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Sunday, October 01, 2006
Walking For Freedom
Gandhi is one of my teachers, one of the examples of how I want to live. From what I've read, he had a fast gait and walked many, many miles throughout India. In his famous salt march of 1930, he walked 240 miles. He was 61 at the time.
When one walks, one is free, not held hostage by gas and oil companies or the auto industry. If we all walked more, our lives would slow down and we would be healthier. We would see the preying mantis, the vole, and the deer that we miss when we zoom by in cars. I think we should start a walking revolution!
Anyway, all of this is leading up to a letter that my friend Jim copied for me. Edward Abbey wrote it in 1986. He had been a park ranger at Arches National Monument (now National Park) in Utah in the 1950's. In 1968, his book, Desert Solitaire was published. In it, he wrote about the desert landscape, "not as a travel guide, but a eulogy".
His letter (taken from an article in The Sun magazine:
Dear Ms Shute:
Thinking about your request for suggestions on great four-wheel-drive trips, I find that I cannot really help you much. There were some good ones: down Baja California before the Mexicans paved the road; from coast to coast through central Australia; from Algiers to Capetown in Africa; and into the many odd corners of the Great American Desert in our own Southwest.
But now I find that I am weary of such adventures. Not because I'm sinking deeper and deeper into my Late Middle Age - arthritic joints make mechanical travel more tempting, not less - but because the Jeep, the Blazer, the Bronco, the Land Cruiser, the Ram and all their many four-by-four cousins have become a plague upon the land.
The ideal off-road journey? I'll tell you: under water. I would like to see every four-by-four on earth, every three-wheeler, every dirt bike, trail bike and Big Foot truck driven straight into the Marianas Trench, three thousand feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, and parked there - left there - for the duration.
For the duration of what? For the duration of this techno-industrial-commercial slime-mold that is transforming our planet into one vast battleground of Cretins against Nature. With the Cretins winning.
What's wrong with the horse? Or the burro? Or the bicycle? Or even, God help us, the human foot? Why should not Americans especially learn to walk again? There is this to be said for walking: it is the one method of human locomotion by which a man or woman proceeds erect, upright, proud and independent, not squatting on the haunches like a frog.
Little boys love machines. Grown-up men and women like to walk.
Sincerely, Edward Abbey
Oracle, AZ
Say it like it is, Ed!
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posted by Carol at 5:05 PM
1 Comments:
This is a great post!
I have long been a fan of both Edward Abby and Gandhi! Although, I prefer Mahatma's non-violent approach over Abby's monkey wrenching...
But either way, your right. A walking revolution is exactly what we need!
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