New ways

“You’re doing nothing when you walk, nothing but walking. But having nothing to do but walk makes it possible to recover the pure sensation of being, to rediscover the simple joy of existing, the joy that permeates the whole of childhood.” 

“So that walking, by unburdening us, prising us from the obsession with doing, puts us in touch with that childhood eternity once again. I mean that walking is so to speak child’s play. To marvel at the beauty of the day, the brightness of the sun, the grandeur of the trees, the blue of the sky: to do that takes no experience, no ability. ”

“It is therefore sensible, incidentally, to distrust people who walk too much and too far: they have already seen everything and only make comparisons. The eternal child is one who has never seen anything so beautiful, because he doesn't compare. So when we set off for a few days, a few weeks, we are not just leaving behind our jobs, neighbours, affairs, habits and troubles; but also our complicated identities, our faces and masks. None of that can hold for long, because walking never calls for anything but the body.”

“None of your knowledge, your reading, your connections will be of any use here: two legs suffice, and big eyes to see with. Walk alone, across mountains or through forests. You are nobody to the hills or the thick boughs heavy with greenery. You are no longer a role, or a status, not even an individual, but a body, a body that feels sharp stones on the paths, the caress of long grass and the freshness of the wind.”

“When you walk, the world has neither present nor future: nothing but the cycle of mornings and evenings. Always the same thing to do all day: walk. But the walker who marvels while walking (the blue of the rocks in a July evening light, the silvery green of olive leaves at noon, the violet morning hills) has no past, no plans, no experience. He has within him the eternal child.”

(Frédéric Gros, “A Philosophy of Walking”)