Walking lets you read the world — and much like the slow, contemplative mental processes involved in reading a book, the pace with which one moves through the world while walking allows for a different, deliberative kind of seeing . You notice more. You think more.

Or, as Nietzsche put it in an aphorism cited by Oppezzo and Schwartz, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”

I wouldn’t go so far, but the spirit of the sentiment seems true enough. I’ve lately heard a great deal about how writing is a form of thinking. There is a stronger sense in which one could take that claim, but it at least means... See more