Wanderlust

Posted for Melany Rivera H2 

Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

When you hear the term walking, you don’t really think much of it. It’s usually just one foot in front of the other to get to your destination. In Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit , she argues that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure , but also for political, aesthetic, and social meaning. Solnit also mentions people that enjoy walking for “sport” have shaped our culture from philosophers to poets. It makes sense, right? Walking around helps us clear our heads and prepare for whatever we need to do. Multiple philosophers are found walking around searching for ideas or maybe just for exercise. There is also not much to the history of walking, mainly because it is human instinct to get up and moving around as a toddler. It is, however, an “unwritten secret history that can be found in books, songs, poems, etc.”

What exactly does walking mean? According to the dictionary, it is moving at a regular and fairly slow pace by lifting and setting down each foot in turn, never having both feet off the ground at once. To Solnit , she describes it as one leg being the pillar between the earth and sky while the other is a pendulum swinging from behind and alternate as each step is taken. During this natural movement, Solnit explains that walking is a state in which the mind, body, and world are aligned. Which seems kind of weird to think about, but it explains how your mind wanders off while you are wandering around. She continues saying, “ it is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, and arrivals.”

Walking is one of the factors that helped influenced philosophy. Yeah, surprising . There is a long historical association between walking and philosophizing. Mainly because there wasn’t a lot of distractions back then as there is now. Solnit readily acknowledges that the subjective experience of the walker is what shapes the route of this imaginative meandering through the various reaches of culture. I quote, “To use a walking metaphor, it trespasses through everybody else’s field — through anatomy, anthropology, architecture, gardening, geography, political and cultural history, literature, sexuality, religious studies — and doesn’t stop in any of them on its long route. “ The history of walking is everyone’s history and we are retracing the steps of someone else.

                Peripatetic. A term used for traveling place to place. It was briefly mentioned in the book, but it took my interest and I decided to google it. Aristotle, who was fifty at the time, decided to make a school. It was not an ordinary school with desks and chairs, instead the dirt and stone roads made the classroom. This school was known as Lyceum. Research students aka Aristotle’s followers were called peripatetics because of the obvious reason of following Aristotle around.  Imagine not being able to keep up with the teacher in the lesson and walking.

QUIZ QUESTIONS

1. The history of walking is a what in books, songs, poems, etc?  
2. Solnit describes one leg as the pendulum, how does she describe the other one? 
3. What were Aristotle’s research students who followed him called? 
4. How old was Aristotle when he formed the Lyceum? 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Solnit believes we live in a “car-dependent and accelerated world” Do you agree or not?
2. If we had peripatetic ways implemented in all college classes, would you attend?
3. Is walking a bad thing or are people lazy nowadays?

Also, here is a funny comic I found about types of philosophers in the rain.