The Ways of Walking
Strolling, Sauntering, Meandering, Hiking, Wandering, Mountaineering, Backpacking, Pilgrimages
Quotations 3

Walking Quotations 1       Walking Quotations 2       Walking Quotations 3      Walking Quotations 4      Walking Quotations 5     Benefits  

Walking Quotations 6     Walking Meditation     Walking Bibliography      Ways of Walking Website      Cloud Hands Blog

“There there is nothing like a wilderness journey for rekindling the fires of life. Simplicity is part of it. Cutting the cackle. Transportation reduced to leg – or arm – power, eating irons to one spoon. Such simplicity, together with sweat and silence, amplify the rhythms of any long journey, especially through unknown, untattered territory. And in the end such a journey can restore an understanding of how insignificant you are --- and thereby set you free.”
-   Colin Fletcher, The River

"When my neighbor walks the dogs, he performs a ritual act of sacer simplicitas, to use the church Latin: "sacred simplicity."  Walking the dog is in truth a ritual of renewal and revival on an intimate scale - a small rebirth of well-being on a daily basis."
-   Robert Fulghum, From Beginning to End

"I have two doctors, my left leg and my right."
-   G. M. Trevelyan

"Freedom - to walk free and own no superior."
-   Walt Whitman

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
-   Herman Melville

"The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all."
-   Wendell Berry

"If you want to know if your brain is flabby, feel your legs."
-   Bruce Barton 

"Our philosophies must be rewritten to remove them from the domain of words and "ideas," and to plant their roots firmly in the earth."
-   William Vogt

"If you look for the truth outside yourself,
It gets farther and farther away.
Today walking alone, I meet it everywhere I step.
It is the same as me, yet I am not it.
Only if you understand it in this way
Will you merge with the way things are."
-   Tung-Shan 

"My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance―

and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces."
-  The Walk by Rainer Marie Rilke, Translated by Robert Bly

"Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed."
-   Walt Whitman

"Although the vast majority of walkers never even think of using a walking staff, I unhesitatingly include it among the foundations of the house that travels on my back."
-   Colin Fletcher, The Complete Walker III

Staff Weapons and Walking Sticks

"Our way is not soft grass, it's a mountain path with lots of rocks.  But it goes upward, forward, toward the sun."
-   Ruth Westheimer

"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.  Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.  The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like falling leaves."
-   John Muir

Sierra Nevada, CA 1984
Rock Creek Basin, Mt. Starr (12,870')
The walker in all but one of the photos on this webpage is Mike Garofalo

"All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking."
-   Friedrich Nietzsche 

"There is more to life than increasing its speed.'
-   Ghandi 

"Today I know there is nothing beyond the farthest of far ridges except a sign-post to unknown places.  The end is in the means - in the sight of that beautiful long straight line of the Downs in which a curve is latent - in the houses we shall never enter, with their dark secret windows and quiet hearth smoke, or their ruins friendly only to elders and nettles - in the people passing whom we shall never know thought we may love them.  Today I know that I walk because it is necessary to do so in order to both live and to make a living."
-  Edward Thomas,  A Fellow Walker

"Gardening is a long road, with many detours and way stations, and here we all are at one point or another.  It's not a question of superior or inferior taste, merely a question of which detour we are on at the moment. Getting there (as they say) is not important; the wandering about in the wilderness or in the olive groves or in the bayous is the whole point."
-   Henry Mitchell, Gardening Is a Long Road

"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without words and never stops at all."
-   Emily Dickinson

"If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking.  Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk."
-   Raymond Inmon

"The basic rule of thumb is to start a walk having had 16 oz. of water (a pint or half liter), then replenishing with a cup of water every 15-20 minutes. That is about a water bottle-full an hour, about a half liter or pint. End your walk with a big glass of water. That will prevent dehydration - losing too much fluid from your body. New guidelines in 2003 tell distance walkers and runners to drink as soon as thirsty."
-   Wendy Bumgardner 

