Only part of what’s wrong with the 21st Century is that nobody saunters any more.  Think about the word.  What image springs to mind?  Maurice Chevalier, with straw hat and mobile cane, strolling with verve along the boulevards of Deauville and Paris?

Or do you see John Muir among the fluid grasses of Sierran meadows, on the way to climbing the unclimbed, bearing little more than rolled bread and some tea?  Even in winter, he would leave his coat behind because it encumbered him too much on mountain-mounting treks.  Once Muir climbed an evergreen to be whipped about in a wild winter storm!  One could could say the tree sauntered too, –rather too roughly for my taste, however.  But it was one of Muir’s peak moments, pun intended.  Muir described saunterers as those who “walk with a swinging, rocking gait,  free of quick, jerky fussiness,” going on to praise those “rare happy rovers.”

Henry David Thoreau concluded that ’sauntering’ comes from ‘les saintes terrers’, holy-landers, those who walked long and slow from shrine to shrine en route to Santiago de Compostela.  Henry himself counted the day lost when he didn’t perambulate for four hours or more; – mostly of course in Concord.  But sometimes in mountains, and once unhappily in New Jersey. 

Think about it.  When was the last time you strolled to no purpose?  Not to the mailbox or the car.  Definitely not to go shopping.  When did you last wander?  When did you see someone aimlessly walking?  I dare you to try it!

I learned my lesson in the South of France.  When I moved to Cannes in October of 1987, first newspapers and magazines (it took me a week to translate one Nice Matin) constantly prated of the joys of “dolce far niente” — the sweetness of doing nothing.  Between Type A personality and Catholic schools, I had NO IDEA what they meant.  It’s an Italian phrase, obviously, and that country’s mastered the process, popes and nuns or no.  There is nothing slower or more rooted in tradition than La Passegiata, when the whole town turns out, in finery, at leisure, to circle the piazza. 

In late November, along the Croisette, I became aware of a terrible stacatto sound behind me.  It was the tatoo of my own American heels, almost military in cadence.  It was as obtrusive as a woodpecker.  NO ONE ELSE was hurrying.  Although the French had “started talking more slowly” (meaning, I had somehow learned to listen faster) around about Thanksgiving, I found that learning to become a “flaneur“, a stroller, a saunterer, remained far more challenging than learning that liquid language.

When I moved to Savannah, Yankee friends asked me why everyone stared at us in town.  I asked the New Jersey friend, Savannah native, (who’d found me the 100-year-old house on the Skidaway River.)  She laughed long and hard: “Because y’all walk so fast.”

Saunterers en route to Santiago de Compostela learn to drop the cares of the day, and with them, the cares of the world.  Thoreau let les saintes terrers buttress him in turning on all his senses, letting in the day’s beauties, the newest blossom, its ripest nut.  And he didn’t give a fig what the neighbors thought - which may be his highest lesson.

Princeton is rich in saunterer-sites.  Palmer Square, (where we went to do errands when my girls were little), is now Strolling Central.  Hinds Plaza beside the Library beckons not only saunterers but sitters.  For hours, watch those who have mastered this gift - they are rapt/wrapped in the sweetness of doing nothing. 

Our Towpath is not only worthy of a journey, it’s worth moving here just for itself.  Kayaking is the liquid form of sauntering. 

A tiny excursion out the Great Road to Hobler Park, near Route #518, permits sauntering (with dogs, if you like) in mowed grassland trails surrounded by wildflowers.  Winged occupants of butterfly accompany you on your stroll.  Woodworker/photographer/nature activist Clem Fiori puts up and maintains not only bluebird houses but also American kestrel boxes.  Northern Harriers coast over the expansive fields in quest of mice and voles.  A few minutes into its more wooded reaches means you absolutely cannot see Princeton.  Barns and silos stud the skyline.  A fox den with five entrance/exits, is tucked in under sheltering conifers.

Go to the plaza or the park.  Learn how to saunter and stroll.  Open pores and senses, as Henry did, not only at Walden.  Nature and human nature blossom at the saunterer’s pace.  There is more to heart fitness than cardio-…

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