If a pun can be excused in this context, Nicholson covers an impressive amount of ground in slightly more than 250 energetically written pages. Informative without being pedantic, the book is crammed with enough accounts of walking accomplishments, including Sebastian Snow's trek along the length of South American (8,700 miles) or the English "professional pedestrian" Captain Barclay's 1809 feat of walking one kilometer per hour for 1,000 hours (it's even harder than it sounds, as Nicholson explains) to fill a small Guinness Book of World Records. Nicholson devotes a chapter to the subject of classic walking songs like Patsy Cline's "Walkin' After Midnight" or Aerosmith's "Walk This Way," and the unforgettable gaits of movie characters Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy or John Travolta in the opening sequence of Saturday Night Fever. You'll even pick up entertaining factoids like the critical difference between a maze and a labyrinth.
As one might expect, Nicholson is quick to draw parallels between walking and writing. "Words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space," he writes, pointing out what many blocked writers have discovered: a good stroll sometimes can be the trick we need to get the words flowing again.
Alongside the book's more journalistic material, Nicholson offers an engaging memoir of the role walking has played in his life. From his boyhood in hilly Sheffield, England, to adult sojourns in Los Angeles, New York and London, there's ample evidence for Nicholson's assertion that, "I walk because it keeps me sane." Despite his passion for the activity, walking hasn't been entirely kind to him. He recounts the story of the serious arm fracture he sustained while walking in Los Angeles and describes how he and his girlfriend almost became hopelessly lost on a casual hike in the desert of Western Australia.
Sometime in the 1970s, when the "jogging" craze hit America, walking began to feel like a stodgy stepsister to its more glamorous sibling. Now a generation and lots of bad hips and knees later, perhaps it's time for a revival of the simple, elegant pleasures of a good walk. If that happens, then The Lost Art of Walking may find itself the Bible of that new movement.--Harvey Freedenberg
Shelf Talker: Is there anything simpler than the act of putting one foot before the other to move along the ground? Mixing journalism and memoir, this love letter to the elemental act of walking offers rich insight into a universal human activity.