| Vol.
I, No. 5 | Cabin
Fever / Town Meeting | Feb.
19th, 2001 |
RE:Creation
A
Simple Cure for Cabin Fever
Thoughts on Thoreau's Walking He
who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all
...
... what would become of us, if we walked only in
a garden or a mall?
from Walking by Henry David Thoreau . A
Simple Cure for Cabin Fever: A Few Meandering
Thoughts on
Thoreau's Walking ... For Thoreau, walking,
like much else he thought about, seems nothing short of a religious
vocation. ... Near the beginning of his little work on walking, he
set a pretty high bar. If you are
ready to leave 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 all
your affairs, and
are a free man -- then you are ready for a walk.
If
his religious tone here strikes us as a bit stretched, we can forgive him
that. He has already taken some pains to point out that the word 'saunter'
was, most likely, "beautifully derived" from a corruption of a common
phrase of the Middle Ages ... viz., " 'from idle people who roved about the
country ... and asked charity, under pretense of going á la Sainte Terre,' to
the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, 'There goes a Sainte-Terrer,' a
Saunterer, a Holy-Lander." A
Diagnosis of Cabin Fever?
Thoreau seems to have known something of the
nature of Cabin Fever, even, though we can't know for sure, even if he did not
suffer from it himself. Living much
out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a certain roughness
of character ... So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a
softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an
increased sensibility to certain impressions.
Or,
again I am alarmed when it happens
that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in
spirit. ... But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off
the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where
my body is -- I am out of my senses. ...
The
Benefits of Walking ...
For many of us these days, unfortunately, the
possibility of a good walk too often dissolves into other, more pressing
requirements. I do know some few folks who have made their walks a part of
their daily ritual, more often than not for the exercise and health
benefits. Unfortunately, I can't count myself among them. But I do
try to get out, winter or summer, as often as possible. And when I do, I
am almost always glad of it. According to Thoreau, however, a
walk ought not at all resemble a form of exercise. ...
the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as
it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours -- as the Swinging
of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the
day.
On the other hand, he
obviously knew the essential nature of his walks for his own "health and
spirits." 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 all worldly engagements.
Meandering
...
If we do find the time, or make it, to go out the door, which way
do we go? For Thoreau, much of this little work is actually
taken up with just that question. Understandably, with the mass migrations
of the time, there are long passages devoted to the West. "Eastward I
go only by force," he tells us. "But westward I go free. Thither
no business leads me." In fact, it is here in his thoughts on the
westward expansion that one of his more popular lines is written. ... The
West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been
preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.
Indeed,
before he is done with it, Thoreau has taken the reader on a whirlwind excursion
around the world. ... But for those of us with less lofty aims, can
he provide any help or direction? Perhaps ... What
is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will
walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if
we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not
indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are
very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one.
An
Excursion into the Nature of Knowledge ...
Thoreau seems, too, not to
have been averse to letting his mind meander along with the rest of him. ...
you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which
ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth's servant to
show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but
his study is out of doors."
What
might Thoreau have ruminated over on his walks? If we take his own account
on the face of it, we can be fairly certain it wasn't about anything 'useful'. We
have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is said
that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of
a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful
Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense ...
The
Walking Spirit ...
Some of these passages may seem somewhat
contradictory, to say the least. Very well, then. ...
But maybe there is a different sort of logic to them. As Thoreau elsewhere
reminds us: It is not
every truth that recommends itself to the common sense.
But,
however far short we may come of many of his suggestions and admonitions, and
for whatever reasons, there is still one which ought to be perfectly practicable
on a walk of any distance or duration, though it may take a fair bit of practice
to get there. ... We should go
forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure,
never to return ...
If Cabin
Fever is getting to you, then, the cure may await you just beyond your
door. As for me, I'm putting my snowshoes on as soon as I type this last
ellipsis. ... .. *******
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