Very few people walk. I mean
really walk. I have a boyfriend who walks. I think of him as a serious walker. But up until I met him, I’d never known anyone else who walks as much as I do.
So now we walk together. And we have a few unspoken guidelines:
1. If our destination is less than 5 miles from home (one way), we walk.
2. If we have no destination, we walk.
3. If it’s a Saturday or a Sunday, we always walk. As long as…
a. we can arrive within the day.
b. (though it may take us half the day to get there)…
c. but then, we won’t be in any hurry to get back. Worth it, indeed!
4. Most of all, we enjoy our walking journeys!
Sometimes the journey is a dinner party. Though never at my place because I don’t cook. Sometimes I think about dead people at dinner parties. What dead people would I invite to a dinner party if I cooked and hosted one?
I’d definitely invite Henry David Thoreau. He was a serious walker and a man after my own heart.
Coincidently, here’s Henry David Thoreau on
Walking. (This is seriously fantastic!)
Oh, Henry!
"I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least...sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements....When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them—as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon—I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour, or four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,—I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together....
...[T]he walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours—as the Swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumbbells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."...
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? ...Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is—I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?...
Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead....
However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as if they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There is the Old Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now, me-thinks, unless that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the bolder to speak of it here, because I presume that there are one or two such roads in every town....
At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only—when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the PUBLIC road, and walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come...."
Read the full essay over at
This Green Blog.
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