all the time, as much as possible
Walking, they tell me, is good for you.
Greek philosopher Diogenes uttered the phrase Solvitur Ambulando, which means “It is solved by walking.” Erasmus of Rotterdam, teacher and philosopher 500 years ago, recommended a walk before and after supper. 16th and 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes had an inkwell built into his walking stick to better keep track of brainstorms while he was walking.
Philosopher, writer and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, “When I stop [walking] I cease to think. My mind only works with my legs.” There is Henry David Thoreau, who probably walked a quarter of a million miles, “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least — and it is commonly more than that — sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from worldly engagements.”
Naturalist, geologist, writer and firebrand Charles Darwin walked around Sand-walk, his arboretum, every morning and afternoon with Polly, his little fox-terrier. Miles Malleson wrote about his friend Bertrand Russell, who was another of those polymath brainiacs, excelling in philosophy, logic, mathematics, history, writing and political activism, “Every morning Bertie would go for an hour’s walk by himself, composing and thinking out his work for that day. He would then come back and write for the rest of the morning, smoothly, easily and without a single correction.”
Don’t forget that zany Friedrich Nietzsche who was all those things the guys above were. He said, “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” He would arise at dawn and walk around the countryside until late morning. In the afternoon he would take a two-hour hike through the forest. He’d make it home late afternoon and then begin his writing for the day.
The romantic poets? William Wordsworth hit a peak of fourteen miles a day. So did Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
I continue to try to woo Lisa. P B Shelley helps when I quote from Love’s Philosophy…
See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
…
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea —
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
Some philosopher said…
One day hiking is better therapy than a year of visits to the shrink.
In my darkest times I have to walk, sometimes alone, in some green place.
— Barbara Kingsolver
Thus if one just keeps on walking everything will be all right.
— Søren Kierkegaard
Walking is man’s best medicine.
— Hippocrates
If you are in a bad mood, go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood, go for another walk.
— Hippocrates
I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.”
— Henry David Thoreau
