Reading time: Less than 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a metaphor from Rebecca Solnit…
If you’re familiar with my blog you’ll know that I am an inveterate walker. Not only do I always walk to get my groceries, go to the library and do my banking, I also walk while I’m writing, thanks to the treadmill I’ve recently acquired.
I also enjoy walking close to my home in the forest known as Pacific Spirit Regional Park. My husband and I try to get there most weekends for a good hour-long stroll. Something about walking in nature is particularly rejuvenating.
For all these reasons, I was particularly interested when I heard that Rebecca Solnit had written a book titled Wanderlust: A History of Walking. I read it earlier this year and she articulated many of my thoughts and feelings about writing. Here is one phrase that struck me:
It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals.
But I also appreciated a metaphor she embedded in another piece of text:
Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord.
I don’t think you need to be a walker to appreciate the loveliness and sophistication of that image…