WALKING AS SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE: Henry Thoreau and the Inward Journey

WALKING AS SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE: Henry Thoreau and the Inward JourneyAuthor(s): David C. SmithSource: Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 74, No. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1991), pp.129-140Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41178592 .

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WALKING AS SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE: Henry Thoreau and the Inward Journey

David С Smith

^merican Transcendentalism continues to interest a diverse group of philosophers, theologians, environmentalists, edu-

cators, historians, sociologists, and literary critics. Its idealistic focus on the human potential contrasts sharply with recent phi- losophies of naturalism, existentialism, absurdism, and nihil- ism. In particular, the Transcendental tenets that a person's inner resources are sufficient to meet any challenge, that following the intuitions of one's own genius leads to unexpected success, challenge the view that humankind, defeated by imper- sonal external forces, is incapable of affecting the quality and purpose of life.

Transcendentalism was largely a response to John Locke's claim that knowledge originates through the senses, and to the claim of formal religion that spiritual truths are dependent on external revelation. The Transcendentalists of mid-nine- teenth-century New England held, to the contrary, that primary truths, especially spiritual truths, were not channeled through the senses but were intuited; the source for real knowledge dwelt within each person. The Transcendentalists believed that divinity dwelt within the self, and they sought the world of the mind as the source for ultimate spiritual truth.1

The emphasis in Transcendentalism was always on internalization, on seeking the truth within. Emerson argued that "every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his

David С Smith is Professor of English and Chair of the Department of Eng- lish and Speech at Southern College of Seventh-Day Ad ven tis ts. He is com- pleting a book based on his dissertation: "Henry David Thoreau: The Transcendental Saunterer" (forthcoming from Frederic C. Beil in 1992), and is researching Thoreau's boating experiences and ties to various environmen- tal movements.

Soundings 74.1-2 (Spring/Summer 1991). ISSN 0038-1861.



130 SOUNDINGS David С. Smith

mind and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due."2 Thoreau claimed that if a man followed "the faintest but constant sug- gestions of his genius, which are certainly true," his course would lead him to the place where he should be.s Following one's inner voice, Transcendentalists believed, led to perfect self-sufficiency. Emerson's admonition in "Self Reliance": "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string" (2:47) pronounced the credo.

If Transcendentalists agreed on the paramount importance of intuition and self-reliance, they disagreed about how one could best live a Transcendental life. Some, like Bronson Al- cott and George Ripley, placed their faith in communal living. The communes which they established, Fruitlands and Brook Farm, offered places where people could follow their intuitions while sharing such activities as work, education, and recreation. Believing that young children had the purest intuitions, Alcott also formed his own school, where he used the Socratic method to elicit and record the sayings of his young students. A few Transcendentalists like Theodore Parker resorted to the world of theology and the pulpit. Emerson sought fulfillment through private meditation and reading, public lectures, infor- mal conversations with his disciples, and of course in writing itself.

But Henry Thoreau discovered Transcendental mysteries in the realities of everyday existence, primarily through sauntering, a form of walking which led to self-discovery and spiritual renewal. Many who know the Thoreau of Waiden and "Civil Disobedience" do not realize that he walked four or more hours nearly every day of his adult life, and that each walk marked an attempt to discover within himself the thoughts and intuitions which would tell him who he was, how he was to live, and what his proper relationship should be to self, nature, others, and God. He considered these walks the "enterprise and adventure of the day,"4 and felt that he could not "preserve [his] health and spirits" unless he sauntered daily "through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements" (Writings 5:207). Claiming in his Journal that "it is a great art to saunter" ([Princeton]



Walking as Spiritual Disdpline 131

1:304), 5 Thoreau developed the art of walking into a highly cul- tivated spiritual discipline.

