Recently we read an excerpt from an interview with Werner Herzog in my sculpture class. Herzog is a German filmmaker who directed Grizzly Man, Fitzcarraldo, Encounters at the End of the World as well as many others. In the interview Herzog is talking about walking and how important traveling on foot is to him. Herzog explains that walking on foot is how we are intended to travel:
For too long now we have been estranged from the essential, which is the nomadic life: traveling on foot. A distinction must be made between hiking and traveling on foot. In today's society - though it would be ridiculous to advocate traveling on foot for everyone to every possible destination - I personally would rather do the existentially essential things in my life on foot. If you live in England and you girlfriend is in Sicily, and it is clear that you want to marry her, then you should walk to Sicily to propose.... The volume and depth and intensity of the world is something that only those on foot will ever experience.Herzog tells a story about how he refused to fly to Paris to see a dying friend, but instead walked all the way from Munich because he could not accept that she might die. He said he walked against her death and knew that she would be alive when he arrived. She was and she lived into her nineties. I like to think that the faith that Herzog put in the power and efficacy of the act of walking actually imbued his journey with real potency. We have become so reliant on the things we have created to make our lives easier that we have lost touch with the importance of utilizing our given tools. Walking is a very primitive and basic mode of movement as nothing is needed outside of ourselves. We have taken what we were born with, our intellect and ingenuity and invented and produced so much to improve our lives that we don’t even need to make use of our skills anymore. I wonder if at some point we’ll start to slip back down the evolutionary slide because we don’t need to remember how to build, how to shelter ourselves to fend for ourselves or even how to walk to transport ourselves.
This is kind of how I feel about sense of direction. I was never blessed with the gift of orientation and I've often wondered about what I would do if I suddenly found myself without google maps or my gps or even a compass. (or moss...) So it always amazes me how far we have come from animals that can orient on the faintest, internal mechanisms or the most ancient of routes. You lose a little of your personal security not knowing your place in the world (literally).
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