“If anyone asks where you are going,” writes Graham, “you may tell him in confidence, whisper the dreadful fact in his ear—‘Honestly, I do not know.’” Graham is talking about his zigzag walks. “This is distinctly not a walk on which to embark with one’s wife,” he adds. Why? Why no wife? Maybe it’s because […]
“Let chance and the town take charge of you,” Graham writes. “For the world we travel in is more wonderful than human plans or idle hearts desire.” Graham is describing a strategy for exploring the streets of New York City, which he calls “the zigzag walk.” He starts down an avenue, then takes the first […]
Graham says the “born wanderer is always expecting to come on something very wonderful—beyond the horizon’s rim.” He further explains that this “makes the desire to wander or explore almost incurable.” The Germans have a name for it. Sehnsucht is their word for “longing.” Commenting on sehnsucht, C.S. Lewis says it is the “inconsolable crux […]
“The imagination wishes to be stirred with the romance of places,” writes Graham. He is commenting on a walk he took at age nine with his mother where they observed “romantic and strange sights.” He was walking barefoot along the Lincolnshire sands, which is a stretch of coastline along the North Sea in eastern England. […]
Graham says the walker/artist is teachable, and the teacher is nature. “Nature becomes your teacher, and from her you will learn what is beautiful and who you are and what your special quest is in life.” I get the “beautiful” part, but I’m wondering how nature is going to show me who I am and […]
“The principal motive of the wander-spirit is curiosity—the desire to know what is beyond the next turning of the woods” (Stephen Graham). I think of curiosity when remembering the walks of my boyhood. In those days my buddies and I followed few marked trails, and most of our hikes began with curiosity. “Is that a […]