When Kathryn Aalto’s husband accepted a position at the University of Exeter in Devon, England, the family, which included three young children, left the US to embark on a grand adventure overseas. On their second day in England, Aalto discovered a book on public footpaths.
“Walking there is very different than walking here,” Aalto told the Taft community during Morning Meeting. “I can walk from my house in Exeter all the way up to the Hebrides, in Scotland, just on these public footpaths. Before the jet lag had worn off we had clocked in about 20 miles on these footpaths.”
At the same time, Aalto was reading classic stories to her children, including A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. And she began to wonder, is there truly a Hundred Acre Wood, like the one Milne wrote about? And if there is, can we walk there?
The answer lies in Aalto’s New York Times bestselling The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood.
Kathryn Aalto is a landscape designer, historian, lecturer, and nonfiction writer. For the past twenty-five years, her focus has been on places where nature and culture intersect: teaching literature of nature and place, designing gardens, and writing about the natural world. As a writer, she has a special interest in the geography of childhood and literary landscapes.