The near and bare hills covered with snow look like mountains, but the mountains in the horizon do not look higher than hills.
I frequently see a hole in the snow where a partridge has squatted, the mark or form of her tail very distinct.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of taking walks daily, — not exercise the legs or body merely, nor barely to recruit the spirits, but positively to exercise both body and spirit, and to succeed to the highest and worthiest ends by the abandonment of all specific ends, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.
And this word "saunter," by the way, is happily derived "from idle people who roved about the country [in the Middle Ages] and asked charity under pretence of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till, perchance, the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of taking walks daily, — not exercise the legs or body merely, nor barely to recruit the spirits, but positively to exercise both body and spirit, and to succeed to the highest and worthiest ends by the abandonment of all specific ends, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.
And this word "saunter," by the way, is happily derived "from idle people who roved about the country [in the Middle Ages] and asked charity under pretence of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till, perchance, the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 10, 1851
I frequently see a hole in the snow where a partridge has squatted. See February 12, 1855 ("Last night perhaps, some partridges rested in this light, dry, deep snow. They must have been almost completely buried. They have left their traces at the bottom. They are such holes as would be made by crowding their bodies in backwards, slanting-wise, while perhaps their heads were left out."); February 13, 1855 (I"see where many have dived into the snow. . . then passed along a foot or more underneath and squatted there, perhaps, with their heads out, and have invariably left much dung at the end of this hole. I scared one from its hole only half a rod in front of me now.")
The art of taking walks daily. Compare Walking ("I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, . . . sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering."); see also The Maine Woods ("I asked Polis if he was not glad to get home again . . . and he said, "It makes no difference to me where I am."); June 14, 1853 ("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 in that favorable frame of mind . . . 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 . . . home is farther away than ever. Here is home"); and note to June 13, 1854 ("When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home . . . I have felt that I was not far from home after all.")
Going a la Sainte Terre. See Walking ("Some, however, would derive the word [saunter] from sans terre, ")
The art of walking
is to saunter daily with
no specific ends.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sauntering
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026
https://tinyurl.com/hdt510110
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