Wednesday, August 29, 2012

REVISITING WANDERLUST



If one cannot be off on a long-distance walk, the next best thing is to dream about such adventures, and one of the best ways to fuel such dreams is to return to Rebecca Solnit's insightful book, Wanderlust: A History of Walking.  Set forth below are some of Ms. Solnit's observations on the fine art and unexpected pleasures of walking.  May you be inspired, as I am, to grab your rucksack and hit the road as soon as possible.

The most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world, this walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory, and heartbreak.

* * * * *

To make walking into an investigation, a ritual, a meditation, is a special subset of walking . . . Which is to say that the subject of walking is, in some sense, about how we invest universal acts with particular meanings. Like eating or breathing, it can be invested with wildly different cultural meanings, from the erotic to the spiritual, from the revolutionary to the artistic.
* * * * *

Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do.  It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking. Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart.  It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing.  Is is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals.

* * * * *

Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord.  Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them.  It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.



The rhythm of walking generates a kind of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts.  This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it.

* * * * * 

The surprises, liberations, and clarifications of travel can sometimes be garnered by going around the block as well as going around the world, and walking travels both near and far.  Or perhaps walking should be called movement, not travel, for one can walk in circles or travel around the world immobilized in a seat, and a certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, or plane.  It is the movement as well as the sights going by by that seems to make things happen in the mind, and this is what makes walking ambiguous and endlessly fertile: it is both means and end, travel and destination.

* * * * * 

Of course walking, as any reader of Thoreau's essay "Walking" knows, inevitably leads into other subjects.  Walking is a subject that is always straying.

* * * * *

The random, the unscreened, allows you to find what you don't know you are looking for, and you don't know a place until it surprises you.  Walking is one way of maintaining a bulwark against the erosion of the mind, the body, the landscape, and the city, and every walker is a guard on patrol to protect the ineffable.

* * * * *  

When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for you when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.


A planned walk of the Wales coastline (Pembrokeshire Coastal Path) had to be cancelled earlier this summer because of conflicts on the home front.  If all goes well, however, I will be off to another destination within the next week.  More to come on this when I return . . . 

 ONWARD!

18 comments:

  1. Walking is one of my favourite things.

    Hope you enjoy your adventure. Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Gwen. Love your "cottage for sale," but, unfortunately, my wife insists upon a warmer climate, which means we are destined to move further south. Thanks for the good wishes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. When I'm walking I disappear into my own little world, sometimes really noticing all that's around me and other times in a completely different zone deep inside my own head. Walking is a wonderful thing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. George, your post is serendipitous and synchronous for me this morning, as if you have taken my own thoughts and run (or walked) with them. To walk is not to be merely a tourist, as Rebecca Solnit seems to say in this book. To walk, anywhere, is a vehicle for thinking, for exploring the terrain of the mind and heart as much as the land. Doing this physical thing creates the space for it, either with a companion in conversation, or in solitude for exploring one's own thoughts.

    I'm excited for you to be on the verge of another solitary walk, this time in the Cotswolds. To explore the land of George while trekking those beautiful hills sounds like a bit of heaven to me.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for the nice comment, ROWAN. Yes, I can tell from your postings that you are personally acquainted with the myriad dimensions of walking. To disappear into our own little world, leaving the other world behind, is often needed to preserve enough sanity to complete the journey.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks, as always, RUTH. To a large extent, walking can be whatever one wants it to be—a physical challenge, a prayer, a meditation, an adventure, an inquiry, a conversation with the divine, and exercise in creativity. The list is endless, and the walker has no limits other than his or her imagination.

    Thanks for the good wishes. I hope that you and Don will be able to set forth on some of these wonderful long-distance walks in the years ahead.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them"... But not necessarily kept dry. Robert and I made it to the Lake District last weekend and got thoroughly soaked.

    We thought of you as our walks -Green Gable, Great Gable, Red Pike (near Buttermere)- took us not far from the Coast to Coast path.

    ReplyDelete
  8. both means and end, travel and destination . . . ..

    Exactly! The healing power of walking is inestimable and should be prescribed to all who are sick in mind and many of those who are sick in body.

    I wish you a wonderful journey!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yes, DOMINIC, one needs to supplement a good attitude with a small measure of Gortex. You were indeed very close to the C2C path. On my trip, we spend one of the nights in Grasmere, which, of course, is surrounded by great walking opportunities.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks, FRIKO. You are so right about the healing power of walking. Nothing, not even a fine glass of wine, cleanses by mind like a good walk. Recently, when a neighbor expressed concern over my safety while walking alone on long-distance walks, I replied that, for me, there is no safer place than walking. Whatever the environment, it feels toxin-free when I am walking.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The Pembrokeshire cliff path is wonderful George. Unfortunately age has caught up with me and my long distance walking is over. But I too get immense pleasure from reading about others doing it. Nice to see you pop up on my sidebar again.
    Dominic and Robert have just been walking in Wales for a few days - it poured every day but they seem to have enjoyed it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.

    LOVE that. The only thing better than a walk as you depict in those photos, is riding a horse along those trails? I hope you take a lot of photos and share with us your next journey. I hope all is well on the homefront now.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks for the thoughtful comment, PAT. Yes, I read Dominic's blog about the recent excursions that he and Robert took in the Lake District. How fortunate you all are to have such magnificence on your doorsteps.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thanks for your lovely comment, MARGARET. My wife would certainly agree with you that trails are enjoyed more on the back of a horse than on one's feet. Alas, however, I cannot relate to that perspective, though I certainly respect it.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Wonderful to think of you tramping again George. My life seems to revolve around walking. I am in a hotel tonight, returning from Aspen - a paradise for walkers. I await the photos so I can relive your walk through them. Good health to you - enjoy your time of solitude on the trail.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thanks for your lovely comments and many good wishes, BARB. Rest assured that you will hear from me when I return from this sorely needed walk through the English countryside.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hi George, I often choose walking when feeling tension or disturbed mind, there is nothing better than walking to find a balance again in such a case. Then I can think again, the tension gone...

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hi, Petra. Thanks for the comment, which I received while in the U.K. walking the Cotswold Way.

    ReplyDelete