|
“Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to believe
that I shall find fair landscapes or sufficient wildness and
freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited by the
prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest
which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly
toward the setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in
it of enough consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I
will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and
ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing
into the wilderness. I should not lay so much stress on this
fact, if I did not believe that something like this is the
prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward
Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is
moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to
west.”
—from a lecture by Henry David Thoreau delivered in his later years, first published as as an essay entitled “Walking” in The Atlantic Monthly, June 1862, one month after Thoreau's death. For the full text of “Walking,” please visit the EcoTopia web site at <http://ecotopia.org/ehof/thoreau/walking.html>.