Where does it start? Muscles tense. One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the earth and sky. The other a pendulum, swinging from behind. Heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot. The big toe pushes off, and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again. The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and then another step and then another that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking. The most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world, this walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory, and heartbreak. […]
As a member of the self-employed whose time saved by technology can be lavished on daydreams and meanders, I know these things have their uses, and use them — a truck, a computer, a modem — myself, but I fear their false urgency, their call to speed, their insistence that travel is less important than arrival. I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness.
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Don’t miss Brain Pickings entire post: Wanderlust: Rebecca Solnit on Walking and the Vitalizing Meanderings of the Mind
Image: Sweet Senderipity
Brilliant!
It is Julie!
“modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness” I think so. More walking and stillness for all of us! 🙂 .
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Travel is less important than arrival . Yes we have forgotten that the journey is more important than the destination.We are racing towards arrival and not living the travel
Yes. That’s it. I’m learning. (Slowly) 🙂
Faster that the speed of thought. That explains a lot.
Yes, it does, doesn’t it.
I often feel these days that we’ve become obsessed with speed for its novelty–a faster internet connection, a quicker download–and to what end? I think that, in many respects, it’s just made me more impatient for no reason. I found myself thoroughly annoyed at the deli the other day because they weren’t slicing my turkey quickly enough! Good grief… Stop and smell the roses–that’s becoming my mantra…
Me too! Me too! Me too!
i love walking too. this is so well-said and i see the world from the ground level when walking, not only offering me a health benefit, but a new perspective.
Agree Beth. I thought she captured it beautifully.