Walking is not about epic events and landscapes. These are mere performances. This is exoticism. Walking is not about these but looking at these, which requires that one detach from these. It is about being at “the edge of civilized worlds”. Walking is more about going in than out.

Thoreau demonstrated this by doing most of his walks within his town of Concord. He did had excursions to far places but these were few. Most of the walks that inspired his journal writings and books concerned Concord.

References

Gros, F. (2014). A Philosophy of Walking. Verso.

But the experience of walking he writes about, which nourishes his discourse, never concerns anything but his long daily strolls around Concord

A small-time adventurer, one might think … but in reality he is warning us against the danger of exoticism. You see so many people who strike out far afield to recount their adventures ‘out there’: the necessarily fabulous encounters, the compulsory epic events, the invariably sublime landscapes, the obviously amazing food. Performances every time, then: in narrative, in adventure, in the extreme.

It cannot be said too often: there’s no need to go far to walk. The true direction of walking is not towards otherness (other worlds, other faces, other cultures, other civilizations); it is towards the edge of civilized worlds, whatever they may be. Walking is setting oneself apart: at the edge of those who work, at the edges of high-speed roads, at the edge of the producers of profit and poverty, exploiters, labourers, and at the edge of those serious people who always have something better to do than receive the pale gentleness of a winter sun or the freshness of a spring breeze.