ, author of Invisible Women *
Rachel Hewitt's writing is always elegant, fierce, intelligent and truthful. No one writes as well as she does about endurance - and survival * HELEN LEWIS, author of Difficult Women *
A book of courage, grief, anger, wisdom and fortitude. It demands our attention * HERMIONE LEE, author of Virginia Woolf *
An urgent, powerful, inspiring book about women making a space for themselves in the macho world of outdoor pursuits-one that reflects on what we risk and what we gain by turning our faces to the wind * CAL FLYN, author of Islands of Abandonment *
Insightful, compelling, and rightfully outraged, In Her Nature brilliantly reclaims the hidden histories and contemporary experiences of women running, hiking, climbing, and taking up space in the world. An essential read, as well as a moving, revealing, and empowering one * JON MCGREGOR, author of Reservoir 13 *

Author Bio

Rachel Hewitt is a writer and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her first book, the best-selling MAP OF A NATION- A BIOGRAPHY OF THE ORDNANCE SURVEY (2010), won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction. She was awarded a Gladstone's Library Political Writing Residency for her second book, A REVOLUTION OF FEELING- THE DECADE THAT FORGED THE MODERN MIND (2017). Rachel is Director of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts and received the prestigious work-in-progress prize, the Eccles British Library Writer's Award, for IN HER NATURE. She loves trail-running and was 1st Female in the Punk Panther Ultra Series in 2020 and 3rd Female in the Hardmoors Marathon Series in 2019. Her longest run to date was the Punk Panther Dales Way Challenge (c. 83 miles) in August 2021. She lives in Yorkshire.