From Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking” published in The Atlantic Monthly, June 1862.
“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…”
“He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.”
“I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that -sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.”
“My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility.”
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
If you are not one who walks, perhaps you should become one!
Mitakuye Oyasin