A Book Is A Heart That Only

Solitude In The City Is About The Lack Of Other People Or Rather Their Distance Beyond A Door Or Wall, But In Remote Places It Isn’t An Absence But The Presence Of Something Else, A Kind Of Humming Silence In Which Solitude Seems As Natural To Your Species As To Any Other, Words Strange Rocks You May Or May Not Turn Over.

As I Started To Pursue The Subject More Deeply I Realized That Walking Was This Wonderful Meandering Path Through Everything I Was Already Interested In - Gender Politics, Public Space And Urban Life, Demonstrations And Parades And Marches. The Relationship Between Walking And Thinking And Between The Mind And The Body.

There Are Those Who Receive As Birthright An Adequate Or At Least Unquestioned Sense Of Self And Those Who Set Out To Reinvent Themselves, For Survival Or For Satisfaction, And Travel Far. Some People Inherit Values And Practices As A House They Inhabit; Some Of Us Have To Burn Down That House, Find Our Own Ground, Build From Scratch, Even As A Psychological Metamorphosis.

[in Mountaineering, If] We Look For Private Experience Rather Than Public History, Even Getting To The Top Becomes An Optional Narrative Rather Than The Main Point, And Those Who Only Wander In High Places Become Part Of The Story.

Some Things We Have Only As Long As They Remain Lost, Some Things Are Not Lost Only So Long As They Are Distant.