Solnit - Wanderlust: a history of walking

THE PACE OF THOUGHTS

Isnt it really quite extraordinary to see that, since man took his first step, no one has asked himself why he walks, how he walks, if he has ever walked, if he could walk better, what he achieves in walking... questions that are tied to all the philosophical, psychological, and political systems which preoccupy the world. HONOR DE BALZAC , THEORIE DE LA DEMARCH

An Eskimo custom offers an angry person release by walking the emotion out of his or her system in a straight line across the landscape; the point at which the anger is conquered is marked with a stick, bearing witness to the strength or length of the rage. LUCY LIPPARD , OVERLAY

We learn a place and how to visualize spatial relationships, as children, on foot and with imagination. Place and the scale of place must be measured against our bodies and their capabilities. GARY SNYDER , BLUE MOUNTAINS CONSTANTLY WALKING

Then one day walking round Tavistock Square I made up, as I sometimes make up my books, To the Lighthouse, in a great, apparently involuntary rush. VIRGINIA WOOLF , MOMENTS OF BEING

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; / But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud. WALLACE STEVENS , OF THE SURFACE OF THINGS

As a result of walking tours in Scotland while he was an undergraduate, he recalls in his autobiography, Pilgrims Way (1940), that the works of Aristotle are forever bound up with me with the smell of peat and certain stretches of granite and heather. ON JOHN BUCHAN , FIRST BARON TWEEDSMUIR , IN CHALLENGE : AN ANTHOLOGY OF THE LITERATURE OF MOUNTAINEERING

... while he himself began to walk around at a lively pace in a Keplerian ellipse, all the time explaining in a low voice his thoughts on complementarity. He walked with bent head and knit brows: from time to time, he looked up at me and underlined some important point by a sober gesture. As he spoke, the words and sentences which I had read before in his papers suddenly took life and became loaded with meaning. It was one of the few solemn moments that count in an existence, the revelation of a world of dazzling thought. LEON ROSENFELD , ON A 1929 ENCOUNTER WITH NIELS BOHR

Last Sunday I took a Walk toward highgate and in the lane that winds by the side of Lord Mansfields park I met Mr. Green our Demonstrator at Guys in conversation with ColeridgeI joined them, after enquiring by a look whether it would be agreeableI walked with him at his alderman-after-dinner pace for nearly two miles I suppose. In those two Miles he broached a thousand thingslet me see if I can give you a listNightingales, poetryon Poetical SensationMetaphysicsDifferent genera and species of DreamsNightmarea dream accompanied by a sense of touchsingle and double touchA dream relatedFirst and second consciousnessthe difference explained between will and Volitionso many metaphysicians from a want of smoking the second consciousnessMonstersthe KrakenMermaidsSouthey believes in themSoutheys belief too much dilutedA Ghost story....