I

Thoreau spent more of his waking hours walking in nature than in any other activity. His quest to know nature, to discover her secrets, led him to saunter in Concord day after day, in every kind of weather and circumstance, in every season. His writings testify to his fascination with the natural landscape around him. "You must be outdoors long, early and late, and travel far and earnestly, in order to perceive the phenomena of the day. Even then much will escape you," he wrote in his Jour- nal (12:1513). In "Walking" he observed:

My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. (Writings 5:211)

But Thoreau's rambles were driven by more than a hunger to know nature. What he really sought in his walks were Tran- scendental insights:

I take all these walks to every point of the compass, and it is always harvest-time with me. I am always gathering my crop from these woods and fields and waters, and no man is in my way or interferes with me. My crop is not their crop. ... I am not gathering beans and corn. Do they think there are no fruits but such as these? I am a reaper; I am not a gleaner. ... I go abroad over the land each day to get the best I can find, and that is never carted off even to the last day of November, and I do not go as a gleaner.

The farmer has always come to the field after some material thing; that is not what a philosopher goes there for. (Journal 10:1205,1206)

Thoreau urged, "You must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking" (Writings 5:210). Original and creative thoughts, not scientific observa- tions of natural phenomena, were his real quarry. He sauntered in the world of nature in order to pursue the world of thought: "How you can overrun a country, climb any ram- part, and carry any fortress, with an army of alert thoughts!




.... You fail in your thoughts, or you prevail in your thoughts only."6

Thoreau practiced a form of internal sauntering which allowed his mind to respond freely to the stimuli provided by the surrounding environment. His preference was to go "a- huckleberrying in the fields of thought" (Journal 12:1532). In Waiden he shared his conviction that his "head [was] an organ for burrowing," and resolved to "mine and burrow [his] way through these hills" (98). The sauntering which interested him most was within himself; "The landscape lies fair within" he noted in his Journal ([Princeton] 1:171).

After sounding the call to explore the inner landscape in Waiden: "Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought" (321), Thoreau resolved in "life without Principle" to seek "the gold within me."7 In his essay "Reform and Re- formers" he established the importance of this inward quest:

How infinitely trackless yet passable are we. Is not our own interior white on the chart? Inward is a direction which no traveller has taken. Inward is the bourne which all travellers seek and from which none desire to return. . . .

Most whom I meet in the streets are, so to speak, outward bound, they live out and out, are going and coming, looking before and behind, all out of doors and in the air. I would fain see them inward bound, retiring in and in, farther and farther every day. . . .8

Thoreau's/ottnwi/ statement, "Let us migrate interiorly without intermission" ([Princeton] 1:119) charts the direction his walks took.

II

The success of Thoreau's internal sauntering depended on the harmonious interaction of body and mind. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: "The brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together."9 Mindful of the importance of coordinating these two aspects of his being, he noted in his Journal, "I never feel that I am inspired unless my body is also. . . . They are fatally mistaken who think that while they strive with their minds, that they may suffer their bodies to stagnate in luxury or sloth" (1:137,138). Walking helped Thoreau keep his body fit and his mind sharp.



Walking as Spiritual Discipline 133

Physical vitality would enhance mental acuity. Physical fit- ness was never an end to itself: "But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called" (Works 5:209). The body's role was to stimulate the mind: "The mind may perchance be persuaded to act, to energize, by the action and energy of the body. Any kind of liquid will fetch the pump" (Journal 2:262). Aware that "the mind never makes a great and successful effort without a corresponding energy of the body,"10 he argued that a good mind relies upon a good body because of the energy needed to walk and to think: "A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as his brain. We exaggerate the importance and exclusiveness of the headquar- ters. Do you suppose they were a race of consumptives and dyspeptics who invented Grecian mythology and poetry? ... I trust we have a good body then" (Journal 13:1569,1570).

In sauntering, mental circulation would correspond to the circulation of the blood:

Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of thought burst forth and fertilize my brain. . . . Only while we are in action is the circulation perfect. (Journal 2:245)

He knew that "the body, the senses, must conspire with the mind. . . . The intellect is powerless to express thought without the aid of the heart and liver and of every member" (Journal 2:254).

