EIGHT WALKING TIPS FROM THOREAU

1.  RUMINATE:  “Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.”

2.  FORGET:  “In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village…What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something other than the woods?”

3.  IT’S NOT ABOUT EXERCISE:  “The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours — as the Swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.”

4.  THINK BEYOND BORDERS:  “We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms.”

5.  GET OFF THE BEATEN PATH:  “Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.”

6.  IT’S EASIER THAN YOU THINK:  “It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount. . .. So far as my experience goes, travellers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way.”

7.  DON’T WORRY ABOUT GETTING LOST:  “If a person lost would conclude that after all he is not lost, he is not beside himself, but standing in his own old shoes on the very spot where he is, and that for the time being he will live there; but the places that have known him, they are lost,-- how much anxiety and danger would vanish.”

8.  DON’T MISS THE METAPHOR:  “There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveller, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of human life,--now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.”