This week’s addition to the Sunday Reading list comes from pioneering Transcendentalist and proponent of Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau. It comes in the shape of his 1962 essay titled ‘Walking’ (sometimes referred to as ‘The Wild’). The essay was molded in during the course of various lectures given by Thoreau – the first being in 1951 at Concord Lyceum.
The essay is a reflection on the value of nature to mankind and how the act of walking alone acts as an avenue for self-reflection. Thoreau pits nature against society, claiming the latter has suppressed the wild natural aspects that the former grants us. Thoreau valued the work so highly that he once exclaimed:
I regard this as a sort of introduction to all that I may write hereafter.
A timely and required reading for our times, one can view the full document in PDF format here or the original publication on the Atlantic’s website here.
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