"Exercise may do more than keep a healthy brain fit: New research suggests working up a good sweat may also offer some help once memory starts to slide- and even improve life for people with Alzheimer’s.  The effects were modest, but a series of studies reported Thursday found vigorous workouts by people with mild memory impairment decreased levels of a warped protein linked to risk of later Alzheimer’s — and improved quality of life for people who already were in early stages of the disease.  “Regular aerobic exercise could be a fountain of youth for the brain,” said cognitive neuroscientist Laura Baker of Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina, who reported some of the research at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.  Doctors have long advised that people keep active as they get older. Exercise is good for the heart, which in turn is good for the brain. Lots of research shows physical activity can improve cognition in healthy older people, potentially lowering their risk of developing dementia.  How much exercise? In studies from North Carolina, Denmark and Canada, people got 45 minutes to an hour of aerobic exercise three or four times a week, compared to seniors who stuck with their usual schedule."
-  Exercise is Good for the Brain

"As I went walking
That ribbon of highway
I saw above me
The endless skyway
I saw below me
The lonesome valley
This land was made for you and me."
-   Woody Guthrie, This Land is Your Land

“Including daily walks, healthy food, proper management of metabolic and vascular risk factors, slows mental decline in older people, says a new study.  The Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability, led by Professor Miia Kivipelto, assessed the effects on brain function of a comprehensive intervention aimed at addressing some of the most important risk factors for age-related dementia, such as high body-mass index and heart health.  The study involved 1260 people from across Finland deemed to be at risk of dementia, aged 60-77 years, with half randomly allocated to the intervention group, and half allocated to a control group, who received regular health advice only.  After two years, study participants' mental function was scored using the Neuropsychological Test Battery (NTB), where a higher score corresponds to better mental functioning. Overall test scores in the intervention group were 25 percent higher than in the control group. For some parts of the test, the difference between groups was even more striking-for executive functioning were 83 percent higher in the intervention group, and processing speed was 150 percent higher. Based on a pre-specified analysis, the intervention appeared to have no effect on patients' memory.  However, based on post-hoc analyses, there was a difference in memory scores between the intervention and control groups.”
-  Times of India, March 12, 2015

Benefits of Walking

 

"Improves your circulation
Shores up your bones
Leads to a longer life
Lightens mood
Can lead to weight loss
Strengthens muscles
Improves strength
Supports your joints
Improves your breath
Slows mental decline
Lowers Alzheimer’s risk
Helps you do more, longer."

– Arthritis Foundation, Walking Program, 2016

"Your mood will improve 
Your creative juices will start flowing
Your jeans will get a little looser
You will slash your risk of chronic disease
You will keep your legs looking great
You will improve your bowel regularity
Your other goals will seem to be more reachable."
-  Prevention Magazine, 7 Incredible Results You Will Get from Walking 30 Minutes Each Day," 2016

 

“Maintain a healthy weight
Prevent or manage various conditions, including heart disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes
Strengthen your bones and muscles
Improve your mood
Improve your balance and coordination.”
– Mayo Clinic, Walking: Improve Your Health, 2016

"Reduce the risk of coronary heart disease
Maintain body weight and lower the risk of obesity
Reduce your risk of breast and colon cancer
Improve blood pressure and blood sugar levels
Enhance mental well being
Reduce your risk of Type 2 diabetes
Improve blood lipid profile
Reduce your risk of osteoporosis
Reduce the risk of stroke
Lessen the severity of COPD
Increase the chances of living longer."
-  Dr. Mercola, M.D., Daily Walk Can Add 7 Years to Your Life, 2016

"It engages your buttocks with the world
It modestly reduces fat
It improves glycemic control, especially after meals
It improves triglyceride levels and lowers blood pressure, especially after meals
It might help you live longer if you do it briskly
It is well tolerated by people with arthritis
It is good for your brain
It reduces stress
It boosts immune function
It helps prevent falls in the elderly
It gives you a chance to think
It can be a kind of meditation
It is in your blood, in your genes
It enables recognition of the felt presence of immediate experience."
-  Mark Sisson, Reasons to Walk this Year, 2014

