Walking null

This is a must read book - it should be required reading for everybody to graduate high school and college. The author's writing style and the old English can be a little challenging in spots, but not too difficult. It is a very enjoyable read that takes the reader to another place spiritually and philosophically. It discusses the very important topic of how we interact with nature, and our bond with nature, as well as the importance of protecting and conserving wild places. It gives a much needed point of view that is rare to find these days and perhaps needed now more than ever. Most of all it is a celebration of appreciating and enjoying the great outdoors (without killing or destroying), simply finding peace and joy in the natural beauty that is around us which so many of us neglect. A real gem that just might stir or awaken something inside of you. You will want to explore or go for a walk in the woods after reading this.

In general, I relate better to narrative than to visual art. But as I’ve spent time with this book, I’ve found myself responding most strongly to the reciprocal relationship between the photos and the quotations.In particular, I found myself pausing on a spread, reading the text on the left-hand page, then gazing at the extraordinary beauty of the photo on the right-hand page, then looking back and forth. On spread after spread, I had an “out-of-mind” experience: being enticed to both see and understand the world as I imagine Thoreau saw and understood it.For this review, I’ve tried to articulate the experience I had, again and again, reading “Walking with Thoreau.” The following description is too linear to do it justice, but I hope it suggests how the text and photos interact to create an experience richer than either alone:Typically, I have had four different stages of experience for each spread, in this approximate order:1) The literal text: what is Thoreau describing? What was Thoreau looking at?2) The image: what part of the contemporary woodland does Jacobson-Hardy connect with the quote?3) The significance of the text: is there a figurative meaning in the text that the image brings out?4) The significance of the image: how does the photo connect with that figurative meaning?For example, on pages 72-3, I noticed myself interacting with the spread this way:1) The two quotes from Thoreau seem to connect two ideas: the “perfect stillness and peace of the winter landscape,” and viewing us not so much as members of society, but as “part and parcel of Nature.” Connecting those two ideas stretched my mind, and then made me curious about what image would evoke that;2) So I looked at the photo on the right, which shows a winter woodland scene, both stark and rich. It wasn’t really "breath-taking" for me; it was more “breath-giving.” I found myself feeling a stillness and peace centered on the memory of fresh, cold air inside my lungs.3) Looking back at the text, I noticed again the phrase “to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature.” I remembered experiences of canoe-camping years ago; often, on the 4th or 5th morning, I would look over a misty lake and feel connected to the world as a whole.4) Looking back at the image, I felt fully a remembered sense of truly belonging on this intricate, amazing planet—which defines me more than does the built world of the city or the town. I felt the primacy of my connection to the beautiful earth shown in Jacobson-Hardy’s photograph.Writing all this out is clumsy and linear. But I wanted to communicate the almost meditative process I experienced through this amazing, humanizing, humbling book.I have seldom been drawn so deeply into a book of photographs. But the thoughtful, inspiring poetry of the book (words and pictures in tension and in balance) holds up Thoreau and his woods in a way that triggered, for me, experiences of joyful wholeness.

Wonderful thoughts on innovation and aspiration and who we really are. The concluding sentence is the best thing this side of the last sentence of the Great Gatsby. My high school self was wrong about Thoreau.

Just completed "Walking" and yes for such a short narrative, it took me awhile. This man was definitively intelligent and intense. I thought this passage would be about the simple joys of movement through his world, what he saw, what he heard, and what he felt. Thoreau was constantly bring up very complex thoughts, ideas, and points of view that I had to stop reading to think and try to understand. Yes he shared his thoughts on the simple things in life but also on many more cerebral matters of thoughts and perspectives. I would have loved to spend a week-end with this incredible man. Read some of this man's material, it's a must. Soon, Craig

paperback is accessible. Read to the end. Yep, I had to read it in high school. Still, that didn't ruin it. A little bit of an attitude going on, I feel that H.D.T. is expressing a somewhat elitist attitude... possibly in a tongue in cheek mode. There is some significant change since it was written... OK. enough. I did not read the cliff notes, so don't rely on this analysis.

