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The news can be a difficult thing to handle. There is strife across the world, and all levels of society seem to be affected. In response, we tend to do a lot of talking, but not a lot of thinking. We often spend our days making claims about the world, but we spend few hours experiencing it. Wordsworth said that “the world is too much with us” because we lose touch with what matters.

In times of stress, one can always look to the wisdom of Henry David Thoreau found in his wonderful essay “Walking.” The act of walking is neither a mere metaphor or an activity. Instead, Thoreau describes its transformative power in allowing the mind to meditate on the important aspects of life and help us to return to a more natural, proper state.

Thoreau begins with a general comment on how often people take the time to walk: “We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art; though, to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers.”

His words are lighthearted and playful, yet he does not hide that he considers the activity important: “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them—as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon—I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.”

Thoreau compares himself to the businessman trapped and unable to experience nature. If he was in such a situation, he would feel bound and unable to live. He does not hate the businessmen, or feel that they are unimportant. Instead, he worries about them devoting themselves completely to trade and not taking the time necessary to preserve their health.

But this activity is not exercise, at least in the physical sense. Thoreau is very clear that there is a spiritual component to walking that allows it to transcend other experiences: “But 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—as the Swinging of dumb- bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man’s swinging dumbbells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!”

He continues, “Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth’s servant to show him her master’s study, she answered, ‘Here is his library, but his study is out of doors.'”

The purpose of walking is to connect to the world around you. Most of the great writers and poets, especially the Romantic Poets, believed that exploring nature was essential for their craft, and it allowed them to find the peace of mind necessary to share their wisdom with others.

Thoreau then describes how the stress caused by society can interferes with truly experiencing nature: “In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is—I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder when I find myself so implicated even in what are called good works—for this may sometimes happen.”

The key, therefore, is to focus on the walk itself and to leave behind all of your worries. Within nature, human problems no longer matter: “Man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and manufactures and agriculture even politics, the most alarming of them all—I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape. Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder leads to it.”

Thoreau dealt far too much with political affairs, and it wears on the soul. Right or wrong, there will always be stress and worry when it comes to political activities, and there are many who abuse political power for personal gain.

In nature, politics matters little: “If you would go to the political world, follow the great road, follow that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half-hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth’s surface where a man does not stand from one year’s end to another, and there, consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke of a man.”

Moving beyond the reasons why walking is necessary, Thoreau despairs over the possible loss of the experience nature because of the encroachment of private property: “But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only—when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.”

Thankfully, those like Theodore Roosevelt knew the necessity of walking, and they established large parks to preserve the public activity. Walking in nature is a fundamental aspect of American society, but the profits of the politically connected can often lead to those tracts vanishing.

However, he abandons his worries to talk about society as a whole and how history can wear on the soul: “We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions.”

Symbolically, Europe represented a land of war, corruption, and deceit. Many different political ideologies sprung forth over time, but most sought to use new ways to subsume power unto a few. America was a land of freedom and opportunity, where a man could enter into nature and build himself up. He did not have to be bound by the stresses and corruptions of the urban life. He could feel free to walk and free his mind. We are still a free people, but we are slowly losing that freedom. We are too bound by our own thoughts and stresses, we care too much about things that ultimately don’t matter. We have become urban but not urbane.

While society has stress, nature has only poetry. There is a beauty to be found, the natural sublime, that calls at the spirit: “Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain-ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those fables? ”

Our connection to nature is what makes us great: “If the moon looks larger here than in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man—as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.”

Thoreau expands on the same point as he continues, “The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were. ”

We weaken ourselves by wallowing in the suffering of society instead of connecting to nature. We become sickly under the stress, instead of vigorous and robust. A precious article discussed Hazlitt’s views on the power of literature, and Thoreau’s words serve as a companion to Hazlitt’s by showing how nature can provide what literature cannot: “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.”

Words are not enough to describe nature in all of its glory; you have to experience it directly. Literature can guide the mind, explain high ideals, and teach lessons. But it is limited and needs experience to fully form the human spirit.

Society can be a miserable place, and it will always be a miserable place as long as we are disconnected from the beauty of nature. Society and politics are built on misery, and they bring out the worst in us. However, we can free ourselves and connect to what is true by learning how to walk again.

This essay was originally published as Thoreau on Walking on August 27, 2015.