"Walking might:
Allow you to see new aspects of your local environment
Make you a bit mellower and more peaceful
Set a good example for others
Enable you to meet other people and dogs
Make for good conversations with a friend while walking
Engender more gratefulness and kindness
Lift your mood and improve your attitude
Give you time to think, reflect, or contemplate alone
Energize your body, mind, and spirit
Bring new scents and smells to your nostrils
Provide mystical experiences and epiphanies
Reduce or resolve your worries 
Enjoying good memories or testing your memory 
Allow you to feel and see the effects of our invisible Air
Give you more confidence in achieving your goals
Get you in better awareness of your feelings
Change your perspective 
Allow you to help with neighborhood watch
Let you be alone for awhile
Make your legs feel good
Appreciate the beauty in our world
Allow you to come under the 'Spell of the Sensuous'
Makes you aware of more varied sounds
Provide some time for listening to music or lectures
Reduce the onset or ameliorate physical ailments or diseases."
-  Michael P. Garofalo, Cloud Hands Blog, October 2016 

"The cardiovascular benefits of walking are biologically plausible; like other forms of regular moderate exercise, walking improves cardiac risk factors such as cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, vascular stiffness and inflammation, and mental stress. And if cardiac protection and a lower death rate are not enough to get you moving, consider that walking and other moderate exercise programs also help protect against dementia, peripheral artery disease, obesity, diabetes, depression, colon cancer, and even erectile dysfunction."
-  Harvard Medical School, Walking: Your Steps to Health, 2016

The Ways of Walking Website     Quotations, Facts, Information, Inspiration, Poetry     Blog

"Frankly, I fail to see how going for a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains can be judged less real than spending six months working eight hours a day, five days a week, in order to earn enough money to be able to come back to a comfortable home in the evening and sit in front of a TV screen and watch the two-dimensional image of some guy talking about a book he has written on a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains."
-   Colin Fletcher, The Complete Walker III

"Above all do not lose your desire to walk.  Everyday I walk myself into a state of well being and walk away from every illness.  I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.  But by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill ... if one keeps on walking everything will be alright."
-   Soren Kierkegaard.

The Spirit of Gardening

The Ways of Walking

One Old Druid's Final Journey

"It's when you are safe at home that you're having an adventure.  When you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home."
-  Thorton Wilder

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”
- Jane Austen, Persuasion  

“Of all the causes which conspire to render the life of a man short and miserable, none have greater influence than the want of proper exercise.”
-  Dr. William Buchan, 18th Century Scottish physician

 “Exercise thy lasting youth defends.”
-  John Gay, British poet

“Resting is rusting.”
-  Helen Hayes

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.  You can steer yourself any direction you choose."
-  Dr. Seuss

"True confidence comes from realizing the view."
-  Tulku Urgyen

"Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial."
-   Edward Abbey

"Walked for half an hour in the garden.  A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn.  The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains - a melancholy nature.  The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief.  A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys.  Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail."
-   Henri Frederic Amiel 

"Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth,
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose-stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass."
-   Felicia Hemans

"I can only meditate when I am walking.  When I stop, I cease to think; my mind works only with my legs."
-   Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

"Too often, the advocates of trails and linear parks along rights-of-way come up against officials who recognize only one kind of park–the squared-off kind that comes in chunks; and one kind of recreation–the supervised kind known as ‘organized sweating.’ Such officials refuse to acknowledge that there has been a change in US recreation trends, reflected in the phenomenal growth of hiking, biking, and horseback riding."
-   Constance Stallings

"The street curves in and out, up and down
in great waves of asphalt;
at night the granite tomb is noisy with starlings
like the creaking of many axles;
only the tired walker know how much there is to climb,
how the sidewalk curves into the cold wind."
-   Charles Reznikoff, Walking and Watching

