Walking: Thoreau’s Prepared Vision

Abstract

What does walking have to do with seeing? The connection seems obvious: they are related as means and ends. If you wish to see something, you need to get close enough and position yourself so as to gain a clear and unobstructed view of it. You must be “moved,” in a purely physical sense. Conversely, if you wish to get somewhere, you need to see where you are going—to watch out for obstacles, that is, to watch out for yourself, and to be sure that you are headed in the right direction. Otherwise, you might get lost, and never reach your destination. In the first case, walking is the means and seeing is the end; in the second, it is the other way around. In both cases, the end is distinct from the means (even if both happen at the same time).

It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould!—painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of us living … They teach us how to die. One wonders if the time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and as ripe …

—Thoreau, “Autumnal Tints”

Wisdom does not inspect, but behold. We must look a long time before we can see.

—Thoreau, “Natural History of Massachusetts”