I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, ascontrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as aninhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. Iwish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for thereare enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee andevery one of you will take care of that.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understoodthe art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so tospeak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived “fromidle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity,under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, tillthe children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” aSaunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, asthey pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go thereare saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derivethe word from sans terre without land or a home, which, therefore, inthe good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at homeeverywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits stillin a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer,in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is allthe while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer thefirst, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sortof crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquerthis Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, whoundertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are buttours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we setout. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on theshortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never toreturn,—prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to ourdesolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother andsister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,—if youhave paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and area free man; then you are ready for a walk.
To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have acompanion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather anold, order—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, butWalkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The chivalric andheroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, orperchance to have subsided into, the Walker—not the Knight, but WalkerErrant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People.
We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art; though,to tell the truth, at least if their own assertions are to be received, most ofmy townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but they cannot. No wealth canbuy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital inthis profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a directdispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the familyof the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it istrue, can remember and have described to me some walks which they took tenyears ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half an hourin the woods; but I know very well that they have co