That other kind of walker

 Some people walk without seeing anything at all.

These days, I try to pay attention to the natural world around me. I’m apt to see the days that I don’t notice something new as a day when I was distracted, not paying attention.

Rebecca Solnit’s book reminded me that some walkers have other things in mind.

Rousseau, for example. His Reveries of a Solitary Walker is the record of what he thought during a series of 10 walks. He improvises on the meaning of a phrase, lunches into recollections, descends into rants.

Some walkers take refuge in thought, as I take refuge in looking at plants, birds and rocks.

Solnit points out that many philosophers have been walkers. Immanuel Kant’s walk through Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad, was called Philosopher’s Path. The city’s residents said you could set your clock by Professor Kant’s progress on his daily walk. And the author of Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics wasn’t paying much attention to the natural world.

These days, I try to pay attention to the natural world. But I know what it is to be lost in thought. On some days, I am that kind of walker.

• Source: Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking; New York, Viking, 2000, pp. 16, 20.