What is there in this so primitive, so outmoded motion of legs and body that gives so fine a lusty pleasure to some of those who practise it? One leg before the other, feet planted swiftly on the ground in turn, lifted, planted again, carrying the whole person, slowly, indeed, (as traffic travels to-day) but surely, (until intelligence revolts and the motion ceases) along: wherein lies the charm of this animal pastime? I suppose in the fact that we are, in fact, animals, and the mere exercise of the body pleases. “The race of wild pedestrian animals,” says Timæus, “came from those who had no philosophy in any of their thoughts, and never considered at all about the nature of the heavens, because they had ceased to use the courses of the head, and followed the guidance of those parts of the soul which surround the breast.” Very true; and so we stride along, walking vegetables, one with the earth we traverse, empty of thought, lazily gluttonous of eye and ear and nose, scrambling up hill, pushing through holt and hanger, emerging on to thorn-grown, wind-swept, close-cropped down, below which spreads a far, hazy glitter of sea, plunging down the hill’s steep shoulder into green bottoms where cressy brooks wind, following ancient footpaths where they run on ancient maps, paths sometimes long lost and forgotten, leading over broken stiles and blocked hedge-gaps, across foot-bridges long vanished, over fields long ploughed, through copses and thickets which have run riot and made impenetrable with their jungly growth what was once the way through the woods. The path broadens; it becomes for a space a deep dark lane, alder- and hazel-hidden, sunk in mud. It is called on the map, for half a mile, Cockshut Lane. It comes to Standfast Barn, plunges through a gap into Cuckoo Copse, becomes again a footpath, tilts up across two steep fields towards the beech-hangered ridge of Farewell Hill. And so on and along, and it will lead you round by the Oakhangers to Cheese-combe Farm, and home by the moors.
What is there to it? You walk, you look, you hear, you smell; life arranges itself easily into a sensuous dream, a feast of sound, sight, scent, and always that light, swinging motion carrying you along, without effort, without thought. So doubtless, do the other animals feel, padding the earth, with their soft, quick feet, nose to ground, ears pricked, eyes bright. Yet they have an effect of following something; they seem ever on the chase, questing and nosing after some dream they have. Here I have the advantage of them; I follow nothing, beyond sometimes a path. I walk for walking’s sake; do they also engage in this pastime, that some consider so odd? In America, I am told, it is not practised; if you walk, it is because you have no means to drive or ride.
Some walkers, such as Socrates, seem to walk only to talk, or to think about something, and even so they prefer to stroll about cities. Socrates enjoyed the green bank of Ilissus when he was taken there, since it offered a charming spot wherein to rest and bathe his feet while he was read to; but (said Phædrus to him), when you are in the country you are like a stranger being led about by a guide. I think you never venture even outside the gates. Very true, my good friend (said Socrates), and I hope you will excuse me when you hear the reason, which is that I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country. But (added he), you have found a spell with which to draw me into the country, as hungry cows are led by waving before them a bough or a fruit. For only hold up in like manner a book before me, and you may lead me all round Attica and over the wide world. And now, having arrived, I intend to lie down, and do you choose any posture in which you can read best. Begin.
A hopeless walker, you see; the kind of walker who would read a book as he walked, or argue about the absolute, or want to sit down and rest after a hundred yards; a walker only suited to pacing meditatively about cloister or peristyle, or strolling about the agora, hailing friends and hearing news. Walking for pleasure should not be an intelligent, discursive, gossiping or bookish pastime; it should be solitary and dumb, placid and vacant of mind, an unimpeded, undistracted error over earth’s face, leg after leg, corporeal frame and urgent soul to timeless motion set.
So on we go and on, in delicious rhythm, until we tire. And the worst of that is that, when we tire, we are so many miles from home, and have to walk as many again to reach it, so that by the time we arrive there, we are fatigued indeed. A little forethought, you say, will prevent this? Very true; but walkers are not intelligent, and do not think ahead; they walk themselves weary, and develop all manner of ailments in the process. A good walk, you say, is worth them all? Again, very true.