So that walking, by unburdening us, prising us from the obsession with doing, puts us in touch with that childhood eternity once again.

Walking, by virtue of having the earth’s support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy.

The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance.

You don’t walk to kill time but to welcome it, to pick off its leaves and petals one by one, second by second.

The sky is always there above you. Endurance is about holding out when the gods appear to have retreated.

wanderer, communed with the Essence. Walking was a ceremony of mystic union, the walker being co-present with the Presence, curled up in the pure bosom of a maternal Nature. In both Rousseau and Wordsworth we find walking celebrated as testimony to presence and mystical fusion.

The crowd is the experience of a commoditized future in formation. Tossed about and dragged along by it, the individual is reduced to being a mere product offered up to anonymous tides.

The hastening passer-by combines velocity of the body with degradation of the intellect. He wants only to go fast and his mind is empty, preoccupied with slipping through the interstices. The

The common experience of preceding centuries had been surprise at the sight of a stranger in town, an unknown face. Where’s he from, what’s he up to? Now, anonymity was the norm. The shock would be to recognize someone.