Rebecca Solnit wrote the book on walking

 Rebecca Solnit is known for bringing “mansplaining” into the language, but I loved her book on walking.

Yesterday’s note was a plea for walking in natural places. I don’t know of anything that is better for my mental health. I think taking time to walk in natural areas would help others, and my note was about research that supports that claim.

But there are many other reasons to walk, and Solnit gets the heart of it: Walking shapes our imagination.

I’ve tried, probably without much success, to explain why, in moving to Georgia after a lifetime in Texas, I had to get into the forest, find the pond, explore the creek. Here’s how Solnit puts it:

When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for you when you get back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.

Or, even better:

A desk is no place to think on the large scale.

• Source: Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking; New York, Viking, 2000, pp. 13 and 4.