In his essay, “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau recommended walking in the American West. But it wasn’t so much the direction he was recommending but the condition of the region. “The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild.”

“I am leaving the city more and more and withdrawing into the wilderness,” he wrote. “Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest.”

Arguably the most famous of American naturalists spent a third of his essay on this rant. If you can find it on the Web, it’s worth a full reading. Here’s one of my takeaways:

“In short, all good things are wild and free,” wrote Thoreau. “Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones.”

Wild places and wild walking mates—sounds like a description for disaster (Have you read Lord of the Flies?).

On the other hand, it describes some of my best hikes. I’ll not name names.

**In the next blog I’m writing about walking in the mountains.