Here Emerson fully agreed. He held that "walking has the best value as gymnastics for the mind" (12:141), and many have testified to the holistic nature of man's being and to the power of walking to induce thought. Today, of course, the relationship between physical and mental activity is readily recog- nized. John Davis notes how walking helps free "our minds for original thought," leading the way to creative thinking.1 1 "The very movement" of rambling, observes Hal Borland, "seems to stir the mind into action. The jolt of even the smoothest gait tends to loosen ideas, give them a chance to rub against each other and mingle and find new proportion and arrange- ment."12 From a scientific point of view, walking increases the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood vessels, making possible




the delivery of more pure oxygen to the brain. This rejuve- nates thinking.13

Ill All of this, of course, Thoreau believed and practiced. What

interested him, however, was not merely that walking stimulated thinking, but that it fostered a special kind of thinking - spiritual intuitions which flowed spontaneously and creatively during the sauntering adventure. The influences ornature and a receptive mind produced these insights. Emerson believed that nature was a prime medium for communicating spiritual facts: "When man has worshipped [God] intellectually, the no- blest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it" (1:62). Arguing that "there seems to be a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material forms," Emerson claimed that "the visible cre- ation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world" (1:34,35). Thus "every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact" (1:26).

According to Emerson, "Every appearance in nature corre- sponds to some state of the mind" (1:26), and Thoreau's task was to cultivate an openness to the influences of the environment. "We do not determine what we will think," Emerson argued. "We only open our senses, clear away as we can all obstruction from the fact, and suffer the intellect to see" (2:328). Thoreau felt that if he could think with a certain "carelessness" he was "sure to be filled" by the influence of the environment (Journal 13:1595).

Thinking with a certain "carelessness" produced for Thoreau the type of Transcendental experiences he sought. While he rambled, his thoughts sauntered freely in their own direction. His Journal account of a road hike reveals the very open nature of the internal sauntering which he enjoyed during his many walks:

On such a road ... I walk securely, seeing far and wide on both sides, as if I were flanked by light infantry on the hills, to rout the provincials, as the British marched into Concord, while my grenadier thoughts keep the main road. That is, my light- armed and wandering thoughts scour the neighboring fields, and so I know if the coast is clear. With what a breadth I advance! I




am not bounded by the walks. I think more than the road full

While I am abroad, the ovipositors plant their seeds in me; I am fly-blown with thought, and go home to hatch and brood over them. (2:229)

Such free thinking was essential. If Thoreau walked bodily into nature but his thoughts remained focused on everyday concerns, he experienced considerable frustration. He found that in order to saunter effectively he had to purge his mind of all mundane concerns:

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my ob- ligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot eas- ily 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. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? (Writings 5:211)

Thoreau's walks carried him away from the city because the city and the people in it reminded him of things which hampered freethinldng. Concerns about the affairs of men impeded his quest to saunter within; temporal thoughts blocked intuition. "The baseness of politicians spoils my walks" he complained (Journal 6:765). The beauty and tranquility of nature could not serve Thoreau's sauntering unless his internal state was re- sponsive to the external environment.

On rare occasions, even when he had rid himself of temporal concerns, Thoreau discovered that the environment could hamper his thinking: "At length, we plodded along the dusty roads, our thoughts became as dusty as they; all thought indeed stopped, thinking broke down, or proceeded only passively in a sort of rhythmical cadence of the confused material of thought" (Writings 5:150). A dusty road, an improper state of mind, or a body unfit for sauntering could hinder Thoreau's quest.

Normally, however, Thoreau had little difficulty responding to the environment. He allowed the landscape to play against his mind in such a way that it, like the movement of his body, stimulated his thinking and inspired original insights. Each




change in weather, season, or view elicited a corresponding mental image or thought.

In one Journal record of a walk marked by quiet and isolation, Thoreau commented:

I am soothed by the delicious stillness of the evening, save that on the hills the wind blows It is an atmosphere burdensome with thought. . . . The din of trivialness is silenced. I float over or through the deeps of silence. ... My life had been a River Platte, tinkling over its sands but useless for all great navigation, but now it suddenly became a fathomless ocean. It shelved to unimagined depths. (6:770)

