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  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frederic-gros/a-philosophy-of-walking/so-its-best",
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  "text": "So it’s best to walk alone, except that one is never entirely alone. As Henry David Thoreau wrote: ‘I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.’ To be buried in Nature is perpetually distracting. Everything talks to you, greets you, demands your attention: trees, flowers, the colour of the roads. The sigh of the wind, the buzzing of insects, the babble of streams, the impact of your feet on the ground: a whole rustling murmur that responds to your presence. Rain, too. A light and gentle rain is a steady accompaniment, a murmur you listen to, with its intonations, outbursts, pauses: the distinct plopping of drops splashing on stone, the long melodious weave of sheets of rain falling steadily. It’s impossible to be alone when walking, with so many things under our gaze which are given to us through the inalienable grasp of contemplation.",
  "language": "en",
  "author": {
    "name": "Frederic Gros",
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    "title": "A Philosophy of Walking",
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    "language": "fr",
    "text": "Mais être seul alors, vraiment seul cette fois : un. Mais d’abord, on n’est jamais tout à fait seul. Comme écrivait Thoreau : « Je restai tout le matin en bonne compagnie, jusqu’à ce que quelqu’un vienne me rendre visite » (c’était la compagnie des arbres, du soleil, des cailloux). Au fond, c’est de rencontrer l’autre, souvent, qui nous ramène à la solitude. La conversation mène à parler de soi et de ses différences. Et doucement, l’autre nous renvoie à nous-mêmes dans notre histoire et notre identité, ce qui veut dire les incompréhensions et les mensonges. Comme si cela existait."
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      "name": "nature",
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      "slug": "you-are-nobody",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/frederic-gros/a-philosophy-of-walking/you-are-nobody",
      "text": "You are nobody to the hills or the thick boughs heavy with greenery. You are no longer a role, or a status, not even an individual, but a body, a body that feels sharp stones on the paths, the caress of long grass and the freshness of the wind. When you walk, the world has neither present nor future: nothing but the cycle of mornings and evenings. Always the same thing to do all day: walk.",
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      "slug": "but-walking-causes",
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      "text": "But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn’t have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It’s more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.",
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      "slug": "first-of-all",
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      "text": "First of all, there is the suspensive freedom that comes by walking, even a simple short stroll: throwing of the burden of cares, forgetting business for a time. You choose to leave the once behind, go out, stroll around, think about other things. With a longer excursion of several days, the process of self-liberation is accentuated: you escape the constraints of work, throw of the yoke of routine.",
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