The act of driving your body, very occasionally, close to its limit of endurance is for some reason one of life’s major satisfactions. And relaxing afterwards is one of life’s most luxurious rewards.

Details of the many walks I made along the crest have blurred, now, into a pleasing tapestry of grass and space and sunlight.

Mostly, two miles an hour is good going.

There is a powerful human compulsion to leave things tied up in neat little bundles. But every journey except your last has an open end. And any journey of value is above all a chapter in a personal odyssey. Its end is not so much a goal attained as another point in a continuing process. And the important thing at the end of a journey – or of a book – is to keep moving forward, refreshed, with as little pause as possible.

Under most conditions, the best roof for your bedroom is the sky. This commonsense arrangement saves weight, time, energy, and money.

Although the vast majority of walkers never even think of using a walking staff, I unhesitatingly include it among the foundations of the house that travels on my back.

Freed from the pressure of haste, the tyranny of film, and now the restraint of clothes, I found myself looking more closely at what went on around me.

The best dress for walking is nakedness.

God is light, we are told, and Hell is outer darkness. But look at a desert mountain stripped bare by the sun, and you learn only geography. Watch darkness claim it, and for a moment you may grasp why God had to create Satan – or man to create both.

I find that the three truly great times for thinking thoughts are when I am standing in the shower, sitting on the john, or walking. And the greatest of these, by far, is walking.