Walking, American Style

An American author for this Fourth of July, from one of his lesser-known works:

"He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river... 

No wealth can buy the requisite leisure freedom, and independence which are capital in this profession... You must be born into the family of Walkers...  the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called... but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day... " 

 ---Henry David Thoreau in "Walking", from the Atlantic Monthly, 1862.  

     Like many high school students, I was assigned Walden to read. While it suited my temperament and interests, I ended up purchasing a book of Thoreau's work.  In it I found this "Walking" essay and a separate account of a trip he made with his brother, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.  I ended up preferring both of these to Walden.