Walking by Thoreau

I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an empathetic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care of that... (pg. 143)

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. it is not indifferent to us which way we walk. there is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. (pg. 143)

...and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men. (pg. 145)

My needle is slow to settle--varies a few degrees, and does not always point due southwest, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and southwest...the future lies that way to me and the earth seems more unexhaused and richer on that side. (pg. 144)

Eastward I go only by forces; but westward I go free. thither no business leads me. (pg. 144)

We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go eastward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. (pg. 145)

We require an infusion of hemlock spruce or arbor vitae in our tea. there is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and for mere gluttony. (pg. 146)

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. dullness is but another name for tameness. it is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the schools, that delights us. (pg. 146)

I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild. approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. i do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account which contents me of that Nature with which even i am acquainted. you will perceive that i demand something which no Augustan nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can give. (pg. 147)

Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past--as it is to some extent a fiction of the present--the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology. (pg. 148)

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.

Before one can truly become a walker, one must be prepared to \"send our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms\" (page 1). Thoreau uses a simile to describe a village with roads springing from it as a lake with rivers springing from it.

...after describing the mythological wonders Thoreau sees while witnessing a sunset, he uses a question to challenge the reader if they have looked at the sunset without imagining the mythological wonders themselves.

One commonality in this reading is that each part relates nature to being good and each part provides a piece of poetry to help illustrate this. In the first part the reader, who is probably the general public, develops a sense of inferiority. The author asserts that the kind of relationship he has with nature is one that is innate. (On section 1 of the essay)

...the author speaks of nature as magical and criticizes the negative effects American society has had on the environment. (On section 2 of the essay)

Thoreau leaves us stimulating our sensitivity toward the existence of nature and the spirituality it beholds. The structuring of the essay into three parts is effective in progressively showing that walking goes beyond the physical activity, but into an appreciation of nature.

Concerning Thoreau's stance, this essay seems to arise out of the author's negative view of American society, and is an attempt to open-up the reader's sensitivity toward nature.

Thoreau's Most Important essay, \"Walking\", links freedom with wildness, Nature and walking. If we can Understand how these four are linked together, then we can grasp one central meaning of freedom in American Thought.

Thoreau gave \"Walking\" as a lecture in 1851, 1852, 1856, and 1857. It was first published in the Atlantic Monthly of June, 1862, and later included in Excursions (1863).

...I think he means a liberation from conventional society into a community of free believers. The second we must meet is \"sans terre\", that is \"without land or home\", meaning, I think, no attachment to a particular place or ideals, ready to seriously entertain all routs and viewpoints.

Thoreau lays down certain conditions for taking a true walk. Playing on the etymology of 'sauntering' as derived from \"a la sainte terre\", Thoreau telles us that or walk aims at reaching \"the Holy Land\".

Thoreau consistently describes the wilderness as an escape, somewhere a person can go to and simply be free. Thoreau highlights the wonder of the wilderness through \"the art of Walking\" (260) which he insists is an activity that one should partake in for a good four or more hours a day.

Through his admiration of the wilderness and his countless hours spent walking through it, Thoreau forgets that many people do not have the luxury of time nor the financial ability to appreciate nature only for its intrinsic value. While Thoreau is content to spend his time \"sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements\" (262) others in lower social classes are forced to work, many of them plowing the fields that Thoreau does not appreciate.

This whimsical approach to wilderness could simply be overlooked were it not for the audacity of Thoreau to belittle the livelihoods of the people who make their living off the commercial value of nature, \"Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps\" (174).

This delusion of nature and its tangible qualities and values begs the question of whether Thoreau is credible in his view of the wilderness. He views it romantically, \"the jewel which dazzled me\" (174) but seems to forget that where it not for the exploitation of this jewel he would not have the roof over his head, the paper he is writing on, or the other luxuries in his life that nature affords him. Thoreau's acclaim for wilderness is essentially useless in that it is merely the idea that nature is to be enjoyed and rarely to be used, an idea that has never nor will ever substantiate society.