A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros Read Free Book Online Page A

is the prairie.’ To travel far, to flee once more the family and the mother (‘la
daromphe’
, a Rimbaud distortion of ‘daronne’ meaning ‘old lady, mother’), toescape the cold of the Ardennes, the freezing wind howling in the dark forests; to flee from sadness and boredom, overcast skies, dark days, black crows too in a dark grey sky, to flee the atrocious misery of winter. To flee the sordid idiocies of the seated ones. ‘Leave behind the warblers of May.’
    Walking. I find in Rimbaud that sense of walking as flight. That deep joy one always feels when walking, to be leaving behind. There’s no question of going back when you are walking. That’s it: you’ve gone, departed. And the immense complementary joys of fatigue, extenuation, forgetfulness of the self and the world. All your former narratives, and those tiring murmurs, drowned by the beat of your tread on the road. Exhaustion that drowns everything. You always know why you are walking: to advance, to leave, to reach, to leave again.
    ‘Let’s go, route! I’m a pedestrian, nothing more.’
    Rimbaud died on 10 November 1891. He was just thirty-seven. In the deaths register of the Conception hospital, he is identified thus: ‘Born in Charleville, passing through Marseille.’
    Passing through. He had only gone there to leave again.
    * They appeared in the
Mercure de France
under the title ‘Relics’.

7
Solitudes

 
    O ught one really to walk alone? Nietzsche, Thoreau and Rousseau are not alone in thinking so. Being in company forces one to jostle, hamper, walk at the wrong speed for others. When walking it’s essential to find your own basic rhythm, and maintain it. The right basic rhythm is the one that suits you, so well that you don’t tire and can keep it up for ten hours. But it is highly specific and exact. So that when you are forced to adjust to someone else’s pace, to walk faster or slower than usual, the body follows badly.
    However, complete solitude is not absolutely essential. You can be with up to three or four … with no more than that, you can still walk without talking. Everyone walks attheir own speed, slight gaps build up, and the leader can turn around from time to time, pause for a moment, call ‘Everything all right?’ in a detached, automatic, almost indifferent way. The reply might be a wave of the hand. Hands on hips, the others may await the slowest; then they will start again, and the order changes. The rhythms come and go, crossing one another. Going at your own pace doesn’t mean walking in an absolutely uniform, regular manner; the body is not a machine. It allows itself slight relaxations or moments of affirmative joy. So with up to three or four people, walking allows these moments of shared solitude. For solitude too can be shared, like bread and daylight.
    With more than four companions, the party becomes a colony, an army on the march. Shouts, whistles, people go from one to another, wait for each other, form groups which soon become clans. Everyone boasts about their equipment. When it’s time to eat, they want you to ‘taste this’, they produce culinary treats, outbid each other … It’s hell. No longer simple or austere: a piece of society transplanted to the mountains. People start making comparisons. With five or more, it’s impossible to share solitude.
    So it’s best to walk alone, except that one is never entirely alone. As Henry David Thoreau wrote: ‘I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.’ To be buried in Nature is perpetually distracting. Everything talks to you, greets you, demands your attention: trees, flowers, the colour of the roads. The sigh of the wind, the buzzing of insects, the babble of streams, the impact of your feet on the ground: a whole rustling murmurthat responds to your presence. Rain, too. A light and gentle rain is a steady accompaniment, a murmur you listen to, with its intonations, outbursts, pauses: the