Walking

Today is National Walking Day!  Here are ten books on walking.

Families on Foot: Urban Hikes to Backyard Treks and National Park Adventures by Jennifer Pharr Davis - Turn off those digital devices; it's time to put some mud on those boots! Research shows the most important thing you can do for your family's long-term physical and emotional well-being is introduce them to the great outdoors. Just a few hours out on the trail (or even strolling through the city) can build stamina-and a good mood. In partnership with American Hiking Society, Families on Foot offers practical advice, engaging activities for every age, and even a trail mix recipe to make hiking fun for every family. From tackling diaper blowouts in the backwoods to using apps to engage teens with nature, here's a backpack full of clever ideas for the whole family. Information for children with special needs and seniors is also included.

Healing Walks for Hard Times: Quiet Your Mind, Strengthen Your Body, and Get Your Life Back by Carolyn Scott Kortge - Sometimes life’s hurdles literally stop us in our tracks, sapping vitality and preventing us from participating fully in our own lives and the lives of those we love. Carolyn Scott Kortge recognizes that a key to joyous re-engagement with the world can be-just as literally-to get moving again. With a focus on walking for wellness, Kortge outlines a compassionate, practical program for navigating your way through life’s physical, emotional, and spiritual hard times. Within the supportive framework of this eight-week walking program you set your own pace, taking steps that restore a sense of balance and order, even if you’re weighed down by the lethargy and loss of control that often accompany illness, depression, or trauma. Discover how to link mental focus with physical movement to create healing periods of stress release. Learn to match your steps with meditation in a way that clears a path through confusion. Move forward, literally, both in good times and in tough ones, with mental and physical steps that lead you away from fear or stress and guide you toward wellness and peace.

The Last Great Walk: The True Story of a 1909 Walk From New York to San Francisco, and Why It Matters Today by Wayne Curtis - In 1909, Edward Payson Weston walked from New York to San Francisco, covering around 40 miles a day and greeted by wildly cheering audiences in every city. The New York Times called it the "first bona-fide walk . . . across the American continent," and eagerly chronicled a journey in which Weston was beset by fatigue, mosquitos, vicious headwinds, and brutal heat. He was 70 years old. Using the framework of Weston's fascinating and surprising story, journalist Wayne Curtis investigates exactly what we lost when we turned away from foot travel, and what we could potentially regain with America?s new embrace of pedestrianism. From how our brains and legs evolved to accommodate our ancient traveling needs to the way that American cities have been designed to cater to cars and discourage pedestrians, Curtis guides readers through an engaging, intelligent exploration of how something as simple as the way we get from one place to another continues to shape our health, our environment, and even our national identity. Not walking, he argues, may be one of the most radical things humans have ever done.

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane - In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pilgrimage and ritual. Told in Macfarlane's distinctive voice, 'The Old Ways' folds together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology and literature. His walks take him from the chalk downs of England to the bird islands of the Scottish northwest, from Palestine to the sacred landscapes of Spain and the Himalayas. Along the way he crosses paths with walkers of many kinds--wanderers, pilgrims, guides, and artists. Above all this is a book about walking as a journey inward and the subtle ways we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move. Macfarlane discovers that paths offer not just a means of traversing space, but of feeling, knowing, and thinking.

Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk was America's Favorite Spectator Sport by Matthew Algeo - Strange as it sounds, during the 1870s and 1880s, America's most popular spectator sport wasn't baseball, football, or horse racing--it was competitive walking. Inside sold-out arenas, competitors walked around dirt tracks almost nonstop for six straight days (never on Sunday), risking their health and sanity to see who could walk the farthest--500 miles, then 520 miles, then 565 miles! These walking matches were as talked about as the weather, the details reported in newspapers and telegraphed to fans from coast to coast. This long-forgotten sport, known as pedestrianism, spawned America's first celebrity athletes, the forerunners--forewalkers, actually--of LeBron James and Tiger Woods. The top pedestrians earned a fortune in prize money and endorsement deals. The sport also opened doors for immigrants, African Americans, and women. But along with the excitement came the inevitable scandals, charges of doping--coca leaves!--and insider gambling. PEDESTRIANISM chronicles competitive walking's peculiar appeal and popularity, its rapid demise, and its enduring influence.

