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    Walking
    Walking
    Walking
    Ebook65 pages53 minutes

    Walking

    By Henry David Thoreau

    4/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1970
    Author

    Henry David Thoreau

    Henry Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, and attended Concord Academy and Harvard. After a short time spent as a teacher, he worked as a surveyor and a handyman, sometimes employed by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Between 1845 and 1847 Thoreau lived in a house he had made himself on Emerson's property near to Walden Pond. During this period he completed A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and wrote the first draft of Walden, the book that is generally judged to be his masterpiece. He died of tuberculosis in 1862, and much of his writing was published posthumously.

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    Reviews for Walking

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      This was my second reading of "Walking" and, this time, I chose to read it in nature. That really made all the difference. I found myself hating it this last fall when I read it in the confines of my tiny little room. Surrounding myself in nature and allowing myself to annotate in the margins made me feel like Thoreau and I were on our own walk, having a conversation. Just like any long conversation there were moments I began to zone out and think about other things but overall it is a wonderful read and an experience I will probably have again.
    • 4/5
      Indeholder "Ole Jacobsen: Indledning", "Om at vandre", "En vintervandring"."Ole Jacobsen: Indledning" handler om ???"Om at vandre" handler om ???"En vintervandring" handler om ???
    • 4/5
      An absolutely elegant and beautiful piece of writing. Thoreau soars and astounds with his mesmerizing prose that touches on many different themes seamlessly, yet inclusively-- privately. This is not one to be mixed.Recommended.
    • 5/5
      Best thing he ever wrote; probably the greatest essay by any of the Transcendentalists. Its greatest paragraph: "My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy."
    • 5/5
      This book is a little gem. It's short, and the writing is lyrical. Clearly, if Thoreau does not inspire you to love nature with this masterpiece, nothing will.
    • 4/5
      Thoreau wrote this essay as a speech, one that he gave a number of times. The piece was published in the Atlantic magazine following his death in 1962. Over the years, I’ve read and enjoyed it several times. Nowadays, most of my walking is around the streets and through a cemetery of a small town in northern California, and not in the woods of my native Vermont. I love the way walking allows and stimulates your mind to wander much farther than your feet. With this reading, I found myself more critical of his language and focus. Thoreau writes about absolute freedom and wilderness, and writes much about land ownership. The language of the period, his historical tangents, along with his focus, simply didn’t feel right or of interest to me at this time. Thinking about my reading experience as I was going through it was very curious, but never a good sign. My concentration or engagement with Thoreau’s words was too distant. I’m afraid if anyone was looking for a structured review of Thoreau’s essay, I’ve got nothing to offer at this time. It’s another example of a reading experience being about where your mind is at the time, and not just the power of the words on the page. Some day, I may come back to Walking and have an entirely different experience, one can never know.
    • 5/5
      I obtained this book or essay from the library as an e-book since it couldn’t provide me with a physical book, or a real book, as I call it.When I’d printed it out it proved to have no page numbers and unfortunately I couldn’t find out the proper order of the pages so I had to read the book haphazardly; but this did not detract from my appreciation of it.The book was published back in 1862 and I found the wonderful, rich elegance of the writing so refreshing.Thoreau was a cultured man, as writers of those days were so he quotes other illustrious authors, also in Latin.The book deals with the art of writing, Nature, Freedom and Wildness. Thoreau refers to “saunterers”; in the Middle Ages those who walked to the Holy Land were referred to as “Sainte-Terrers”, saunterers or Holy-Landers; though he explains that “saunterer” could also have been derived from the phrase “sans terre”, without land or home, or having no particular home.He prefers the first derivation, however, since “every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth, and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels”.He states: “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.”(Sadly, one of the drawbacks of writers from former centuries is the assumption that only one gender exists, the male gender. One would think that women don’t ever take walks and don’t even exist. Luckily, things are changing now!)Thoreau informs us that he can easily walk any number of miles without going by any house or crossing a road, but sometimes he finds that his body is in the woods but he is “thinking of something out of the woods”.He says cutting down the forest deforms the landscape and makes it more and more “tame and cheap”.He and his companion, which he sometimes has, fancy themselves as “Walkers” or “Walkers Errant”. The Walker Errant is a “sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People”.“It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers.”He feels that he cannot preserve his health and spirits, unless he spends four hours a day, at least, sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, “absolutely free from all worldly engagements”.When he goes for a walk, he inevitably decides to walk south-west. “The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side.”“We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature – we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.”The author states: “The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild – in Wildness is the preservation of the World.”He believes in the forest, and in the meadow. “How near to good is what is wild.” The most alive is the Wildness, not yet subdued by man. “I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village.”He tells us that we cannot afford not to live in the present. “He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.” He talks of “the gospel according to this moment”.He rejoices that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made “the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society”.“I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre cultivated.”He argues the value of ignorance – there is need for a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance. A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful but beautiful, while his so-called knowledge is often worse than useless.Who is the best man to deal with – the man who knows nothing about a subject and knows that he knows nothing, or the one who knows something but thinks that he knows it all?The highest that we can attain to is not knowledge, but “Sympathy with Intelligence”.He complains how little appreciation of the landscape there is among us.To sum up, this little book is a eulogization not only to walking but to the wondrousness of Nature. Wildness and Freedom. Thoreau’s rich style, the like of which is unseen in modern writing, is an inspiration in itself.

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    Walking - Henry David Thoreau

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Walking, by Henry David Thoreau

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    Title: Walking

    Author: Henry David Thoreau

    Release Date: August 7, 2008 [EBook #1022]

    Last Updated: January 26, 2013

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WALKING ***

    Produced by Q Myers, and David Widger

    WALKING

    by Henry David Thoreau

    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 as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.

    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 pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, There goes a Sainte-Terrer, a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. 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. 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. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

    It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, 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.

    To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The Chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker—not the Knight, but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People.

    We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten years ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half an hour in the woods;

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