The compact between writing and walking is almost as old as literature -- a walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells.

The compact between writing and walking is almost as old as literature -- a walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells.

A basic language-literacy of Nature is falling from us. And what is being lost along with this literacy is something perhaps even more valuable: a kind of language-magic, the power that certain words possess to enchant our imaginative relations with Nature and landscape.

By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.

We are fallen mostly into pieces but the wild returns us to ourselves

I remembered what Thoreau had written in his journal about thinking nothing of walking eight miles to greet a tree.

Humans are animals and like all animals we leave tracks as we walk: signs of passage made in snow, sand, mud, grass, dew, earth or moss.... We easily forget that we are track-markers, through, because most of our journeys now occur on asphalt and concrete--and these are substances not easily impressed.