![]() Intending to “regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society,” because “there are enough champions of civilization,” Thoreau argues that the genius of walking lies not in mechanically putting one foot in front of the other en route to a destination but in mastering the art of sauntering. Johnson from ‘Henry Hikes to Fitchburg,’ a children’s book about Thoreau’s philosophy. ![]() In his 1861 treatise Walking ( free ebook | public library), penned seven years after Walden, he sets out to remind us of how that primal act of mobility connects us with our essential wildness, that spring of spiritual vitality methodically dried up by our sedentary civilization. Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817–May 6, 1862) was a man of extraordinary wisdom on everything from optimism to the true meaning of “success” to the creative benefits of keeping a diary to the greatest gift of growing old. ![]() A century and a half earlier, another remarkable mind made a beautiful and timeless case for that basic, infinitely rewarding, yet presently endangered human activity. That is the glory of life,” Maira Kalman exhorted in her glorious visual memoir. ![]()
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