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.

Walden Pond

The "footprint" of Thoreau's cabin 

Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachussetts

 

     Henry David Thoreau wrote his famed essay/book Walden about his approximate year-and-a-half living in a cabin near Walden Pond.   It was publishe in 1854.  Though some assume he spent his entire time isolated there, he went into the town of Concord with some regularity.  He also entertained guests at his small cabin.               

Happy Spring!

Padding along the eastern side of the lake in the still of the morning, we soon saw a few sheldrakes, which the Indian [guide Joseph Polis] calle Shecorways...we also saw and heard loons, Medawisla, which he said was a sign of wind. ---"Allegash & East Branch"; Henry David Thoreau