By Nick Gallo
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of talking walks,—who had 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 ask charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “there goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.
This incredible passage begins Thoreau’s essay “Walking” which I had the privilege of discussing with several men at last week’s Meriwether Academy reading group in West Nashville.
Walking is not merely an idle or pleasant activity; it is a skill, an art, one leading man to his highest aims—and even a call to arms: “For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.”
The essay exalts Nature over culture, or merely civil society: “While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature.”
It exalts walking Westward: toward the setting sun, toward the American frontier rather than the Old World: “I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west.”
And ultimately toward true Wildness: “The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.” The World—formed by poets, philosophers and political founders:
Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source.
Incredibly, Wildness gives primitive depth to our poetic words—it gives them life that blooms in the hearts and minds of faithful readers through aeons:
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them, —transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library, —aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.
Yet, we moderns fail to attain this communion with the Wild and free: “I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild….Mythology comes nearer to it than anything.” Even more strikingly: “We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Kosmos, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious philological fact.”
Thorough goes on to express a unique task for America, one rooted in our nation’s natural beauty:
If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar…For I believe that climate does thus react on man,—as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life?
This incredible essay ties together many values that are central to Meriwether today: the importance of deep communion with nature, of developing authors whose writing is rooted in this communion, and of discovering a unique mission for America in our time.
Thoreau is, perhaps, one of the most important American authors for our generation to read given how severely alienated from nature and dominated by technology that we have become. Let us continue to walk with Thorough to discover what he can teach us about how to live and how he can help guide us through this difficult age.