"Go To Grass. You Have Eaten Hay Long Enough."

To start off the new blog, I wanted something interesting, powerful, and rugged.

But alas, all I found was Gene Wilder with a beard.

I bought Walking, a long essay by Henry David Thoreau, while on a family vacation in West Virginia. The essay intends to show the reader what the true art of taking walks is. If you think you can take a walk, Thoreau disagrees. He states that he's only met two other people in his life who knew how to walk. So what does this purist say constitutes a real walk? You cannot plan where you are going. You just have to allow your legs to move you, and hope that you can find your way home like a lost dog. You have to fully make yourself a part of nature; any mindset that you had back home has to leave you entirely. "If you are ready to leave your father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again-if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk."

Thoreau's writing quickly takes on the nature of his walks- he goes all over the map. He speaks at length about his preference of swamps over nice land, his hatred of gardens, his hatred of names, his hatred of man's inclination to focus more on the world of his creation than the true, natural world, his hatred of human learning and thought,and his love of pine trees.

So if you're a person or were made by a person, HDT isn't a big fan of you.


I realized while reading this that a lot of his messages- closeness with wildness, the meaninglessness of words and symbols- have appeared many times before in things I've read. Shakespeare and Plato have said the same. And yet, no matter how many times these same sentiments may be repeated, my mind feels stretched by every reincarnation of the same idea.

Cliche and mind-blowing.

We forget, I guess. That living as wild and instinctive beings is natural. We forget that pretty much everything that we use day-to-day is made up, and every time we're reminded of it, we can't help but be shocked. No matter how many times we're told otherwise, our new natural seems to be fake. It's disgusting.