Mais marcher, cela fait imprégnation. Marcher interminablement, faire passer par les pores de sa peau la hauteur des montagnes quand on s’y affronte … - Frédéric Gros

So it’s best to walk alone, except that one is never entirely alone. As Henry David Thoreau wrote: ‘I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.’ To be buried in Nature is perpetually distracting. Everything talks to you, greets you, demands your attention: trees, flowers, the colour of the roads. The sigh of the wind, the buzzing of insects, the babble of streams, the impact of your feet on the ground: a whole rustling murmur that responds to your presence. Rain, too. A light and gentle rain is a steady accompaniment, a murmur you listen to, with its intonations, outbursts, pauses: the distinct plopping of drops splashing on stone, the long melodious weave of sheets of rain falling steadily. It’s impossible to be alone when walking, with so many things under our gaze which are given to us through the inalienable grasp of contemplation.

You are nobody to the hills or the thick boughs heavy with greenery. You are no longer a role, or a status, not even an individual, but a body, a body that feels sharp stones on the paths, the caress of long grass and the freshness of the wind. When you walk, the world has neither present nor future: nothing but the cycle of mornings and evenings. Always the same thing to do all day: walk.

Il y a le silence des marches dans la neige. Silence des pas étouffés sous un ciel blanc. Tout autour rien ne bouge. Les choses et le temps sont pris dans la glace. Immobilité sourde, tout est arrêté. Tout est uni, feutré. C’est un silence de mise en veille, de parenthèse cotonneuse, blanche, suspendue.