“Writing friends have said, ‘Take trouble for a walk’,” Charlotte Wood says. “Whatever you’re trying to resolve in the book, or whatever. It does work: your mind can just wander.”
Most mornings see the author pacing a loop through the gentle slopes and restored wetlands of Sydney park. “I think they’ve done such a beautiful job,” she tells me. “It was old, poisoned land, basically.” But, though Wood is emphatic about the importance of staying close to nature, her walks are not so much about the park itself. They fall somewhere between routine and ritual, a buffer of personal order when the world is pushing in.
