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4.5
If you’re expecting a Flâneur Manifesto, this brief essay (36 pages print) by Henry David Thoreau may disappoint you. The title is rather misleading. I’ve always been a walker, even though I grew up in a very large city that had an excellent public transportation system. My friends would wave at me from the bus while I walked back home. I would go out of my way so that the walk would last longer. When I had no choice but to take the bus, I would get off a couple of stops before mine. I was hoping Thoreau would throw some light on the need to use our legs that some of us feel. While it begins with some comments on walking, the essay is not exactly about that. It is an apologia of the wild life. “All good things are wild and free”: I cannot think of a more appropriate summary.It’s been too long since I read _Walden_ (1854), but if my memory serves me right, there is not much in this essay that Thoreau did not express one way or another in his most famous book. “Walking” (1862) has, of course, the advantage of brevity. About walking itself, Thoreau tells us that “every walk is a crusade,” and his invitation to a walk is almost the same as Christ’s call to his disciples: “If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again--if you have paid your debts, and made your will--then you are ready for a walk.” Becoming a walker requires “a direct dispensation from Heaven.” I wonder what was behind my choice to walk instead of taking the bus. Did I simply want to be different? If so, was it because I did not want to be identified with the majority? Because I wanted to be noticed, even if I was probably made fun of behind my back? Or did I simply want to save the bus fare? The bus simply went too fast for me. It did not allow me to pause and look at the world around me. I wanted to look at the shop windows, at the people, at the sidewalks and the trees. Thoreau does not go into detail when it comes to the psychology of the walker, but I do feel that when I decide to walk I am answering to some sort of call.Thoreau soon delves into the beauty of wildness. All of our so-called improvements “deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.” I was surprised to find in this essay a phrase I had heard in a Metallica song! “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.” The song, if you’re interested, is “Of Wolf and Man,” from the black album. I share Thoreau’s enthusiasm for nature in the raw, though I admit I like a few of civilization’s comforts. “I enter a swamp as a sacred place,--a sanctum sanctorum.” A few years ago I had the chance to visit New Orleans; I went with a girl I was dating at the time. Our time was limited, so we had to decide between a boat down the Mississippi or a swamp tour. She wanted the former, and could not find one reason why I--or anyone, for that matter--would be more interested in the latter. “It’s just a swamp!” she said. I enjoyed the Mississippi, but I’m still waiting for the opportunity to go back to New Orleans--on my own, or with the right person--and experience the swamp tour.Literature, says Thoreau, should be wild too. I was reminded of the English painter Thomas Cole, who loved the American continent because of its “want of association.” US literature fulfills the promise Thoreau envisioned. Edgar Allan Poe is an iconic American author because he is sui generis. Many of his short stories inaugurated genres. “Genius is a light which makes darkness visible,” Thoreau says, “like the lightning flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself--and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.”My favorite passage in the essay, however, has to do with knowledge and ignorance. “What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. […] Which is the best man to deal with--he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?” I don’t believe Thoreau is promoting ignorance; rather, he questions our perception of knowledge. The situation in our age is even more pitiful. We may be lead to believe we know everything simply because we carry little devices in our pockets that allow us to look up anything we want. In school we are taught what the system decides we should be taught. Universities are no better. The environment has become so politicized that in some cases more indoctrination goes on in universities than in high schools. Thoreau does not disparage knowledge; he is saying that much of what we call knowledge is a form of ignorance. In our upside-down world, unlearning is often more liberating than learning.There’s much more to Thoreau’s philosophy than can be appreciated in “Walking,” but this is an excellent essay that offers plenty of food for thought. Thoreau may (and has) been criticized for many things, but few will deny that he is an excellent writer and a stimulating thinker. I have reservations about _Walden_, but it is a book that should be read, even if it is only to disagree with it. “Walking” may not be exactly about the art of using your legs, but in its exploration of wild nature it moves us to truly become a part of the world we call our home.My next essay by Thoreau will be “Civil Disobedience.”Thanks for reading, and enjoy the book!
