RIYADH: Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking” (first delivered as a lecture in 1851 and later published, in 1862) is often treated as a piece of American nature writing. But reading it in that way alone understates its ambition. It is better understood as a philosophical argument that “walking” is a discipline of freedom — an act that tests whether a person belongs primarily to society or to the living world. It is a provocation; a demand that we measure modern life against something older than
