A Philosophy of Walking
Recently on impulse, I walked the Palmerston North City Circuit, a route of slightly more than 26km.*
When I was preparing myself I briefly considered taking a headphone radio, but soon abandoned the idea. Although I anticipated five or more hours of walking in my own company, I knew, that on my journey, I would be neither bored or lonely.
So what is it about walking or tramping that makes the activity so absorbing and satisfying? This is a question that is the subject of a beautifully written and recently discovered book “The Philosophy of Walking” by French philosopher Frederic Gros. The book was first published in 2011 and is translated from the original French. Here I will share a few of the treasures to be found in this gem of a book. To learn more go on line and read some of the published reviews or better still, get your own copy.
The activity described in the book as walking has more in common with tramping than simply walking or strolling. The French call the activity
la randonnée. For the record here is the Wikipedia based definition of tramping. It is defined as a recreational activity involving walking over rough country and known elsewhere as backpacking, rambling, hill walking and bushwalking.
Gros’s true walker leaves the pavement far behind. Less organized than a sport and more profound than a voyage, a long walk, Gros suggests, allows us to commune with the sublime. He insists that walking is not a competitive sport; I am not sure that some of the trampers of my acquaintance see it that way!
Through sheer force of continuous effort, the views we contemplate become more beautiful than if we had simply pulled over by the side of the road to admire them.
By physically covering the terrain, we make it ours: The beauty of the world is inscribed in us, and we in it.
We shed our identities in the course of the long, rhythmic move on two legs across the landscape, Gros says; all other ambitions fall away as we give ourselves over to the transformative powers of physical exertion.
In chapters on Nietzsche, Rousseau, Rimbaud, Thoreau and others, Gros considers the inspiration they each found in walking. Nietzsche even advised, aphoristically, “Do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement.” Gros takes this to mean that books bear in their very DNA the circumstances of their conception; we can tell when they have been composed entirely at a desk, their authors hunched and squinting over a stack of books. {Here I have drawn on a review that appeared in the New York Times.}
So as nicely diagnosed by Gros, I enjoyed my solitary walk around hometown. Was it a walk, a stroll or a tramp? I am not sure what to call it but I can record that I returned home relaxed and hungry with a small blister as an unwanted memento.
*The Palmerston North City circuit is a flat walk made up of three series elements; The River Link walkway, the Mangaone Stream walkway and the Manawatu Riverside walkway. In total the loop is a route of slightly more than 26km. For the record, on the day I walked it, the temperature was in the low twenties with a mainly overcast sky and I completed it in a little less than six hours at a “contemplative pace.”