“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking,” wrote the American naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) in an essay titled “Walking.”
The first thing to understand is that it is an art — a religion, more precisely; whose real activity, “sauntering,” is no mere synonym for walking. It derives from “sainte terre” (holy land). “They,” writes Thoreau, “who never go to the Holy Land in their walks... are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds.”
No vagabond was he: “I think I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least — and it is commonly more than that — sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.”