Walking Distance: Extraordinary Hikes for Ordinary People by Robert Manning - Walking is simple, but it can also be profound. In an increasingly complex and frantic world, walking can simplify our lives. It encourages intimate contact with places and people, promotes health, and is one of the most sustainable forms of recreation. Robert and Martha Manning invite readers to explore the pleasures of long-distance walking in their inspiring new book, Walking Distance.
At the heart of Walking Distance are firsthand descriptions of thirty of the world's great long-distance hikes, spanning six continents and ranging from inn-to-inn to backpacking trips. Each entry--from Turkey's Lycian Way to Vermont's Long Trail--features personal anecdotes, natural and cultural history, and useful tips, including suggestions for preparing for hikes and for additional reading. Each trail narrative is richly illustrated with color photographs and maps.

Walking Meditation: Easy Steps to Mindfulness by Anh Huong Nguyen & Thich Nhat Hanh - What if every step you took deepened your connection with all of life, heightening your perception of the infinite wonders of the present moment? With Walking Meditation: Easy Steps to Mindfulness, you will discover an instructional program for a serene spiritual practice that will help you walk with presence and peace of mind, whether in the stillness of nature or on a bustling sidewalk in the city.
 Just as sitting meditation draws focused attention to the breath, walking meditation centers the practitioner in the aliveness of the present moment through movement. As taught by the esteemed Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh and one of his principle students, Nguyen Anh-Huong, Walking Meditation illuminates the central tenets of this powerful art.
 Now including online access to complementary audio and video guided meditations, this book features progressive instruction in basic mindfulness techniques such as conscious breathing and walking mindfully in nature, then proceeds to methods for meditative walking anywhere and any time--even in busy public spaces. You will also learn:
 * How to recognize the miracle in simply walking--not as a means to an end, but as the opportunity to touch the fullness of life
* Reversing "habit energy" through the union of body and mind
* Using walking meditation to work with difficult emotions such as anger and anxiety
* Learning to walk with apranihita--joyful and appreciative aimlessness
 With Walking Meditation, practitioners from every spiritual tradition will find "our home in the here and now, as the long road we all must walk turns to quiet joy.

Walking the Himalayas by Levison Wood - Levison Wood's most challenging expedition yet begins along the Silk Road route of Afghanistan and travels 1700 miles through five countries over the course of six months. Following in the footsteps of the great explorers, Wood walks the entire length of the Himalayas in an adventure of survival and endurance. In a personal story of perseverance and discovery, Wood forges bonds with local guides, porters, mountain men, soldiers, farmers, smugglers and shepherds. By travelling on foot, and following the same footpaths that locals use, he uncovers stories that might otherwise remain hidden. Along the way he also reveals the history of the Himalayas and two millennia of exploration, and examines a continent in crisis in the 21st century. Packed with action and emotion, more than anything Walking the Himalayas is a story of one intrepid man's traels in a world poised on the edge of tremendous change.

The Wander Society by Keri Smith - Several years ago when Keri Smith, bestselling author of Wreck This Journal, discovered cryptic handwritten notations in a worn copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, her interest was piqued. Little did she know at the time that those simple markings would become the basis of a years-long, life-changing exploration into a mysterious group known only as The Wander Society, as well as the subject of this book. Within these pages, you'll find the results of Smith's research: A guide to the Wander Society, a secretive group that holds up the act of wandering, or unplanned exploring, as a way of life. You'll learn about the group's mysterious origins, meet fellow wanderers through time, discover how wandering feeds the creative mind, and learn how to best practice the art of wandering, should you choose to accept the mission.

Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit - What does it mean to be out walking in the world, whether in a landscape or a metropolis, on a pilgrimage or a protest march? In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit draws together many histories--of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores--to create a portrait of the range of possibilities for this most basic act. Arguing that walking as history means walking for pleasure and for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit homes in on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from the peripatetic philosophers of ancient Greece to the poets of the Romantic Age, from the perambulations of the Surrealists to the ascents of mountaineers.The first general history of walking, Solnit's book finds a profound relationship between walking and thinking, walking and culture, and argues for the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk in an ever-more automobile-dependent and accelerated world.