Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“I'm grateful,” I said. “And I respect him. I just don't believe in him.”
Our conversation was interrupted by Jai, who sprang from between us and bolted for the
truck, jabbing the air with his fingers as he went. A new song had started, and he wanted to
be in the mosh pit.
The more I thought about the Yamuna yatra, the more it blew my mind what a diverse
range of traditions it interwove. There was the forceful nonviolence of Gandhi's political
campaigns, of course. Then there was the ancient practice of religious pilgrimage, Hindu
or otherwise. But since I'm an American, it was also impossible to spend any time with a
troupe of scruffy, nature-worshipping activist holy men without stumbling, inevitably, over
Henry David Thoreau.
It's hard to believe that a single, self-proclaimed slacker could be largely responsible for
delivering us two of the best ideas of the last 150 years, but in Thoreau's case the slacker
had some tricks up his sleeve. The first idea was that of civil disobedience, which Thoreau
named and explained, and which he practiced in a limited, proof-of-concept kind of way.
Half a century on, his ideas became a major inspiration for Gandhi, who credited Thoreau
as an indispensable political strategist. (Another half century, and Thoreau's ideas found
their way in front of Martin Luther King Jr.)
The second idea was that nature is good, and good for you. The best way for a person to
strive for spiritual perfection, he argued, is through the direct experience of wild, untamed
nature, which will free the mind from civilization's clotting noise. Thoreau wasn't the only
one to espouse this idea—the 1800s saw a whole transcendental crew on the loose—but he
expressed it with such humor and good nature, and in a way still so accessible to readers,
that we might as well give him most of the credit. Every time someone goes for a run in the
woods, or donates to the Sierra Club, or maxes out their credit card at REI, the man with
the neck beard and the bean patch ought to get royalties.
If there was one way that Thoreau thought was best for getting in touch with the en-
vironment, it was walking. The guy made a yatra of every afternoon. He championed not
only walking but also ambling, strolling, moseying, and above all, sauntering. In his essay
Walking,
he makes the wry assertion that “I have met with but one or two persons in the
course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is of taking walks—who had a
genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING.” From those rhapsodic capitals, he moves direc-
tly to the task of blurring the line between loafing and sacred pilgrimage, arguing that to
saunter effectively is to be on a holy journey to nowhere in particular.
