Walking - Paperback

by Henry David Thoreau (Author)

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understoodthe art of Walking, that is, of taking walks-who had a genius, so to speak, forsauntering, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved aboutthe country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going à laSainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a SainteTerrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in theirwalks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do gothere are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, wouldderive the word from sans terre without land or a home, which, therefore, in thegood sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere.For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all thetime may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is nomore vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seekingthe shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the mostprobable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter theHermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of theInfidels.