Appreciating life's amble opportunities

He also faults Thoreau's 1862 essay "Walking" for forever linking nature walks to a pre-packaged kind of "spirituality-lite." Though clearly a stab at humor, blaming Thoreau for the New Age movement's glorification of nature is just odd. William Hazlitt's equally rousing essay "On Going a Journey" first appeared in 1822, heading a brief Romantic boom in the walking essay; the New Age movement has many forefathers.

This underscores the missed opportunity for Nicholson to discuss his theme more deeply. In lieu of a guided journey on the relationship between walking and spirituality, he presents a series of brief strolls and anecdotes about the Wandering Jew, walking labyrinths in prisons and the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. There is no overarching framework, save for the link between faith and people with feet.

Early on, Nicholson admits he's "outside the loop of academic theory" and offers no "fancy way" to frame the connection between walking and writing, other than the old adage, "What could be more basic than a single step, more basic than a single word?"

Nothing, of course.

"Walking away is one of life's greatest pleasures," he writes, leaving a conference on psychogeography (which he defines as "a way for clever young men to mooch around cities doing nothing much") before the main speaker presents. It's a cute way to demonstrate a point, but Nicholson walks away while we are still chewing on the material.

Given how many current walking references he makes before leaving -- performance artists, "street" photographers, song lyrics, travelers crossing entire continents on foot -- one suspects that it's the author, and not the act of walking, who is somewhat lost.