“I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.”
-  Ernest Hemingway   

“To walk is to lack a place.  It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.”
-  Michel de Certeau 

“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.”
-  Henry David Thoreau 

“Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.”
-  Rebecca Solnit  

“Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.”
-  Jules Renard  

"Walking is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things.  It is the one way of freedom.  If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.”
-  Elizabeth von Arnim  

“I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbors who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.”
-  John Clare 

"Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them.  Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned.  The only friend to walk with is one... who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.”
-  C. S. Lewis

“After a day's walk everything has twice its usual value.”
-  George Macauley Trevelyan

“We ought to take outdoor walks, to refresh and raise our spirits by deep breathing in the open air.”
-  Seneca 

"When man ventures into the wilderness, climbs the ridges, and sleeps in the forest, he comes in close communion with his Creator. When man pits himself against the mountain, he taps inner springs of his strength. He comes to know himself."
-   William O. Douglas 

"When, through automation, a man’s job has become unchallenging, boring and just a way to obtain purchasing power, if he is to keep that yeastlike feeling of being a prime mover in the world, he must do something of value with his spare time."
-   Ray Lowes 

"Recreation in the open is of the finest grade. The moral benefits are all positive. The individual with any soul cannot live long in the presence of towering mountains or sweeping plains without getting a little of the high moral standard of Nature infused into his being … with eyes opened, the great story of the Earth’s forming, the history of a tree, the life of a flower or the activities of some small animal will all unfold themselves to the recreationist."
-   Arthur Carhart, 1919

Montani semper liberi.  
Mountaineers are always free.
-  A Saying in Latin

"Society as we know it is almost a conspiracy against human health. One of the main forces working to counteract that is the trailsman."
-   Steward Udall

"A garden should feel like a walk in the woods."
-   Dan Kiley

The Spirit of Gardening

The Ways of Walking

One Old Druid's Final Journey

"What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!"
-   Helen Keller

"I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me."
-   Fred Allen

"I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until sundown: for going out, I found, was really going in."
-   John Muir 

"Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein…"
-   Jeremiah 6:16 

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find resources of strength that will endure as long as life lasts."
-   Rachel Carson

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth."
-   Robert Frost, Two Roads  

"Thoughts come clearly while one walks."
-   Thomas Mann

"Happy is the man who has acquired the love of walking for its own sake!"
-   W.J. Holland

"There is this to be said for walking: It's the one mode of human locomotion by which a man proceeds on his own two feet, upright, erect, as a man should be, not squatting on his rear haunches like a frog."
-   Edward Abbey

"The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts.  The creates an odd consonance between
internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it.  A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was 
there all along, as though thinking were traveling rather than making."
-   Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

"Some people like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path."
-   Jean Anouilh

"He who limps is still walking."
-   Stanislaw J. Lec 

"Solvitur ambulando," St. Jerome was fond of saying.  To solve a problem, walk around."
-   Gregory McNamee

"We seek a renewed stirring of love for the earth. We plead that what we are capable of doing to it is often what we ought not to do. We urge that all people now determine that an untrammeled wildness shall remain here to testify that this generation had love for the next.
     We would celebrate a new renaissance. The old one found a way to exploit. The new one has discovered the Earth's limits. Knowing them, we may learn anew what compassion and beauty are, and pause to listen to the Earth's music.
     We may see that progress is not the accelerating speed with which we multiply and subdue the Earth nor the growing number of things we possess and cling to. It is a way along which to search for truth, to find serenity and love and reverence for life, to be part of an enduring harmony, trying hard not to sing out of tune."
-   David Brower

"Hiking is the best workout! ... You can hike for three hours and not even realize you're working out.  And, hiking alone lets me have some time to myself."
-   Jamie Luner

"Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk.  It is walking toward me, without hurrying."
-   Jean Cocteau

