Near the beginning of Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking,” he tells us what a Saunterer is:
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, which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. . . . [For] every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
Know thyself first, advised Socrates. To this end, try listing several of your worldly Holy Lands and the Infidels on their way to taking them to pieces. What is the most you’d sacrifice if it would save a Holy Land of yours from ruin? Your life? A resolution never to eat out again?
When we get right down to it, no Holy Land was ever saved by wishing or offering token gestures. Nothing but great personal sacrifice of time and money has a chance.
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