Walking

BOOK/DESCRIPTION : "Walking, or sometimes referred to as The Wild, is a lecture by Henry David Thoreau first delivered at the Concord Lyceum on April 23, 1851. It was written between 1851 and 1860, but parts were extracted from his earlier journals. Thoreau read the piece a total of ten times, more than any other of his lectures. Walking was first published as an essay in the Atlantic Monthly after his death in 1862. He considered it one of his seminal works, so much so, that he once wrote of the lecture, I regard this as a sort of introduction to all that I may write hereafter. Walking is a Transcendental essay in which Thoreau talks about the importance of nature to mankind, and how people cannot survive without nature, physically, mentally, and spiritually, yet we seem to be spending more and more time entrenched by society. For Thoreau walking is a self-reflective spiritual act that occurs only when you are away from society, that allows you to learn about who you are, and find other aspects of yourself that have been chipped away by society. Walking is an important canon in the transcendental movement that would lay the foundation for his best known work, Walden. Along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature, and George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature, it has become one of the most important essays in the Transcendentalist movement. The philosophies of Henry David Thoreau, hero to environmentalists and ecologists, profound thinker on humanity's happiness, have greatly influenced the American character. His writings on human nature, materialism, and the natural world continue to be of profound import today. In this essay, and vital to any appreciation of the great man's work, Thoreau explores: * the joys and necessities of long afternoon walks; * how spending time in untrammeled fields and woods soothes the spirit; * how Nature guides us on our walks; * the lure of the wild for writers and artists; * why all good things are wild and free, and more." ----- AUTHOR/DESCRIPTION : "Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience (originally published as Resistance to Civil Government), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and Yankee attention to practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Thoreau is sometimes referred to as an anarchist. Though Civil Disobedience seems to call for improving rather than abolishing government--I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government--the direction of this improvement contrarily points toward anarchism: 'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."