For YEARS I have owned Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit. For some reason I've begun the book many times, but repeatedly and willingly cast it aside for other books. So, with the turn of the year I was determined to commit, focus and read Wanderlust... and I'm succeeding. Yesterday I read a line that reminded me that when walking long distance I see each step as a stitch, and when sewing each stitch for a step. Land and textile reflecting one another. On page 163 Rebecca writes, 'If walking sews together the land that ownership tears apart, then trespassing does so as a political statement.'
On the previous page is a passage that enabled me to see walking in a way I'd never considered before, that it is the antithesis of owning.'Walking focuses not on the boundary lines of ownership that break the land into pieces but on the paths that function as a kind of circulatory system connecting the whole organism. Walking is, in a way, the antithesis of owning. It postulates a mobile, empty-handed, shareable experience of land. Nomads have often been disturbing to nationalism because their roving blurs and perforates the boundaries that define nations; walking does the same thing on the smaller scale of private property.'
Wonderful.