"To find new things, take the path you took yesterday."
-   John Burroughs

"Walking isn't a lost art - one must, by some means, get to the garage."
-   Evan Esar

"Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread."
-   Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Walking is the natural recreation for a man who desires not absolutely to suppress his intellect but to turn it out to play for a season."
-  Leslie Stephen

The Spirit of Gardening

The Ways of Walking

One Old Druid's Final Journey

"The wilderness is a place of rest -- not in the sense of being motionless, for the lure, after all, is to move, to round the next bend. The rest comes in the isolation from distractions, in the slowing of the daily centrifugal forces that keep us off balance."
-   David Douglas

"If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't go at noon.   But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking - one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time and a court for."
-   Edward Hoagland

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake."
-  Wallace Stevens

"Singing the same song at a different tone,
In thoughts, destined to die, unknown.
Born unto a world not of our own,
We walked together, walking alone."
-   Michael R. Anderson, Walking Alone 

" Wilderness is a place where the wild potential is fully expressed, a diversity of living and nonliving beings flourishing according to their own sorts of order. In ecology we speak of "wild systems." When an ecosystem is fully functioning, all the members are present at the assembly. To speak of wilderness is to speak of wholeness. Human beings came out of that wholeness, and to consider the possibility of reactivating membership in the Assembly of All Beings is in no way regressive."
-  Gary Snyder

"All power comes from the legs.  Through the correct training of stepping, the martial artist will be able to make quick and agile transitions during combat.  Victory in fighting depends on the proper use of footwork.  There is an old Chinese martial arts proverb that states: "To practice boxing without training the legs is a foolish and hazardous venture."  It is very important to develop the power and energy of the legs; only then can true martial power be cultivated."
-   Jerry Alan Johnson, The Essence of Internal Martial Arts 

"A French author has advanced this seeming paradox, that very few men know how to take a walk; and, indeed, it is true, that few know how to take a walk with a prospect of any other pleasure, than the same company would have afforded them at home. 
    There are animals that borrow their colour from the neighbouring body; and, consequently, vary their hue as they happen to change their place.  In like manner it ought to be the endeavour of every man to derive his reflections from the objects about him; for it is to no purpose that he alters his position, if his attention continues fixed to the same point."
-  Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

"The place where you lose the trail is not necessarily the place where it ends."
-   Tom Brown, Jr.

"Golf is a good walk spoiled."
-   Mark Twain

"It is a great art to saunter."
-   Henry David Thoreau, 1841 

"How can you explain that you need to know that the trees are still there, and the hills and the sky?  Anyone knows they are.  How can you say it is time your pulse responded to another rhythm, the rhythm of the day and the season instead of the hour and the minute?  No, you cannot explain.  So you walk."
-   Source Unknown 

"My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing."
-   Aldous Huxley

"Of all exercises walking is the best."
-   Thomas Jefferson

Walking Quotations 1       Walking Quotations 2       Walking Quotations 3      Walking Quotations 4      Walking Quotations 5  

Walking Quotations 6     Walking Meditation      Ways of Walking Website      Cloud Hands Blog

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
-   William Shakespeare, MacBeth

"Walking around
                an early spring garden--
going nowhere."
-   Kyoshi

"The beginning is in the end and the end is in the beginning."
-  Kabbalah

“Simplicity in all things is the secret of the wilderness and one of its most valuable lessons. It is what we leave behind that is important. I think the matter of simplicity goes further than just food, equipment, and unnecessary gadgets; it goes into the matter of thoughts and objectives as well. When in the wilds, we must not carry our problems with us or the joy is lost.” 
-   Sigurd F. Olson 

"The fight for free space–for wilderness and for public space–must be accompanied by a fight for free time to spend wandering in that space. Otherwise the individual imagination will be bulldozed over for the chain-store outlets of consumer appetite, true-crime titillations, and celebrity crises."
-   Rebecca Solnit

