Sauntering – Part 3
From “The Spirit of Sauntering; Thoreau on the Art of
Walking and the Perils of a Sedentary Lifestyle”, by Maria Popova:
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.
Of course, lest we forget, Thoreau was able to saunter
through the woods and over the hills and fields in no small part thanks to
support from his mom and sister, who fetched him fresh-baked donuts as he
renounced civilization. In fact, he makes a sweetly compassionate aside, given
the era he was writing in, about women’s historical lack of mobility:
How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than
men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do
not stand it at all.
Thoreau is careful to point out that the walking he extols
has nothing to do with transportational utility or physical exercise — rather
it is a spiritual endeavor undertaken for its own sake:
The 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!
To engage in this kind of walking, Thoreau argues, we ought
to reconnect with our wild nature:
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?
Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure —
as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw.
Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest.
All good things are wild and free.
But his most prescient point has to do with the idea that
sauntering — like any soul-nourishing activity — should be approached with a
mindset of presence rather than productivity. To think that a man who
lived in a forest cabin in the middle of the 19th century might have such extraordinary
insight into our toxic modern cult of busyness is hard to imagine, and yet he
captures the idea that “busy is a decision” with astounding elegance:
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?
May the Source be with you!
5 KM
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