Walking - Abstract
GuyeBlood
Lewis-Clark State College
Walking- Abstract 1
Walking- Abstract 2
Walking - Abstract
In Walking, the author Henry David Thoreau (1862) wishes to speak a word for the preservation
of nature, for the wildness and the absolute freedom it represents. There are many others who
would speak for civilization. Thoreau expresses his affinity for nature through sauntering, or the
art of walking. He walks each day: some days four hours, sometimes 20 miles, and still other
days he chooses a route where he walks all day without ever seeing civilization. Thoreau is
tormented by the taming of the wild. He is distressed by surveyed boundaries, the cutting down
of entire forests, and houses cropping up all around his wildemess. Thoreau alleged that
civilization of the wild makes man weak, and not all men are fit to be civilized. In every
civilized man or domesticated farm animal are wild oats still to be sown. 'Tn short," Thoreau
(1862) believes, "all good things are wild and free" (p. 16), and the preservation of the wildness
is the preservation of the world.
Walking- Abstract 3
References
Thoreau, H. D. (1862). Walking. In Tmnscendentalists. Retrieved September 29, 2008, from
http://www.transcendentalists.com/walking.htm
