I like to think of myself as a walker. Not in any grand sense, I have not accomplished any great feats of walking, but more in my preference for self-propulsion. I like not being reliant on a machine to get me where I am going and I like that by restricting myself only to the capability of my own body I also limit how far I can travel. It feels more human and more humble.
In this way, I find myself of similar mind to both Henry David Thoreau and Wendell Berry, two men from different times whose writing inspires me greatly. Berry makes sharp distinction in his writing between a road and a path, the former being a scar upon the landscape whereas the latter is merely a knowledge of it born out of a relationship with place, rather than a rush past it. In The Native Hill he writes that:
“The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around.”
There is always a sense of limits in Wendell Berry’s writing and I think that puts him at odds with much of our current society, in which excess is the preferred measure. Berry often refers to the damage we do to the world happening when we go beyond our natural human limits by putting technology in place that allows us to do and, much more pertinently, to take more. He is not against technology per se, just against its implementation being thoughtless and not considering the consequences, both to the planet and to the work and life of a person.
Theoretically I could run, cycle or even drive from where I am to where I am heading, but is completing the movement more quickly or increasing the distance of it in the same time really adding anything of value to the exercise? It would certainly involve using more resources, whether that be my own energy, the production of a machine or the running of that machine. Might it be more beneficial for both me and every other living thing if I made do with a good walk?
Returning to The Native Hill, Berry describes some small history in Kentucky in which newcomers are laying down a road and while doing so cut down many trees to put up a camp. He compares this destructive interaction with the land to that of the original native inhabitants and the natural violence of the newcomers actions verses the gentler touch of the natives. He then continues:
“But my understanding of this curiously parabolic fragment of history will not be complete until I have considered more directly that the occasion of this particular violence was the building of the road. It is obvious that one who values the idea of community cannot speak against roads without risking all sorts of absurdity. It must be noticed, nevertheless, that the predecessor to this first road was ‘nothing but an Indian trail passing the wilderness’ – a path.
The Indians, then, who had the wisdom and the grace to live in this country perhaps ten thousand years without destroying or damaging any of it, needed for their travels no more than a footpath; but their successors, who in a century and a half plundered the area of at least half its topsoil and virtually all of its forest, felt immediately that they had to have a road. My interest is not in the question of whether or not they needed the road, but in the fact that the road was then, and is now, the most characteristic form of their relation to the country.”
This view, which incorporates taking your time and not rushing past a place in your hurry to get somewhere else, chimes nicely with Simon Barnes’ call in his book Rewild Yourself. He asks us to see going for a walk not as something to deliver a particular outcome, but rather as an opportunity to connect with our local environment and the nature that resides there. This, in turn, will provide us with all sorts of benefits but our endeavour should be connection rather than an end goal.
“The secret is all in the subtle adjustment of priorities. Climb the hill not because you need the workout but because you might see a buzzard. Take the loop through the park not for the sake of your gluteal muscles but because there are sometimes redwings on the grass in winter and blackbirds singing in spring. Once you start to think like this, everything changes.
You are still taking exercise but you are no longer Taking Exercise. You are no longer the priority. You are an innocent victim, caught in the crossfire of nature.”
Barnes’ book is all about re-orientating ourselves back to a place where we recognise ourselves in nature rather than separate from it and in that it shares similar territory to Berry’s sense that we have lost our connection to the land and to place. Both try to bring us back to a way of life that is gentler on the planet and its resources and also more suited to our underlying purpose as human beings.
Henry David Thoreau wrote a whole book about and indeed titled Walking, albeit quite a small one. He would hold little truck with one of my favourite local walks, along an old railway track known as the Southwell Trail, preferring as you might expect of the hero of Walden, to walk freely into the wild wood without the restraint of manmade pathways and thoroughfares.
Sadly, we do not have much in the way of wilderness in Nottinghamshire. A few hundred years ago, I may have been able to walk deep into Sherwood and chance a meeting with either wild beast or heroic outlaws, but not anymore. Now, it is well marked trails and RSPB information boards that walkers discover, rather than king’s deer, wild boar and merry men.
Thoreau thought more grandly of walking and put it into a greater context of adventure. The Saunterer, La Sainte-Terrer, Holy-Lander, set upon a grand quest. I like the idea of a great pilgrimage, but in all honesty, you are more likely to find me walking purposefully towards a country pub than struggling physically and spiritually along El Camino de Santiago.
“Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return – prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.
If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again – if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man – then you are ready for a walk.”
No doubt Thoreau would swiftly call me out as an “idler and vagabond”, but is it really so bad for a walk to end at the old hearth-side? I think not.
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If you would like to read more of Wendell Berry I recommend The World-Ending Fire, a collection of his writing, selected and introduced by Paul Kingsnorth, published by Penguin Books in 2018
Henry David Thoreau’s writing is of course widely available and his classic Walden is a must read for anyone interested in living within rather than above nature.
Simon Barnes’ Rewild Yourself: 23 Spellbinding Ways to Make Nature More Visible was published by Simon & Schuster in 2018 and has a fairly self explanatory title.
Live Many Lives 