Quietness and solitude plunged him deep into the interior of his own mental ocean, triggering a steady flow of insights. A harsh, winter scene, however, affected his thinking quite differ- ently, constricting his thoughts and paring the fat away: "Friends long since gone there, and you left to walk on frozen ground, with your hands in your pockets Ah, but is not this a glorious time for your deep inward fires? . . . What do the thoughts find to live on? . . . Does not each thought become a vulture to gnaw your vitals?" (Journal 3:302). A "clear, cold November light" caused his thoughts to "sparkle like the water surface and the downy twigs" (Journal 12:1530). Sauntering by a river loosened his thinking, making his thoughts free-flowing and expansive:

What a relief and expansion of my thoughts when I come out from that inland position by the graveyard to this broad river's shore! . . . Here the earth is fluid to my thought, the sky is re- flected from beneath. . . . There my thoughts were confined and trivial, and I hid myself from the gaze of travellers. Here they are expanded and elevated, and I am charmed by the beautiful river-reach. . . . There is something in the scenery of a broad river equivalent to culture and civilization. Its channel conducts our thoughts as well as bodies to classic and famous ports, and allies us to all that is fair and great. I like to remember that at the end of half a day's walk I can stand on the bank of the Merri- mack. It is just wide enough to interrupt the land and lead my eye and thoughts down its channel to the sea. (Journal 11:1315)

For Thoreau, it was impossible to walk through the landscape without being affected internally. He comments that "the scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer" (Journal 2:262). This internalization process could be ini- tiated by any external feature, as happened during a mountain




hike when he found that the higher altitude of the mountain and the uneven terrain "suggested so many thoughts" and affected him so that he "no longer thought and reasoned as in the plain" (Journal 14:1681). Walking in the rain, Thoreau observed in his Journal that "this rain is good for thought. It is especially agreeable to me as I enter the wood and hear the soothing dripping on the leaves. It domiciliâtes me in nature" (10:1289). Smooth water and the humming of mosquitoes drove his thoughts "inward, even as clouds and trees are re- flected in the still, smooth water. There is an inwardness even in the mosquitoe's hum" (Journal 6:765). The ripeness of an October day made him "riper for thought, too" (Journal 10:1199). Every feature of the external landscape influenced Thoreau's exploration of his inner landscape.

IV

Thoreau's rambles yielded rich spiritual rewards. They transformed his life, satisfying his Transcendental desires in a greater way than did anything else he attempted. How dependent his personal sense of well-being was upon these walks is evident in this Journal reflection:

There is nothing so sanative, so poetic, as a walk in the woods and fields. . . . Nothing so inspires me and excites such serene and profitable thought I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful. . . . This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of thoroughwort, or bone- set, to my intellect. This is what I go out to seek. (9:1104)

Thoreau highly valued the sense of personal freedom and iden- tity which sauntering provided. He found that he could "re- cover the lost child that [he] was." He felt it essential to be "fancy-free" and observed, "There [in walking] I have freedom in my thought, and in my soul am free" (Journal 2:225,226).

As Thoreau walked, the environment worked its magic on him, pulling intuitions out of his subconscious:

This seems the true hour to be abroad sauntering far from home. Your thoughts being already turned toward home, your walk in one sense ended, you are . . . open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before. Then the dews begin to descend in your mind, and its atmosphere is




strained of all impurities; and home is farther away than ever. Here is home; the beauty of the world impresses you. There is a coolness in your mind as in a well. life is too grand for supper. (Journal 5:592)

A walk in the rain touched the psychological self: "You feel the fertilizing influence of the rain in your mind. The part of you that is wettest is fullest of life, like the lichens. You discover evidences of immortality not known to divines. You cease to die" (Journal 10:1248). Picking berries fostered spiritual reflection: "The slight distraction of picking berries is favorable to a mild, abstracted, poetic mood, to sequestered or transcendental thinking. I return even more fresh to my mood from such slight interruptions" (Journal 4:466). Drinking from a stream expanded the self- "I do not drink in vain. I have swallowed something worth the while. The day is not as it was before I stooped to drink. . . . There were some seeds of thought, methinks, floating in that water, which are expanding in me" (Jour- nal 2:242).