"It has been said that there are landscapes one can walk through, landscapes which can be gazed upon, landscapes in which one may dwell ...  Those fit for walking through or being gazed upon are not equal to those in which one may dwell or ramble."
-   Kuo Hsi

"Nature, and the original system that created us, must always remain somehow with us, the bedrock of our movements and actions. What is our duty? To live a life."
-   Rick Bass 

"Walkers turn to the Bibbulmun Track for all manner of reasons: enjoyment, the joy of the outdoors,
the companionship of others or solitude. But I wonder whether the Track, and time spent on the Track,
has the power to heal too.  I can’t pretend that walking the Bibbulmun healed my cancer – that had more to do with a surgeon’s skill and a family’s love.  I can’t pretend that the Bibbulmun helped in overcoming the wounds – mental and physical - of the fire.  Tons of mulch, a revegetation program and time took care of that.  But the Bibbulmun has helped to put otherwise dispiriting events into some kind of perspective, reinforcing the notion that life has to go on, come what may.  And that is a kind of healing.  There’s a neatness, a sense of order about walking the Track.  You set off in the morning for a known destination, fully aware that there’s a good chance of a safe arrival by mid-afternoon, in good time for a lie-down and a nice cup of tea before dinner.  There’s a beginning and an end to each day. You know where you’re headed, which is quite the opposite of life itself.  Maybe that’s why I like the Track. Maybe it’s simply an escape route from an increasingly silly world.  Visitors to Broome often talk of “Broome Time” which I suppose means the suspension of the daily ritual.  I suspect that “Track Time” operates in much the same way."
-  Peter Lund, A Walker's Philosophy

"To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life." 
–   John Burroughs

"The contented person enjoys the scenery of a detour."
–   Author Unknown

"Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time."
-   Steven Wright

"It's a well known fact that all spiritual people and places are very calm, serene and down to earth. When these qualities get associated with walking it makes the bond between the two stronger... how?When a person does walking at any time of the day his body is under circulation which in turn makes him healthy and if he is healthy he will be successful and success will make him spiritual to help him to remain successful.  Walking keeps the mind at rest which in turn helps one to think better and hence work better.  Walking and spirituality are related very closely because both require regular time-table, both require effort, both both help you to be successful."
-   Anuradha Mishra

A pedestrian is someone who thought there were a couple of gallons left in the tank. 

"Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow." 
-   Henry David Thoreau  

"If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are."
-   Wendell Berry

"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."
-   Chinese Proverb

"Farewell we call to hearth and hall!
Though wind may blow and rain may fall.
We must away ere the break of day.
Far over wood and mountain tall."
-   J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

"The lessons we learn from the wild become the etiquette of freedom."
-   Gary Snyder

"If a daily fitness walk could be put in a pill, it would be one of the most popular prescriptions in the world. It has so many health benefits. Walking can reduce the risk of many diseases — from heart attack and stroke to hip fracture and glaucoma. These may sound like claims on a bottle of snake oil, but they're backed by major research. Walking requires no prescription, the risk of side effects is very low, and the benefits are numerous: managing your weight, controlling your blood pressure, decreasing your risk of heart attack, boosting "good" cholesterol, lowering your risk of stroke ..."
-  AARP, Numerous Benefits of Walking

"It's amazing how much time one can spend in a garden doing nothing at all.  I sometimes think, in fact, that the nicest part of gardening is walking around in a daze, idly deadheading the odd dahlia, wondering where on earth to squeeze in yet another impulse buy, debating whether to move the recalcitrant artemisia one more time, or daydreaming about where to put the pergola."
-   Jane Garmey, A Writer in the Garden 

"You need special shoes for hiking - and a bit of a special soul as well."
-   Emme Woodhull-Bäche

"A fact bobbed up from my memory, that the ancient Egyptians prescribed  walking through a garden as a cure for the mad.  It was a mind-altering drug we took daily."
-   Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks 

Caloric Expenditures for Different Bodyweights for One Hour of Walking at Various Speeds

