Sauntering

We met Thoreau yesterday, in the company of his faithful dog, Ruby, whose joyful presence inspires the world around her to reveal its secrets. Immediately after greeting us on the trail, he told us, beaming with delight, that he’d discovered a very tall dogwood in bloom, which he said is a Pacific dogwood. The tree, the tallest of its kind we’ve ever seen, is just visible from the main path, but he found it in a roundabout way, because he’s one who will follow any little game trail to see where it leads. Doing so has taken him on many an adventure, whereas most of us keep to the main track as we log our minutes and miles.

Thoreau, whose real name is Joe, dresses well for the part. He wears rugged clothing, and shoes that will withstand the barbs and thorns of nettles and berries. He told us that he’d walked through poison oak. He said he gathers the nettles for tea. He named two or three kinds of berries he’d noticed, and did his best to describe the route he’d partly followed and partly made for himself. What impressed us most was that even here, in this little state park by the river, there’s an inexhaustible number of things that are known only to the land itself, to the birds and the trees, from the microscopic underfoot to the sky overhead.

In our time of life, and indeed whatever our age, if we’re to undertake a closer reading not only of books, but of ourselves and of the world, we need to cultivate Thoreau’s — and Ruby’s, and Joe’s — independent spirit and quality of attention. We must in all respects be participants and explorers, rather than mere bystanders and those who never stray from the well-beaten path. We must discover in ourselves the genius of sauntering, as Thoreau puts it — the art of walking as if we’re going à la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land.

At the time we met, and for the whole time we were out, there was a light rain. But the atmosphere was so magical that hurrying through our walk to avoid getting wet was the last thing on our minds. The field daisies and dandelions were delighted. So were we, muddy feet and all.

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