The Walking, Thinking Biped, part eleven. Social Nature Walking

A lot of us like to walk along in nature and have our own thoughts and insights. As soon as you get even one more person, there is the possibility of having quotidian conversation, not very different from what you would have in an automobile, drive out the appreciation of the natural world. I have frequently had this experience when leading students on hiking field trips. They can walk all day and see almost nothing they will remember.

That is, unless the hike is specifically designed to enhance observation and the ability to integrate with nature. This may be nowhere better seen than in scouting groups. I was, for several years, a Boy Scout. Though I was the one most interested in nature, the others got really good at rock climbing, tying knots, erecting tents, building camp fires, rappelling across creeks, and even the use of Morse code for long distance communication. For us, the Boy Scout Handbook and the Army Field Survival Manual were central texts (which included how to distinguish edible vs. dangerous plants). I was about the only boy who saw the spiritual dimensions of nature, which is why I was chosen to give the Sunday morning sermon at the Boy Scout Camporee in Tulare County about 1968.

There can be an even larger social context. In Europe, especially Germany, hundreds or thousands of people like to go on mass hikes together. The movement is called Volksmarch and its theme song, as far as I can tell, is The Happy Wanderer:

I love to go a-wandering along the mountain track

And as I go I love to sing, my knapsack on my back.

Sometimes sharing a trail with other hikers is not particularly pleasant. While I was hiking in the Black Hills of South Dakota, parents with two adolescent children singing, as they walked, “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, ninety-nine bottles of beer.” I’m sure you know or can guess the next ninety-eight verses. I found this incredibly annoying. But then I told myself, the parents are taxpayers just like me, their revenues sustain the National Forest Service, just like mine. Even when we are alone in a forest, we depend on the social network, which sustains the forest.