Frederic Gros begins his book The Philosophy of Walking with the
statement that ‘Walking is not a sport.’ (Gros, 2015, p.2)
This, I feel, is not totally
true. There is a type of walking that is
target driven, interested in results and speed: peak bagging, whether it be
Munros (Scottish mountains over 3000 feet), Wainwrights (hills mentioned in
Alfred Wainwright’s famous Lake District guide), Welsh 3000s, Dartmoor Tors,
Alpine Peaks or Himalayan giants. I have
to admit to enjoying this style of walking some of the time. I ‘collect’ Munros and Wainwrights, but more
often I indulge myself in a slower style of walking. Frederic Gros talks about walking as the best
way to go more slowly than any other method that has been found. He says that the lesson to be learned is that
in walking the authentic sign of assurance is slowness, and haste and speed
accelerates time which passes more quickly, and two hours of hurry shorten a
day. Also, he says that one of the
secrets of walking is a slow approach to landscape that gradually renders them
familiar (Gros, 2015). Rebecca Solnit also points out that she likes walking 'because it is slow and she suspects that the mind,
like the feet, works best at 3 mph' (Solnit, 2001, p.10).
Walking slowly enables me, as Gros says, to marvel at the beauty of the day, the brightness of the sun, the grandeur of the trees, the blue of the sky. In particular I enjoy the intricate, close-up detail of nature: the beauty of a lichen covered rock, or a moss encrusted tree, a weathered, silvered tree stump in a forest, the floor of a wood, detail of a fern or the beauty of a feather. Robert MacFarlane reminds us that John Muir, too, revelled in the detail of nature: ‘Every tree calls for special admiration...’ He remarks, ‘How typical of Muir to see dazzle, where most would see dullness.’ (MacFarlane, 2016, p.11) When walking in mountains I often feel that I never want to come down and, like Nan Shepherd, author of The Living Mountain, about the Cairngorm massif in Scotland, I often feel myself part of the landscape (Shepherd, 1977) .
As a walker, Robert MacFarlane in Landmarks tells us that Nan Shepherd ‘practiced a kind of unpious pilgrimage. She tramped around, over, across and into the mountain, rather than charging up it. There is an implicit humility to her repeated acts of traverse which stands as a corrective to the self-exultation of the mountaineers hunger for the utmost point.’ (MacFarlane, 2016, p.64) Frederic Gros points out that 'this is why expeditions in high mountain country (conquering peaks, each one a challenge) are always slightly impure: because they give rise to a narcissistic gratification. What dominates in walking, away from ostentation and showing off, is the simple joy of feeling your body in the most primitively natural activity' (Gros, 2015, p.143). In Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit writes of phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl who, in 1931, 'described walking as the experience by which we understand our body in relationship to the world' (Solnit, 2014, p.27). One day during a recent trip to France I was wandering in the Combeau Valley, high in the Vercors mountains, hunting for orchids and observing nature’s intimate details, I lay down, surrounded by wonderful flowers and views, to rest and meditate and reflect on the day. I lost myself in the in the changing patterns in the clouds above and, like Shepherd, my body became part of the land beneath me and my mind wandered among the clouds above. Frederic Gros is in agreement:' the body becomes steeped in the earth it treads and thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape it BECOMES the landscape' (Gros, 2015, p.85). This is exactly what I felt on this day. Like Hamish Fulton and Paul Gaffney I have long found walking to be a meditative experience. These moments are transcendental, spiritual times during which I find it easy to believe in a creator god. Gros explains that joy is experienced in walking referring to the affect linked to activity. He says that the same fundamental idea can be found in Aristotle and Spinoza: joy is the accompaniment to an affirmation. That is, he says, 'why joy, unlike pleasure, increases with repetition and is enriched' (Gros, 2015, p.142). This is why I feel joy in walking whether it be ‘peak bagging’ or a slower, more reflective, observant approach. Even when ticking off peaks, however, walking is always joyful and I continue to take pleasure in nature around me, especially its intimate details. I love the interplay of the weather on the landscape: clouds, wind, rain, snow and even mist and fog.
I particularly enjoy walking in wet woodland, even in the rain. Colours are more saturated and water drips off the vegetation, the drops sparkling like jewels when the sun comes out again. In each drop is a perfect inverted reflection of the world when examined closely. When walking I enjoy seeking out and photographing the intricate detail of nature, the ordinary, the detail unnoticed by most people, things that most would walk straight past; I like to uncover the hidden aspects of a place. In the afterword of Eliot Porter’s Intimate Landscapes, Weston J. Naef, MOMA curator, quotes Paul Klee, who said that 'the purpose of art is to make visible the invisible' (Naef, 1979, p.126).
