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All good things are wild and free.
Sep 10, 2025
All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart.
It's all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure-they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come.
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
I will look at the footprints going in and out of the water and dream up a small blue good to talk to.
With the first step, the number of shapes the walk might take is infinite, but then the walk begins to define itself as it goes along, though freedom remains total with each step: any tempting side road can be turned into an impulse, or any wild patch of woods can be explored. The pattern of the walk is to come true, is to be recognized, discovered.
Isn't it really quite extraordinary to see that, since man took his first step, no one has asked himself why he walks, how he walks, if he has ever walked, if he could walk better, what he achieves in walking .. questions that are tied to all the philosophical, psychological, and political systems which preoccupy the world.
I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write.
It is a short walk from the hallelujah to the hoot.
You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That's an education in itself.
When I'm in turmoil, when I can't think, when I'm exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It's just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me, something to make me feel less like jumping off a building.
Reading without purpose is sauntering not exercise.
If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life.
The lessons we learn from the wild become the etiquette of freedom.
A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man.
We souls on foot, with foot-folk meet: For we that cannot hope to ride For ease or pride, have fellowship.
Walking around an early spring garden- going nowhere.
I can walk down the street all day and people look at me, but they don't talk to me or stop me.
Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.
Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.
It's amazing how much time one can spend in a garden doing nothing at all. I sometimes think, in fact, that the nicest part of gardening is walking around in a daze, idly deadheading the odd dahlia, wondering where on earth to squeeze in yet another impulse buy, debating whether to move the recalcitrant artemisia one more time, or daydreaming about where to put the pergola.
Walking takes longer... than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed.
Everyone can identify with a fragrant garden, with beauty of sunset, with the quiet of nature, with a warm and cozy cottage.
I firmly believe that everyone deserves to live within walking distance of either beauty or convenience, if not both.
The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an alleory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest).
I grew up in New Hampshire. My closest neighbor was a mile away. The deer and the raccoons were my friends. So I would spend time walking through the woods, looking for the most beautiful tropical thing that can survive the winter in the woods in New Hampshire.
When man ventures into the wilderness, climbs the ridges, and sleeps in the forest, he comes in close communion with his Creator. When man pits himself against the mountain, he taps inner springs of his strength. He comes to know himself.
Sweet pliability of man's spirit, that can at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments! - long - long since had ye numbered out my days, had I not trod so great a part of them upon this enchanted ground. When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it, to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rose-buds of delights; and have taken a few turns on it, come back strengthened and refreshed.
Some mountaineers are proud of having done all their climbs without bivouac. How much they have missed ! And the same applies to those who enjoy only rock climbing, or only the ice climbs, onyl the ridges or faces. We should refuse none of the thousands and one joys that the mountains offer us at every turn. We should brush nothing aside, set no restrictions. We should experience hunger and thirst, be able to go fast, but also to go slowly and to contemplate.
In the inhalation and exhalation there is an energy and a lively divine spirit, since He, through his spirit supports the breath of life, giving courage to the people who are in the earth and spirit to those who walk on it.
Give me the clear blue sky above my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking!
From thought to thought, from mountain peak to mountain. Love leads me on; for I can never still My trouble on the world's well beaten ways.
Oh, shut up. He is not saying that he's too good-looking to be friends with girls. But then again, yesterday at the beach, there were a high percentage of beach beauties sitting very close to us and/or sauntering repeatedly past. And he never looked up once. I snort. "You poor handsome thing. If only you were ugly, then girls wouldn't have to throw themselves at you all the time. I could break your perfect nose for you, if it'd make your life easier.
Gardening is a long road, with many detours and way stations, and here we all are at one point or another. It's not a question of superior or inferior taste, merely a question of which detour we are on at the moment. Getting there (as they say) is not important; the wandering about in the wilderness or in the olive groves or in the bayous is the whole point.
The rule of thumb for the old backpacking was that the weight of your pack should equal the weight of yourself and the kitchen range combined. Just a casual glance at the full pack sitting on the floor could give you a double hernia and fuse four vertebrae. After carrying the pack all day, you had to remember to tie one leg to a tree before you dropped it. Otherwise you would float off into space. The pack eliminated the need for any special kind of ground-gripping shoes, because your feet would sink a foot and a half into hard-packed earth, two inches into solid rock.
We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home, in towns and cities.
The man with the knapsack is never lost. No matter whither he may stray, his food and shelter are right with him, and home is wherever he may choose to stop.
Think what a great world revolution will take place when ... [there are] millions of guys all over the world with rucksacks on their backs tramping around the back country.
There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right.
Although the vast majority of walkers never even think of using a walking staff, I unhesitatingly include it among the foundations of the house that travels on my back.
It is one of the blessings of wilderness life that it shows us how few things we need in order to be perfectly happy.
Backpacking is the art of knowing what not to take.
In the evening, I walked alone down to the Lake by the side of Crow Park after sunset and saw the solemn coloring of night draw on, the last gleam of sunshine fading away on the hilltops, the seep serene of the asters, and the long shadows of the mountains thrown across them, till they nearly touched the hithermost shore. At distance hear the murmur of many waterfalls not audible in the day-time. Wished for the moon, but she was dark to me and silent, hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Along the river's summer walk, The withered tufts of asters nod; And trembles on its arid stalk the hoar plum of the golden-rod.
The influence of fine scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irritations and elevates our friendships.
There there is nothing like a wilderness journey for rekindling the fires of life. Simplicity is part of it. Cutting the cackle. Transportation reduced to leg - or arm - power, eating irons to one spoon. Such simplicity, together with sweat and silence, amplify the rhythms of any long journey, especially through unknown, untattered territory. And in the end such a journey can restore an understanding of how insignificant you are -- and thereby set you free.
Just put one foot in front of the other.
The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours ... but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.
Recreation in the open is of the finest grade. The moral benefits are all positive. The individual with any soul cannot live long in the presence of towering mountains or sweeping plains without getting a little of the high moral standard of Nature infused into his being ... with eyes opened, the great story of the Earth's forming, the history of a tree, the life of a flower or the activities of some small animal will all unfold themselves to the recreationist.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.