Traveling a good deal in . . . Amherst

Thoreau writes in Walden (with delightful consciousness of his irony) that he has “traveled a good deal in Concord.” This spring, I too have been traveling a good deal in my hometown. And like Thoreau – and a lot of other people now – I’m doing most of my traveling on foot.

Luckily, I live in a town that rewards walking. It’s small, it’s pretty, and now, with the college students gone, it’s uncrowded. There are bike paths and conservation areas with leafy trails, but just walking down the street is a pleasure, too. My neighbors are often strolling down the road – sometimes with their dogs – or they’re out working in their yards. And those yards! They’re landscaped with dogwoods, cherry trees, and Japanese maples. Edging the downward slopes of driveways, piles of boulders bloom with pockets of Alyssum or daylilies. Rustic fence-posts or picket fences are lined with tulips, irises, and rosebushes.

Sometimes it does feel like a guilty pleasure. Last week, especially, with peaceful protests getting hijacked by a few people prone to violence and inflamed by police in riot gear, it felt surreal on some mornings to be strolling through rhododendron forests with friends and their dogs.

Yet it felt healthy, too. However important it is stay informed – also to do what small actions we can and donate what we can to organizations that will make a difference – listening to the news can become addictive. (Anger and outrage, even when they’re justified, can be addictive.) Walking is a good antidote.  

Walden is not, of course, just a paean to walking and living in the woods. After Thoreau’s comment about traveling a good deal in Concord, he adds that “everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.” They seem to him to work too hard, worry too much, and spend their precious days making money rather than being aware of themselves as spiritual and natural beings. Or, as he says more famously, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Is it true? Is he right? I think yes, and also no.

Most of us have hours of quiet desperation, for sure. Life is often hard and inevitably imperfect. We have inconsistent desires: we want the excitements of travel and the comforts of home, the challenges of useful work and the chance to take naps whenever we like. We completely mistake our good friend’s meaning one day, say something insensitive the next day, squabble with someone we love over nothing on another day. And worse: Our bodies break down in painful ways. Dreams into which we threw our hearts and souls evaporate. Relationships we counted on crash and burn. People we love get sick and die.

But do most people really live lives deprived of fulfillment and happiness? There certainly are people whose lives are a hard grind day after day with no clear reward, who get overwhelmed and lose hope. (I’m thinking, among others, of those “deaths of despair” people talk about these days: deaths caused by self-destructive addictions, fueled by an underlying sense of being useless or worthless.) And I suspect that one price of our modern emphasis on individuality is that more people feel lonely or isolated for stretches of their lives. But most people, most of the time?

Not in my experience. Life bangs us around, and we screw up, but most people I know are pretty clear about their values and their sources of genuine satisfaction. Even in a pandemic, they figure out ways to feed their minds and imaginations. After losses and failures, they revive their hearts and hopes. In grief, they may shut down for a few hours, or even a few months. But then they pick themselves up and go back to walking through the world with their souls open and alive.