Naef also says of Porter that ‘to appreciate Porter's photographs close attention should be paid to the writings of Henry David Thoreau. 'He was a 20th century Thoreauvian whose inspiration came from a series of camping trips in the Canadian Rockies and his time spent as a boy on Great Spruce Head, an island owned by his family.’ (Naef, 1979, p.127). He also says of him that, 'initially, his approach had more in common with the method of the scientist than that of the aesthete, or of the meditative observer he became' (Naef, 1979, p.127). While some feel that Porter’s work is scientific, Graham Clarke in The Photograph includes his work in the chapter on fine art. He says that his work is very much in the tradition of Stieglitz and his photograph Pool in a Brook, has echoes of the Equivalence series. What makes it special, says Clarke, 'is the way Porter’s use of colour calls attention to the surface of the photograph, and does so through a remarkable play of texture and process'. The overall effect, he says, is almost painterly, although the surface ‘sheen’ creates an image that we can only observe and never, like paint, touch (Clarke, 1997, p.179). Naef tells us that Porter went on to reread Thoreau after his wife pointed out the similarity between his work and Thoreau's writings. He then began using the writings as direct inspiration for photographs; for instance plate 11 in the book Aspen, Yellow Leaves and Asters is based on Thoreau's journal entry for October 1852. The work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, especially his 1835 essay Nature also became an inspiration. One aspect of Porter's work, Naef writes, is a tendency to degeographise the image. In Intimate Landscapes the photographs could be of anywhere rather than attached to any specific place. (Naef, 1979, p.pp.126-134) I feel, too, that my current body of work for assignment 4 could be anywhere.
Walking slowly enables me, as Gros says, to marvel at the beauty of the day, the brightness of the sun, the grandeur of the trees, the blue of the sky. In particular I enjoy the intricate, close-up detail of nature: the beauty of a lichen covered rock, or a moss encrusted tree, a weathered, silvered tree stump in a forest, the floor of a wood, detail of a fern or the beauty of a feather. Robert MacFarlane reminds us that John Muir, too, revelled in the detail of nature: ‘Every tree calls for special admiration...’ He remarks, ‘How typical of Muir to see dazzle, where most would see dullness.’ (MacFarlane, 2016, p.11) When walking in mountains I often feel that I never want to come down and, like Nan Shepherd, author of The Living Mountain, about the Cairngorm massif in Scotland, I often feel myself part of the landscape (Shepherd, 1977) .
As a walker, Robert MacFarlane in Landmarks tells us that Nan Shepherd ‘practiced a kind of unpious pilgrimage. She tramped around, over, across and into the mountain, rather than charging up it. There is an implicit humility to her repeated acts of traverse which stands as a corrective to the self-exultation of the mountaineers hunger for the utmost point.’ (MacFarlane, 2016, p.64) Frederic Gros points out that 'this is why expeditions in high mountain country (conquering peaks, each one a challenge) are always slightly impure: because they give rise to a narcissistic gratification. What dominates in walking, away from ostentation and showing off, is the simple joy of feeling your body in the most primitively natural activity' (Gros, 2015, p.143). In Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit writes of phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl who, in 1931, 'described walking as the experience by which we understand our body in relationship to the world' (Solnit, 2014, p.27). One day during a recent trip to France I was wandering in the Combeau Valley, high in the Vercors mountains, hunting for orchids and observing nature’s intimate details, I lay down, surrounded by wonderful flowers and views, to rest and meditate and reflect on the day. I lost myself in the in the changing patterns in the clouds above and, like Shepherd, my body became part of the land beneath me and my mind wandered among the clouds above. Frederic Gros is in agreement:' the body becomes steeped in the earth it treads and thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape it BECOMES the landscape' (Gros, 2015, p.85). This is exactly what I felt on this day. Like Hamish Fulton and Paul Gaffney I have long found walking to be a meditative experience. These moments are transcendental, spiritual times during which I find it easy to believe in a creator god. Gros explains that joy is experienced in walking referring to the affect linked to activity. He says that the same fundamental idea can be found in Aristotle and Spinoza: joy is the accompaniment to an affirmation. That is, he says, 'why joy, unlike pleasure, increases with repetition and is enriched' (Gros, 2015, p.142). This is why I feel joy in walking whether it be ‘peak bagging’ or a slower, more reflective, observant approach. Even when ticking off peaks, however, walking is always joyful and I continue to take pleasure in nature around me, especially its intimate details. I love the interplay of the weather on the landscape: clouds, wind, rain, snow and even mist and fog.