“I am alarmed when It happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. “ (Henry David Thoreau, WALKING)Thoreau has a very vigorous animosity against walking for exercise or efficiency--going from place to place with the least diversion. I am not sure what his deeper reasons for being ornery about it might be, but the attitude can be neatly characterized, and maybe pigeonholed, as a predictable Transcendentalist strategy against living only for physical reasons and not the more crucial, more mindful, transcendental purposes. These Transcedentalist writers of the middle 1800’s, including Emerson and others, were convinced that people were not fully achieving the spiritual, the loftier, aspect of life.Clearly mindful walking, for Thoreau, can generate, a productive collision of our values, the values that the society inculcates in us. Things like efficiency and purpose and even the search for personal perfection of body with all the attendant concern for how we are perceived physically are devalued. For Thoreau walking was a ritual not a mechanical physical process or a mindless activity.This long essay--for that is what it is--can be read in a few hours. But it is large in scope. It moves into a larger discussion of the necessity of wildness, the wildness of nature and of the environment and wildness in the internal make-up of human beings.While WALKING is not as powerfully and tightly styled as Thoreau's greatest essays, it is genuine Thoreau, personally engaging, sometimes quotable, and often startlingly neighborly.

*Book Review* Walking by Henry David Thoreau xx "Saunter" I love that word.  We should all take time to saunter.  Henry David Thoreau certainly did..Thoreau's 'Walking' is a lecture on the benefits of nature.  He devotes himself to the outdoors and who can blame him? The descriptions of the walks he takes are encouraging..Thoreau was an American writer and philosopher. He is best known for his essay 'Walden' although he has written a lot of other works. He lived from 1817 to 1862..Thoreau's unflagging enthusiasm dominates the writing.  I like a walk in the fresh air but I found this essay a bit over the top.  His love of swamps is quite alarming. I prefer my countryside easier on the legs. He talks about the wild with references to man and beast. He describes his surroundings with total adoration..Here are a couple of quotes I enjoyed:.Quote "A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.".Quote "Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.".I enjoyed his little account of when he climbed a tree and what he saw. Although I am not sure how safe that would have been..I agree with Thoreau. Do we fit in enough time to relax in nature? Are we always busy? There is no doubt it is good for us. Sadly we are not very good at putting our mental health first..It's not a big read but still I did find it hard to concentrate and it ended up being more of a chore than an enjoyable read. I may need to read it again. I enjoyed parts of it none the less and whole heartedly agree about the benefits of nature.

Walking is quite a short ruminative work, about the benefits and experiences that can be found through walking in nature. Like most writings by Thoreau, it is as intensely meandering and digressive as walking itself. For modern audiences I think his style is a mixed blessing, sometimes profound and insightful, sometimes puffed up and pontificating. Thoreau does a lot of the latter, giving us his opinions at great length sometimes on the cultural, moral and ecological downsides of the US industrialised economy then in its infancy.He often wanders so far off topic you really do lose track with what he's on about, or what his central theme or point is. Though some of his thoughts that emerge along the way do still have the ring of truth about them. He is the archetypal romantic idealist, urging humanity to get back in touch with the earth. In our post-industrial world this strikes a quaint and elitist note, which isn't going to be much help to most of us living a crowded urban life style. Strangely I can see why he can be adopted by both the left and right wing of US politics. He's not averse to strident tub thumping about moral decadence whilst at the same time espousing an alternative simple lifestyle stripped of the clutter of capitalism. Depends how selectively you read him, I guess.

standing. A great resetter and antidote to freshen your mind. Does some of our current irresponsible shallow popular culture - tiktok, youtube, pinterest, celebrities for their own sake - qualify as a song sung purely to express the enjoyment of living? And a celebration of the cockerel revelling in the present? And therefore good? This essay has Buddhist elements also and it would have been fascinating to have watched Thoreau attend a thai or japanese monk’s retreat. A beautiful read. Thank you

I particularly liked how he said we [can only truly go for a walk if we leave our concerns and worries aside]. By doing this I think he is saying that [we must have our attention in the moment to truly experience what it is like to go for a walk].

Not as expected. Thought there would be lots of quotes and inspirational writings. Not great.