[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.
Interpretation
Walking allows you to observe and appreciate the beauty of life more fully than any other form of transport.
In this quote, Elizabeth Von Arnim expresses the idea that walking provides a unique opportunity to engage with the world around us. Unlike faster modes of transportation, walking allows us to slow down and notice the small, often overlooked details of life, leading to a deeper appreciation of our surroundings and a sense of freedom.
In practice
This quote is perfect for inspiring a nature walk event in a community newsletter.
On wet days I will go into the thickest parts of the forest, where the pine needles are everlastingly dry, and when the sun shines I'll lie on the heath and see how the broom flares against the clouds. I shall be perpetually happy, because there will be no one to worry me.
I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow.
If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind.
Many of us who aren't farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.
So that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again.
In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth.
The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives
Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god... No river contains a spirit... no snake the embodiment of wisdom, no mountain cave the home of a great demon. No voices now speak to man from stones, plants and animals, nor does he speak to them thinking they can hear. His contact with nature has gone, and with it has gone the profound emotional energy that this symbolic connection supplied.
...full of God's thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most exalted grandeur and enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of beginnings abounding in first lessons of life, mountain building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons in stone, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful with humanity.
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