Thoreau's intuitions launched him into ecstatic spiritual states; they lifted him far above the mundane world. Typical of these experiences is the time when he discovered a particular flower, the johnswort:

It affected me, this tender dome-like bud, within the bosom of the earth, like a temple upon the earth, resounding with the worship of votaries. Me thought I saw the flames in yellow robes within it. ... May I lead my life the following year as innocently as [these flowers] I anticipate nature. Destined to become a fair yellow flower above the surface to delight the eyes of children and its Maker. It offered to my mind a litde temple into which to enter and worship. (Journal 4:515)

Every observed phenomenon offered Thoreau a chance to raise his consciousness to a spiritual plane. He resolved, "I would fain improve every opportunity to wonder and worship, as a sunflower welcomes the light. The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and im- mortal I become" (Journal 9:1063,1064).

In his Journal Thoreau observed: "The eternity which I de- tect in Nature I predicate of myself also. How many springs I have had this same experience! I am encouraged, for I recog- nize this steady persistency and recovery of Nature as a quality of myself" (8:896). To discover the spiritual element within




himself was, of course, the most affirming, most truly Tran- scendental experience he could have. Hiking across a frozen pond, Thoreau found the purity of the snow suggesting a divine quality within himself: "I go across Waiden. My shadow is very blue. It is especially blue when there is a bright sunlight on pure white snow. It suggests that there may be something divine, something celestial in me" (7:839).

V

Thoreau's approach to walking as spiritual discipline offers a pattern for self-discovery open to the modern walker. In "Walking" Thoreau advocated spiritual sauntering:

They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pre- tend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. . . . For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Her- mit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels. (Writings 5:205,206)

like Thoreau, we can use physical energy to spark mental energy; we can walk in nature, purged of mundane concerns and open to the world of spirit. Seeking the world within, we can reap the fruits of self-discovery and spiritual renewal. As Ann Zwinger notes, Thoreau's walks "entice us to wander. He could have given us no greater gift."14

Portions of this article are drawn from the author's copyrighted dissertation and are excerpted from his forthcoming book to be published by Frederic С Beil.

NOTES

1. Two very informative studies of Transcendentalism are Paul F. Boiler, American Transcendentalism, 1830-1860: An Intellectual Inquiry (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974) and Brian M. Barbour, ed., American Transcen- dentalism: An Anthology of Criticism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973).

2. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cente- nary Edition, 12 vols. (New York: AMS Press, 1979) 1:340. All references from Emerson are taken from this edition, and volume and page numbers are cited in the text.




3. Henry David Thoreau, Waiden, ed. J. Lyndon Shanley (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971) 216. All references from Waiden are taken from this edition and page numbers are cited in the text.

4. Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Waiden Edi- tion, 20 vols. (Boston: The Riverside Press, 1906) 5:209. All references from this edition are acknowledged in the text by Writings and the volume and раке numbers.

5. Journal citations are taken from three sources: Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, ed. Bradford Torrey and Frances H. Allen, 1906 (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1962) 14 vols, bound as 2; Henry David Thoreau, Journal Vol. 1: 1837-1844, ed. Elizabeth Hale Witherell, et al. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981); and Henry David Thoreau, Journal Vol 2: 1842-1848, ed. Robert Sattelmeyer (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984). Citations from the two Princeton volumes are acknowledged in the text by [Princeton], and volume and page numbers are given in- text for all three editions.

6. Henry David Thoreau, The Correspondence of Henry Thoreau, ed. Walter Harding and Carl Bode (New York: New York UP, 1958) 558.

7. Henry David Thoreau, Reform Papers, ed. Wendell Ghck (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980) 164.

8. Thoreau, Reform Papers 193, 194. 9. Thoreau, The Correspondence of Henry Thoreau 220.

10. Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrmack Rivers, ed. Carl F. Hovde, William L. Howarth, and Elizabeth Witherell (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980) 106.

11. John T. Davis, Walking! (Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1979) 47.

12. Hal Borland, "To Own the Streets and Fields," The Gentle Art of Walking, ed. George D. Trent (New York: Random House, 1971) 11.

13. ВШ Gale, The Wonderful World of Walking (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1979) 64.

14. Ann Zwinger, "The Quintessential Wanderer, The Thoreau Society Bulletin 169 (Fall 1984): 1,2.



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WALKING AS SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE: Henry Thoreau and the Inward Journey

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