I particularly enjoy walking in wet woodland, even in the rain. Colours are more saturated and water drips off the vegetation, the drops sparkling like jewels when the sun comes out again. In each drop is a perfect inverted reflection of the world when examined closely. When walking I enjoy seeking out and photographing the intricate detail of nature, the ordinary, the detail unnoticed by most people, things that most would walk straight past; I like to uncover the hidden aspects of a place. In the afterword of Eliot Porter’s Intimate Landscapes, Weston J. Naef, MOMA curator, quotes Paul Klee, who said that 'the purpose of art is to make visible the invisible' (Naef, 1979, p.126).
Naef also says of Porter that ‘to appreciate Porter's photographs close attention should be paid to the writings of Henry David Thoreau. 'He was a 20th century Thoreauvian whose inspiration came from a series of camping trips in the Canadian Rockies and his time spent as a boy on Great Spruce Head, an island owned by his family.’ (Naef, 1979, p.127). He also says of him that, 'initially, his approach had more in common with the method of the scientist than that of the aesthete, or of the meditative observer he became' (Naef, 1979, p.127). While some feel that Porter’s work is scientific, Graham Clarke in The Photograph includes his work in the chapter on fine art. He says that his work is very much in the tradition of Stieglitz and his photograph Pool in a Brook, has echoes of the Equivalence series. What makes it special, says Clarke, 'is the way Porter’s use of colour calls attention to the surface of the photograph, and does so through a remarkable play of texture and process'. The overall effect, he says, is almost painterly, although the surface ‘sheen’ creates an image that we can only observe and never, like paint, touch (Clarke, 1997, p.179). Naef tells us that Porter went on to reread Thoreau after his wife pointed out the similarity between his work and Thoreau's writings. He then began using the writings as direct inspiration for photographs; for instance plate 11 in the book Aspen, Yellow Leaves and Asters is based on Thoreau's journal entry for October 1852. The work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, especially his 1835 essay Nature also became an inspiration. One aspect of Porter's work, Naef writes, is a tendency to degeographise the image. In Intimate Landscapes the photographs could be of anywhere rather than attached to any specific place. (Naef, 1979, p.pp.126-134) I feel, too, that my current body of work for assignment 4 could be anywhere.
Like artists and photographer Hamish Fulton,
Richard Long and Paul Gaffney I have long found walking to be a meditative
experience, whether in mountain landscapes or lowland woods. When walking
in mountains, especially when on my own, I have a very strong sensation that I
never want to come down. In woodland it is both easy and a joy to lose
and find oneself again as Roger Deakin says ‘To enter a wood is to pass into a
different world in which we ourselves are transformed. It is where you travel to find yourself,
often, paradoxically, by getting lost.’ (Deakin, 2007, p.x). I spent my childhood roaming the woods around
my village, some of which I now walk for my BOW. My formative years were spent roaming those
woods developing a deep love for nature that was to last a lifetime. Walking allows me to slow down and fully
experience and appreciate the landscape that I travel through. It not
only provides exercise and improves health; it nourishes the mind, providing
spiritual refreshment through contact with nature. The natural world has
always been important to me and during my walks I delight in my observations
much as Austrian photographer Claudia Rohraurer did in her walks through the
woodlands of a Finnish Nature Reserve.
References and Bibliography
Clarke, G. (1997) The Photograph, Oxford, OUP
Clarke, G. (1997) The Photograph, Oxford, OUP
Deakin, R. (2008) Wildwood, A Journey Through Trees, London, Penguin
Gros, F. (2015) A Philosophy of Walking,
London, Verso
MacFarlane, R. (2016) Landmarks, London,
Penguin
Naef, W.J. (1979) Intimate Landscapes,
New York: MOMA
Shepherd, N. (2011) The Living Mountain,
London, Canongate Books
Solnit, R. (2014) Wanderlust, A History of Walking, London, Granta Fulton, H. http://www.hamish-fulton.com/
Gaffney, P. http://www.paulgaffneyphotography.com/
Long, R. http://www.richardlong.org/
Porter, E. http://www.cartermuseum.org/collections/porter/
Rohrauer. C http://www.claudiarohrauer.info/?/work/photo-trekking/
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