The Spirit of Sauntering: Thoreau on the Art of Walking and the Perils of a Sedentary Lifestyle

met with but one or two persons in the course of his life who understood the art of walking, that is, of taking walks – who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering

• Walking , Henry David Thoreau


• Reveries of the Solitary Walker , Jean-Jacques Rousseau


• Ki (Trees), Kōda Aya


• Méditations poétiques , Alphonse de Lamartine


• A Field Guide to Getting Lost , Oristelle Bonis et Rebecca Solnit


• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek , Annie Dillard


• The Gardener and His Master , Jean de La Fontaine


• A Philosophy of Walking , Frédéri

... See more

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