Henry David Thoreau: Walking - The Atlantic

The writer extols the virtues of immersing oneself in nature and laments the inevitable encroachment of private ownership upon the wilderness.

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that. I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering:

related reading

• EMERSON - ESSAYS - SELF-RELIANCEarchive.vcu.edu
• Solitude | Waldencommons.digitalthoreau.org
• Walden | Project Gutenberggutenberg.org
• Literary Hub >> On the Link Between Great Thinking and Obsessive Walkinglithub.com
• Solitude and Leadership - The American Scholartheamericanscholar.org
• On the Duty of Civil Disobedienceibiblio.org
• The Project Gutenberg eBook of On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreaugutenberg.org
• The Case Against Travel | The New Yorkernewyorker.com
• Mary Oliver Wild Geesephys.unm.edu
• “The American Scholar”la.utexas.edu
• Song of Myself (1892 version) | The Poetry Foundationpoetryfoundation.org
• Man in the Arena Speech - Theodore Roosevelt 1910worldfuturefund.org