One of this year’s Christmas presents from my daughter Julie was John Gibson’s “Walking the New England Coast”. I have found the book to be a great guide to walking areas near our home in Hudson. And as a matter of fact we’ll be using one of his suggested walks this weekend at Nickerson State Park on Cape Cod. He presents many walks that I would not noticed - but should have. For that I own Mr. Gibson my thanks. But what was most interesting and incredibly insightful was the book’s introduction. This book’s author expresses his point a view with perfect accuracy and passion. And, I agree with it! So here it is from John Gibson’s “Walking the New England Coast”:
“Let us be honest. We have made a mess of things. That life in which we participate, loosely labeled “modern” has failed to live up to its billing. It is a stressful existence, hurried, often superficial, acquisitive, and not much mindful of the roadside, except as we hurtle past. Worse, it is a life indoors in offices, stores, malls, and high-rise monuments to the administrative age - an unnatural life by any standard.
In the mail, advertisements are advanced for two thousand-dollar exercise machines, three-thousand-dollar-a-month “health vacations”, and limitless other expensive bodily manipulations. The rational is obvious: having manufactured an intolerable mode of existence, we ought to purchase manufactured reliefs. Behind it all lingers the embarrassed sense of being less well off than our grandparents, who had a genuine physical existence, however rough, in a real, physical world. We have, in the name of slick affluence, outsmarted ourselves. And thus we languish in the chromium-pipe racks of the health clubs, imagining what it might feel like to move naturally in a less mechanized world.
The alternative to this deliberate discomfort is so beautifully simple, so close at hand, that we don’t see it. Come walk in the woods. Stroll along the New England shore and reconnect with that world beyond the concrete. Discover whatever suits you. You will need no exercise machines, club memberships, health resort treatments. A decent pair of walking shoes, a small day pack, and some binoculars will suffice. Walking, away from the man-made world, exhilarates, refreshes, restores, empowers, ennobles. It costs essentially nothing.
For decades physiologists have extolled the systemic virtues of walking, but one does not need to medically research the obvious. It simply feels better. One of the reasons our grandparents thrived in a world with fewer things was, of course, that they walked. My paternal grandfather, though he had a horse, walked at least fifteen miles per day as a patrolman covering a beat in the tougher neighborhoods of turn-of-the-century Boston. In his eighties, he could pick me up with all of my hundred pound weight hanging on one arm. He had never been to a health club, but he walked.
The benefits of cruising New England’s wooded shore are more than physical. Psychological payoffs from walking through unspoiled countryside free of human rearrangement are legion. Once, sitting next to the summit of New Hampshire’s wintry Mt. Washington eating a near frozen sandwich, I watched an unexpected human presence approach through the clouds. A successful bored businessman joined me on the top, having made an accidental, almost impossible ascent of the iced-up mountain. Largely unprepared, out for a walk, he had negotiated buried trails and ice gullies or worse, and here he was! He was lost, in danger, but he had never escaped from his office quite like this before and he was deliriously happy. All of his business success had left him bored and stalled, but a tough walk on the mountain had restored his excitement for living. One can get this feeling of rejuvenation in the natural world without clambering up a mountain, of course. A walk in nearby woods, perhaps with the rolling ocean as a backdrop, can do the job nicely. One needs only to begin.”
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Good walking,
John Gibson
About the author (from the back cover of “Walking the New England Coast”):
John Gibson has been introducing hikers to New England’s special places for over 15 years through his books: 50 Hikes in Maine, 50 Hikes in Southern Maine, and Walking the Maine Coast (now in its second edition). Hallowell, Maine is his home when he is not out tramping the trails in New England, Ireland, or Western Europe.
Filed under: New England on April 11th, 2007 | No Comments »
Is Fall the best time of the year to walk?
Today’s lunchtime walk was bright and sunny drawing more attention wooded areas. As a matter of fact that walk was so enjoyable, I’ve rearranged tomorrow’s schedule so I can walk an extra hour. After all, these colors don’t last all that long.
Foliage isn’t the only reason why Fall walks are the best. The air is cooler with a cleaner feel to it. There’s hardly any bugs out and the ground is dry.
There also seems to be more time for walking in the Fall. There’s less lawn mowing to do, less social commitments, and less trips to the beach.
