Not to have known - as most men have not - either the mountain or the desert is not to have known one's self. Not to have known one's self is to have known no one.
Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
Earth is a homicide victim. We lose our children. There are wars. Disease. And God comes strolling by like a cosmic Billie Burke.
This land is your land, this land is my land
If you talk about genres - I don't care if you're talking about war, Westerns, science fiction, horror, fantasy, humor, romance - anything you can find, strolling the aisles of a Borders or a Barnes & Noble, I can bring you many comic books representing each genre.
And they discovered something very interesting: when it comes to walking, most of the ant's thinking and decision-making is not in its brain at all. It's distributed. It's in its legs.
Long distance hiking is not a vacation, it's too long for that. It's not recreation, too much toil and pain involved. It is, we decide, a way of life, a very simplified Spartan way of living ... life on the move ... heavy packs, sweating brow; they make you appreciate warm sunshine, companionship, cool water. The best way to appreciate these things that are precious and important in life it is take them away.
Walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world.
It's amazing how much time one can spend in a garden doing nothing at all. I sometimes think, in fact, that the nicest part of gardening is walking around in a daze, idly deadheading the odd dahlia, wondering where on earth to squeeze in yet another impulse buy, debating whether to move the recalcitrant artemisia one more time, or daydreaming about where to put the pergola.
I have two doctors, my left leg and my right.
Isn't it really quite extraordinary to see that, since man took his first step, no one has asked himself why he walks, how he walks, if he has ever walked, if he could walk better, what he achieves in walking .. questions that are tied to all the philosophical, psychological, and political systems which preoccupy the world.
No fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet us in our walks each day.
I don't climb mountains. Mountains climb me. The mountain is myself. I climb on myself.
Put you hand before your eyes and remember, you that have walked, the places from which you have walked away, and the wilderness into which you manfully turned the steps of your abandonment ... It is your business to leave all that you have know altogether behind you, and no man has eyes at the back of his head - go forward.
Simplicity in all things is the secret of the wilderness and one of its most valuable lessons. It is what we leave behind that is important. I think the matter of simplicity goes further than just food, equipment, and unnecessary gadgets; it goes into the matter of thoughts and objectives as well. When in the wilds, we must not carry our problems with us or the joy is lost.
The wilderness is a place of rest - not in the sense of being motionless, for the lure, after all, is to move, to round the next bend. The rest comes in the isolation from distractions, in the slowing of the daily centrifugal forces that keep us off balance.
If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.
I just rely on natural talent," said Adrian, strolling up to the start of the Dragon's Lair. "When you have such a wealth of it to draw from, the danger comes from having too much.
Even the weather seemed to be celebrating; as June approached, the days became cloudless and sultry, and all anybody felt like doing was strolling onto the grounds and flopping down on the grass with several pints of iced pumpkin juice, perhaps playing a casual game of Gobstones or watching the giant squid propel itself dreamily across the surface of the lake.
I have walked this south stream when to believe in spring was an act of faith. It was spitting snow and blowing, and within two days of being May ... But as if to assert the triumph of climate over weather, one ancient willow managed a few gray pussy willows, soft and barely visible against the snow-blurred gray background.
To cultivate a garden is to walk with God.
A fact bobbed up from my memory, that the ancient Egyptians prescribed walking through a garden as a cure for the mad. It was a mind-altering drug we took daily.
Then, when people saw you strolling around at high noon holding your rosary beads, they’d think, ‘Well, that can’t be a vampire.
Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.
To be whole and harmonious, man must also know the music of the beaches and the woods. He must find the thing of which he is only an infinitesimal part and nurture it and love it, if he is to live.
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