Caloric Expenditures Per Mile for Different Bodyweights by Walking at Various Speeds

"Paradise is the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real Earth on which we stand. Yes, God bless America, the Earth upon which we stand."
-   Edward Abbey

"Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots."
-   Henry David Thoreau, Walking

"Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind.  Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility."
-   Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

"In God's wildness lies the hope of the world -- the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness."
-   John Muir

"People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.  But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.  Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes.  All is a miracle."
-   Thich Nhat Hanh

The Spirit of Gardening

The Ways of Walking

One Old Druid's Final Journey

"What is there that confers the noblest delight?  What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him?  Discovery!  To know that you are walking where none others have walked."
-   Mark Twain 

"Now shall I walk
or shall I ride?
"Ride," Pleasure said:
"Walk," Joy replied.
-   W.H. Davies

"I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
-   Chris Howell

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul."
-   Edward Abbey

"The Road goes every on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And wither then?  I cannot say."
-   J. R. R. Tolkein, Lord of the Rings

The study found it didn't matter where you walk -- strolling indoors or outdoors similarly boosted creative inspiration. The act of walking itself, and not the environment, was the main factor. Across the board, creativity levels were consistently and significantly higher for those walking compared to those sitting.

"Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking. We finally may be taking a step, or two, toward discovering why," Oppezzo and Schwartz wrote in the study published this week in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition."
-  David Stabler 

Stanford Study Finds Walking Improves Creativity  April 24, 2014

"Other research has focused on how aerobic exercise generally protects long-term cognitive function, but until now, there did not appear to be a study that specifically examined the effect of non-aerobic walking on the simultaneous creative generation of new ideas and then compared it against sitting, Oppezzo said.

A person walking indoors – on a treadmill in a room facing a blank wall – or walking outdoors in the fresh air produced twice as many creative responses compared to a person sitting down, one of the experiments found.

"I thought walking outside would blow everything out of the water, but walking on a treadmill in a small, boring room still had strong results, which surprised me," Oppezzo said.

The study also found that creative juices continued to flow even when a person sat back down shortly after a walk."
-  Marily Oppezzo     April 24, 2014

"Keep close to Nature's heart, yourself; and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean ..."
-   John Muir

"Our true home is in the present moment.  To live in the present moment is a miracle.  The miracle is not to walk on water.  The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment…"
-  Thich Nhat Hanh

"The more zigzag the way, the deeper the scenery. 
The winding path approaches the secluded and peaceful place."
-   Huang Binhong

The Complete Guide to Walking, New and Revised: For Health, Weight Loss, and Fitness by Mark Fenton  

Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit   

Walking: A Complete Guide to the Complete Exercise by Casey Meyers 

The Spirited Walker: Fitness Walking For Clarity, Balance, and Spiritual Connection by Carolyn Kortge

"Do not feed children on a maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature. Let their souls drink in all that is pure and sweet. Rear them, if possible, amid pleasant surroundings ... Let nature teach them the lessons of good and proper living, combined with an abundance of well-balanced nourishment. Those children will grow to be the best men and women. Put the best in them by contact with the best outside. They will absorb it as a plant absorbs the sunshine and the dew."
-   Luther Burbank

"Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other."
-   M. C. Richards

"It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him [H.D. Thoreau].  He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own."
-   Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Finally, Veblen gives us a leg up, perhaps, on Kant's "purposiveness without purpose" in the poet's walking.  In his fourth chapter, Veblen writes that ". . . along with the make-believe of purposeful employment, and woven inextricably into its texture, there is commonly, if not invariably, a more or less appreciable element of purposeful effort directed to some serious end," the serious end being, in Wordsworth's case, his poetry.  Wordsworth walked a lot.  He pretended that walking was work, just like that of real men.  It was really a form of conspicuous consumption in its excess.  He had to revel in that excess and produce something others in his leisure class could appreciate.  That was his poetry."
-  Malcolm Hayward

"Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of wilderness have always been its spiritual values -- silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude -- able to be harvested by any traveler who visits."
-   David Douglas 

“There comes . . . a longing never to travel again except on foot.”
-  Wendell Berry, Remembering

"In one respect, at least, said I, after quitting the public road, in order to pursue a path, faintly tracked through the luxuriant herbage of the fields, and which left me at liberty to indulge the solitary reveries of a mind, to which the volume of nature is ever open at some page of instruction and delight; - in one respect, at least, I may boast of a resemblance to the simplicity of the ancient sages; I pursue my meditations on foot, and can find occasion for philosophic reflections, wherever yon fretted vault (the philosopher's best canopy) extends its glorious covering."
-  John Thelwall, The Peripatetic

"All walking is discovery.  On foot we take the time to see things whole."
-   Hal Borland

"It is good to collect things; it is better to take walks."
-   Anatole France

Spirituality
Quotes for Gardeners and Lovers of the Green Way

"Before supper take a little walk, after supper do the same.
-   Erasmus 

"It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end."
-   Ursula K. LeGui

"Study Nature, not books"
-   Lous Agassiz 

Here is my walking path. It is a .35 mile, asphalt paved, cul-de-sac, Kilkenny Lane, in Red Bluff, California.  Kilkenny Lane moves in an east-west direction from the front of my home to Highway 99 West.  I practice Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong in the circular area in front of my house shown the foreground of this picture.  I rarely encounter a car on Kilkenny Lane.    

"A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.
-   Paul Dudley White 

“But the beauty is in the walking -- we are betrayed by destinations.”
- Gwyn Thomas

"Always in big woods, when you leave familiar ground and step off alone to a new place, there will be, along with feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your bond with the wilderness you are going into. What you are doing is exploring. You are understanding the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place. It is the experience of our essential loneliness, for nobody can discover the world for anybody else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes common ground, and a common bond, and we cease to be alone."
-   Wendell Berry, The Unknown Wilderness 

"When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one's physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do.  Then every man one meets is an individual."
-   Aleister Crowley

"The influence of fine scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irritations and elevates our friendships."
-   Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life

"It takes days of practice to learn the art of sauntering.  Commonly we stride through the out-of-doors too swiftly to see more than the most obvious and prominent things. 
For observing nature, the best pace is a snail’s pace."
-   Edwin Way Teale, Circle of the Seasons

"We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success."
-   Henry David Thoreau
 

"Nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas." 
-   J.K. Rowling

"The man with the knapsack is never lost. No matter whither he may stray, his food and shelter are right with him, and home is wherever he may choose to stop."
-   Horace Kephart, 1917

"The world belongs to the energetic."
-   Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition."
-   Katherine Hepburn

"We live with our heels as well as head and most of our pleasure comes in that way."
-   John Muir

"It is an old custom of these people to pick up a stone and toss it on the pile.  Perhaps it is a symbolical lightening of the load they carry, perhaps a small offering to the gods of the trails."
-   Lousi L'Amour, The Lonesome Gods

"The thrill of tramping alone and unafraid through a wilderness of lakes, creeks, alpine meadows, and glaciers is not known to many. A civilization can be built around the machine but it is doubtful that a meaningful life can be produced by it.… When man worships at the feet of avalas creations. When he feels the wind blowing through him on a high peak or sleeps under a closely matted white bark pine in an exposed basin, he is apt to find his relationship to the universe."
-   William O. Douglas 

The Spirit of Gardening

The Ways of Walking

One Old Druid's Final Journey

"You have to stay in shape.  My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was sixty.  She's ninety-seven today and we don't know where the hell she is."
-   Ellen Degeneres  

“As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.”
- Woody Guthrie

"Make the commitment to gradually improve both your exercise performance and your eating habits.  Take your time, what's the hurry?  View it as a journey to improve yourself.  Although this is difficult, focus on the journey, not the end result."
-   Bob Greene