“I am alarmed when It happens that
I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. “
(Henry David Thoreau, WALKING)
Thoreau has a very vigorous
animosity against walking for exercise or efficiency--going from place to place
with the least diversion. I am not sure what his deeper reasons for being
ornery about it might be, but the attitude can be neatly characterized, and
maybe pigeonholed, as a predictable Transcendentalist strategy against living
only for physical reasons and not the more crucial, more mindful,
transcendental purposes. These Transcendentalist writers of the middle 1800’s,
including Emerson and others, were convinced that people were not fully
achieving the spiritual, the loftier, aspect of life.
Clearly mindful walking, for
Thoreau, can generate, a productive collision of our values, the values that
the society inculcates in us. Things like efficiency and purpose and even the
search for personal perfection of body with all the attendant concern for how
we are perceived physically are devalued. For Thoreau walking was a ritual not
a mechanical physical process or a mindless activity.
This long essay--for that is what
it is--can be read in a few hours. But it is large in scope. It moves into a
larger discussion of the necessity of wildness, the wildness of nature and of
the environment and wildness in the internal make-up of human beings.
While WALKING is not as powerfully
and tightly styled as Thoreau's greatest essays, it is genuine Thoreau,
personally engaging, sometimes quotable, and often startlingly neighborly.
I wrote this review the other day for a Kindle reader review of the book, Walking by Thoreau. It was satisfying to do it. It sounds a little silly or something, but I liked doing it, along with hundreds of others. I think the review needs to explore more detail to do justice to where the book goes in its critique of his social and natural environment, of sensitive community planning and of education.
One personal reason I chose to read the book: I don't walk right now, not much. Ginny and I have stopped our excessively long 4 to 7 mile daily walks in the last 9 months. Ginny is ill and not a persistent walker anymore. So I want to write about walking & not walking and what it means to me. Thoreau is a great place to start researching this topic. If you know any other great books on walking, let me know what they are ...
I read all the time while at home because Ginny is sick and needs 24-hour care now, and I do it. She has dementia. The symptoms of the illness are dramatic enough to keep us at home most of the time. When we are at home we listen to music and watch baseball. She cannot tolerate the raucous political talk shows, the angry voices, and the violent action things. So we have taken a pledge to stick with peace and quiet disturbed only by Mozart and the Giants. I am glad she is at home and remembers me well. We are happy.
Anyway I read compulsively. I want to track what I read and to think about it--to do something with it. So I am going to keep a record by doing short essays on what I read, to make it less ephemeral, less a mere distraction and a way to spend the time. I am reading many books, varied books, rereading some old books that I might have read forty years ago. It is fun for me. I invite anyone to read these books. Call me. (831-252-3197) We could sit down for coffee & a chat. Or please suggest a book to me.
I want suggestions of good non-fiction and fiction, poetry, even plays. I just read "Othello." It was great to do that after years and years. Meanwhile, I will continue to look for free books on Kindle, cheap books, used books, and library books. Even stolen or abandoned books.
I feel a little like Burgess Meredith in that Twilight Zone episode -- an obsessive reader, he is the only survivor of a nuclear bomb because he was in the bank safe. So he is exuberant and goes to the public library. He carries out armloads of books and piles them on the steps of the library. Then, as he about to begin reading, he accidentally breaks his thick glasses. I don't have thick glasses, but I do rely on reading specs. Fortunately, I can get new ones at the drug store when I step on them.
