Walking Wordsworth

I knew the Romantic poet was a walker, but not the extent of his rambles. According to Alice Outwater in a new book called Wild at Heart, William Wordsworth spent much of his day walking. He would compose poetry as he strode along gravel paths, which he favored over the bushwhacking preferred by his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (I'm with you, Wordsworth.)

Wordsworth covered roughly 10 miles a day, an estimated 175,000 miles in his lifetime. He and his sister Dorothy walked so much and at such odd hours that the local people suspected them of being French spies.

According to Outwater, Wordsworth's perambulations were inspired by his meeting John "Walking" Stewart, an English philosopher who hiked from India to Europe. Wordsworth, 21 at the time, was especially interested in Stewart's philosophy on nature.

And it was in nature, not sitting passively in it but walking through it, that Wordsworth found his life and his inspiration.

(Dove Cottage, near Grasmere in England, where Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy. Photo: Wikipedia.)