The train, the car, the buggy, the bicycle are excellent means of getting from place to place; none of them gives him leisure to note what lies between. That is peculiarly the walker’s gain. It is then that he gathers the harvest of the quiet eye, and he sees not only the widespread landscape, but also the details of Nature’s plan.
Category Archives: Literature
Quote: Ralph Waldo Emerson
This quote speaks directly to the sacrament of ad Communionem for the the Order. “There are two companions, with one or other of whom it is desirable to go out on a tramp. One is an artist, that is, who has an eye for beauty. If you use a good and skilful companion, you shallContinue reading “Quote: Ralph Waldo Emerson”
Quote: J. Brooks Atkinson
“Walking companions, like heroes, are difficult to pluck out of the crowd of acquaintances. Good dispositions, ready wit, friendly conversation serve well enough by the fireside but they prove insufficient in the field. For there you need transcendentalists — nothing less; you need poets, sages, humorists and natural philosophers.” — J. Brooks Atkinson, “A NoteContinue reading “Quote: J. Brooks Atkinson”
Quote: Stephen Graham, “ The Gentle Art of Tramping”
“On the road the weak and strong points of character are revealed. There are those who complain, making each mile seem like three; there are those who have untapped reserves of cheerfulness, who sing their companions through the tired hours.” Stephen Graham Stephen Graham World Traveller
Quote: Soren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard, from a letter to his favorite niece, Henriette Lund, in 1847 “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that oneContinue reading “Quote: Soren Kierkegaard”
If You Know Bourke You Know Australia
I WAS in Bourke, New South Wales – the outback, that most powerful of Australian words – the edge of the world, where the unknown begins. I was having a break from writing Cold Light and I had my backpack and gear with me, intending to do a trek in that hard country, maybe to look at a geological oddity called Mount Gunderbooka, about sixty kilometres south-west of the dwindling township of Bourke. The mountain name carried within it the word ‘book’.
Essay: George Macaulay Trevelyan “ Walking” 1914
“I have two doctors, my left leg and my right.”
Quote: Wanderlust
Rebecca Solnit “I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.” — Rebecca Solnit
Essay: For the full life experience, put down all devices and walk
To live with eyes on the screen is to be attached, stuck in the frame, taking in what is presented to us and re-presented to us again. But representation — even in fine-grained pixilation — is not experience. To experience is to perceive. When we look at a screen, we might see something, but we don’t perceive. To live life through representations is to live passively, to receive rather than to experience. It is also, we fear, to live the life of a follower.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for thatContinue reading “The Road Not Taken”
