However ultrafast and mobile our lives have become, the oldest and slowest mode of human movement is making a steady comeback. For walkers anywhere, five inspiring 21st century companions connecting mind, feet and soul.
WANDERLUST (Rebecca Solnit)
If there is a contemporary successor book to David Henry Thoreau’s 1862 essay Walking it is Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust. Published at the turn of the century there is no book that more deeply explores the anthropology of walking. That sounds like a hard academic read but it never is. From its significance biologically, historically, politically, socially, psychologically, Solnit ventures off-road into the small moments, the ways in which walking turns us into ourselves.
THE OLD WAYS (Robert Mcfarlane)
In the The Old Ways Robert Mcfarlane takes us on a soul-stirring expedition of how people relate to ancient paths, how we are defined by the old ways even as we think they are defined by us. The book covers Icknield Way in southeast England, trails on Scotland’s Cairgorm massive, pathways of the sea, pilgrimage routes in the Himalayas, the occupied hills of the West Bank, the lesser known routes of Spain’s Camino and the perilous Broomway mudflats of Essex. McFarlane gives us profound insight into the human code of pathways, traveling with fellow contemporary and long gone authors, scientists, sailors, vagarious collectors and pilgrims of the most curious kinds.
THE LAST GREAT WALK (Wayne Curtis)
Just over a century ago walking was a major spectator sport. The automobile revolution was at the doorstep of a radical makeover of America’s urban and rural landscape. Pedestrianism was still the dominant mode of transport and just about to fade away rapidly. Charles Payton Weston made his living from walking. In 1909, at 70 years of age, he leaves New York City to walk to San Francisco in 100 days with a plan to cover an astonishing 4,000 miles on foot for six days per week (Sunday still being the God-given day of rest in 1909). Wayne Curtis follows Weston’s journey but the real story he tells is the one of the battle between pedestrianism and modern transport, one swiftly won by the latter around a century ago. Curtis tells the end-of-era tale of how all else changed when walking vanished from the American urban cityscape and the mindset of citizens, architects, business people, politicians and bureaucrats. The book is well-paced brisk read. It is not a depressing account of the lost art of walking: Curtis also covers the steady and surefooted comeback of walking in the 21st century.
OUT OF EDEN (Paul Salopek)
Immersive storytelling and slow journalism are popular antidotes to news as entertainment. They have not (re)conquered our world yet but there are countless ventures out there, some of them supported by major storytelling platforms. The most daring and far-reaching of these experiments is the collaboration between National Geographic and Pulizter Prize winner Paul Salopek. For the Out of Eden project Salopek started his 21,000 mile foot journey in Ethiopia in 2013. From there he has been retracing the pathways of the first humans out of Africa and across the world at three miles per hour. A myriad of educational, research and media projects have sprung from his storytelling. Salopek is presently walking along the Silk Road in Kyrgyzstan.
A PHILOSOPHY OF WALKING (Frédéric Gros)
The history of philosophy (and therefore our world) would look radically different -that is: a lot poorer- if it was not for walking. French author and philosophy professor Frédéric Gros walks us though the act of walking in the lives and (mis)fortunes of a long list of thinkers and poets: Baudelaire, Ghandi, Kant, Kiergekaard, Nietsche, Rimbaud, Rousseau, Thoreau, Wordsworth and others. Their addiction to and escape into walking fascinates. Gros thesis: walking was not an aid to their writing or actions; it often was one and the same. As a supplement to the book and a reminder that walking at its core is an act of disobedience read this brilliantly funny and insightful interview by Carole Cadwalladr with the author.
