Wilderness Mum

Kate Barron finds ways to balance her family’s deep love of adventure with her toddler’s evolving needs

When I last spoke to JUNO, I was navigating first-time motherhood with my baby boy while walking the UK coastline, living outdoors and raising funds for the veterans’ charity SSAFA. I had met my partner, Chris Lewis, nearly two and a half years earlier at the bottom of a cliff on the north-west tip of Scotland in 2020, where he was three years into what would become a six-year walk around the entire UK coastline. He had just returned from Shetland, having spent the first lockdown marooned on the uninhabited island of Hildasay with his adopted dog, Jet. Three months later, having met only twice, I took a leap of faith and left my former life and decade-long career behind, to join him on the journey.

I discovered I was pregnant while walking down the Yorkshire coast. By this point, the journey had grown beyond an adventure. Living outdoors in that elemental, liminal space where land meets sea, working hard each day to meet our basic needs, had become a way of life, one that profoundly shaped me and the mother I would become. Rooted in simplicity, purpose, and deep connection with ourselves, each other, and nature, it brought such fulfilment and meaning to my life. Living with no pressure, structure, or routine beyond the rhythms of Mother Nature, weather, sun and tide, and the steady plod of our feet through ever-changing landscapes, filled each day with awe, beauty and unexpected surprises.

I knew instinctively that this was how I wanted to bring my son into the world, and more importantly, how I wanted to raise him.