The Art of Walking

(Found here)

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who has a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived ‘from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going á la Sainte Terre,’ to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, ‘There goes a Sainter-Terrer,’ a Saunterer, — a Holy Lander... Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit... 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…”

~Henry David Thoreau