Monday, April 2, 2012

Thoreau, the Art of Walking

Dan by paynehollow
Dan, a photo by paynehollow on Flickr.

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil - to regard man an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society...

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks - who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under the pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander...

Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense will mean having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering...

6 comments:

John Farrier said...

That kind of walking takes time, which is the hard part.

Dan Trabue said...

It is true, we are but faint hearted crusaders, even the walkers, now-a-days, who undertake no persevering never ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours and come round again at evening to the old hearth side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps.

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk.

Alan said...

Ah, Thoreau. I've never seen what people admire about that lazy tax dodger and scofflaw.

Dan Trabue said...

If naught else, my good man, there is the sheer poetry of his words.

Alan said...

10 pages about hoeing beans? Feh. ;)

Alan said...

Seriously though, during a month long class trip in Concord for a class on transcendentalist literature, I spent an evening trespassing on a frozen Walden Pond late at night during a January full moon, and got to hear the ice boom, as he writes about.

I figured Thoreau would be happy that I was trespassing after the park had closed.

I still suspect he was a lazy tax dodger and scofflaw and that he'd probably be happy with that estimate too. :)