To Saunter is to walk about in an idle or leisurely manner, or more specifically a verb describing a a style walking. It is simply to walk slowly with a joyful disposition, and has been spoken of by many naturalist . Julia Cameron the creativity guide, swears that sauntering opens up the creative blocks.
Henry David Thoreau says he has met one or two people in the course of his life who have understood the art of walking, that is of taking walks who had the genius so to speak, for sauntering,
These days we live in a series of interiors, disconnected from one another, but when we walk we are measuring and connecting to the earth, then we connect with everything unlike walking through the spaces- that we occupy, then we are walking only those interiors. Sauntering out in the open is about living and connecting with whole world rather than in the interiors that we build against the world.
June 19th the world acknowledges the right to saunter, as World Sauntering Day or International Sauntering Day its just to remind us to take it easy, connect with the greenery, gaze at the sky, it is taking some quality time with yourself, maybe like taking yourself on a date. In 1979 when Jogging became a rage, W.T. Rabe created the sauntering day so that one could relax and enjoy oneself.
Everyone has the right to walk from one end of the city to the other, in secure and beautiful spaces. Everyone has the right to use the public transport, view a unhampered clean street and not be obstructed by two wheelers dashing on the side walk or cluttered with railings, signs and rubbish.
It is quite essential to do nature walking, that is any kind of walking we can do in natural world, be it strolling, striding, sauntering, stepping, treading whatever….Here is what Julia Cameron suggests, go outside, don’t tell anyone, don’t take your phone. Start walking and keep walking till you longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same road each day, to work back from work we stop seeing it actually. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to function without being aware, which we cannot do when we are walking a new terrain. Of course we cannot get anything out of, one cannot utilize it for anything either thats the basic idea saunter park when you feel like just be with whatever you are and whatever you have, we will actually discover a whole world out there, it would be just out there out of our familiar window, and we would foolishly miss it.
My own experience in sauntering is when we go out to saunter, really aimlessly maybe right till sundown, it was really going in.
“Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect – like a man – on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Parwatisingari's Weblog 