The blog
Of all the seasons, writers seem to like summer best. “Everything good, everything magical, happens between the months of June and August” said author and screenwriter Jenny Han. “In summer, the song sings itself” wrote poet William Carlos William. “Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June” concurred actor/writer Al Bernstein. I suppose…
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“The world’s favorite season is the spring,” wrote Edwin Teale (North with the Spring, 1951). “All things seem possible in May.” Nearly a hundred years earlier, another American naturalist, Henry David Thoreau, took the same view. He said that we find in spring “the principle of renewal of the eternal—the year beginning with younger hope…
“You can’t get too much winter in the winter,” wrote Robert Frost. Call me crazy, but I agree with him. I love winter walks, and the snowier, the better. I know what you’re going to say. “You wouldn’t make that statement if you lived in Buffalo, New York or Truckee, California.” And, of course, you…
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Do you feel that your days pass too quickly? Do you wish you could slow things down? Maybe get more pleasure out of each moment? Antonia Malchik (A Walking Life) says that daily walks will help: “When we walk, time slows down, and our multitasking brains rest and reconnect with our creative selves—We become more…
For long hikes, especially when climbing in the mountains, consider Nordic walking, a practice that revolutionized my walks some 20 years ago. I learned it from my Austrian sister-in-law who learned it from the Finns where it originated as off-season training for snow skiers in the 1970s. Put simply, Nordic walking employs special poles to…
“Walking gives us back our senses,” wrote Sussman and Goode (The Magic of Walking). “We see, hear, smell the world as we never can when we ride.” That’s because our vehicles trap us, they explained. The doors and windows isolate us from things we would see, hear or smell if we were walking. Long before…
In 1955 at the age of 67 Grandma Emma Gatewood became the first solo female to complete the 2,168-mile Appalachian Trail. She would do it three more times before her death nearly 20 years later. Emma’s story, as chronicled by Ben Montgomery in Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, is one of the most inspiring things I’ve read.…
“Humans are slow animals,” wrote Rebecca Solnit. “What we excel at is distance, sustaining a pace for hours or days.” The theory would be put to a test in 2016 at what was billed as the “Man Against Horse Race” in Prescott, Arizona. Conceived in a Prescott bar when an avid runner bet his equestrian…
“One of the agreeable surprises of becoming a walker is that you can walk faster and farther than you think, and with complete comfort,” wrote Aaron Sussman and Ruth Goode (The Magic of Walking, 1980). According to the authors, most people do not know how fast they walk. Evidently, until one becomes a walker he…
“Walk to get lost,” wrote Annabel Streets. “I like getting lost. I like the way it jolts me awake as if a double espresso has been poured directly into my head and given a good stir.” Evidently, there are benefits to being lost. Says Streets, “When we’re lost, we’re exposed to new landscapes and landmarks—forcing…
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“Doing nothing is hard to do,” wrote Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust. “It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.” Solnit’s point is that our modern culture is consumed with productivity. For your activity to be valuable, it must produce—more money, more friends, more health—and so…
“I can only meditate when I walk,” wrote Jean-Jaques Rousseau. “”When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.” In his Confessions (completed in 1770), the famous French philosopher went on to explain in more detail. “There is something about walking which stimulates and enlivens my thoughts. When I stay…