Showing posts with label Sauntering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sauntering. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Sauntering

At breakfast the other day, we got to chuckling over our first car trip after last summers cruise. I thought we were speeding down the road, and so was looking for police cars. You know ...to avoid a speeding ticket. Laura looked over at me and said, "The speed limit is 25 mph."
"I know," I murmured, looking down at the speedometer. It read: 15 mph. No wonder there was a line of cars following us!
Going at a slower pace does help us to notice things. I remember walking our late dog in the rain one evening to see the rain drops making phospheresence circles in the water off the dock. I wouldn't have seen this amazing sight had I not been there, and looking.
"In his essay on the art of walking, Henry David Thoreau described his daily regimen of four-hour walks, a time when he could gather himself, hear the sound of his own heart beating - all the while _sauntering_, as he was fond of calling it, a word, he wrote, "which ... is beautifully derived 'from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,' to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, ' There goes a Sainte-Terre,' a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander."*
Sauntering, whether walking, or sailing, (or, might we add, driving?) Is then an opportunity for soulful travel.
Blessings on your journeys.
* Cousineau, Phil. _The Art of Pilgrimage_ 104-5.