Walk Like a Thought: Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust, and the Well-Being of Moving Slowly

We don’t have to go far to go deep. Rebecca Solnit reminds us that walking is the smallest pilgrimage with the largest return: a way the day becomes porous again and the self remembers how to listen.

“Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together… It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.” —Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking. The Marginalian

When the pace drops to something human, attention thickens. Place speaks back. Thoughts arrive not like commands but like weather—gathering, clearing, revealing a horizon you couldn’t see from your chair. Solnit calls it “the rhythm of walking” generating “a kind of rhythm of thinking,” an odd consonance between outer path and inner path. The Marginalian

She also gives a gentle warning to our century of speed: “I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought.” So we walk to take our minds back to their natural tempo. The Marginalian

The cultural work of walking in Solnit’s key

Walking is never only locomotion. In Solnit’s history it wanders into pilgrimage and protest, city-making and daydream—the “amateur act” that trespasses across anatomy, architecture, politics, and prayer. It’s how we rejoin the in-between: streets and paths that stitch home, work, and wonder back into one continuous world. The Marginalian

What wandering meant to Solnit

1) Attention as a craft

For Solnit, walking is attention training. The rhythm of footfall steadies the mind; the world comes into focus at the speed of a person, not a machine. When pace slows, meaning returns. (See her discussion of musing, unstructured time—the vanishing “room” where thinking and seeing happen.) alisonmorgan.co.uk

2) Thinking with your feet

She argues that movement and thought echo each other—the path outside helps us trace the path within. It’s why a new idea often feels “discovered” rather than invented after a long walk. The Marginalian

3) Walking as citizenship

Sidewalks, parks, and squares aren’t just backdrops; they’re instruments of democracy. Processions and marches show how feet make publics. As Solnit puts it, Paris’s walkerly geography is braided with its history of uprisings. alisonmorgan.co.uk

4) Walking as meaning, not mileage

Solnit writes that exploring the world is one way we explore the mind; walking lets us travel both terrains at once. The point isn’t distance; it’s the quality of encounter—with streets, weather, strangers, and the self that shows up when speed drops. alisonmorgan.co.uk

A short Solnit sampler

• “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned …” —Wanderlust (2000/2001). The Marginalian

• “The mind … works at about three miles an hour.” —Wanderlust. The Marginalian

• “Paris is the great city of walkers. And it is the great city of revolution.” —Wanderlust, on parties, processions, and revolutions. alisonmorgan.co.uk

How to live this: walking as lifestyle & well-being in Solnit’s spirit

1. Make a daily alignment walk.
   Ten–twenty minutes at human pace, no audio. Let the street set the rhythm; notice three specifics (light, smell, texture). This is the “mind–body–world” chord, tuned on purpose. The Marginalian

2. Use walking to think (not just to go).
   When stuck, pick a loop you know. Solnit suggests thought ripens at walking speed; let the loop “hold” the problem while you observe. The Marginalian

3. Practice the city as a language.
   Read corners and cross-streets like sentences: where does this alley “say” you can go; where does the plaza invite you to pause? Treat public space as shared authorship; your feet are part of the draft. alisonmorgan.co.uk

4. Honor unstructured time.
   Leave some walks agenda-free. Solnit laments the loss of daydream hours; protect them. That’s where seeing—and feeling well—tend to return. alisonmorgan.co.uk

5. Walk together sometimes.
   A pair or small group sharpens perception differently and reminds you walking is also public life. Think of it as low-stakes citizenship practice. alisonmorgan.co.uk

Why this matters now

We live in an age that asks for more speed and gives back less seeing. Solnit’s answer is beautifully ordinary: choose a human pace. At three miles an hour, attention thickens, anxiety thins, and the world becomes legible enough to love—and to change.

How to walk like Solnit (a lifestyle, not a streak)

1) Keep a daily “alignment walk.” Ten to twenty minutes, no audio, just breath and footfall until the mind–body–world chord comes into tune. Note three specifics—light on a window, the smell after rain, a corner you’ve never really seen. (You’re practicing attention, not performance.) The Marginalian

2) Walk to think. When stuck, give the problem to your feet. Solnit’s rhythm line is literal: let the outer route entrain the inner one; many of us find a new idea already waiting at the next turn. The Marginalian

3) Walk for mood hygiene. If you can add trees or water, do it—the nature premium helps loosen rumination. But any safe path beats the couch for shifting mind-weather.

4) Make walking social & civic. Strolls with a friend are soft places for truth. Streets and squares are also where we practice democracy with our bodies—the presence that turns a crowd into a public. The Marginalian

5) Measure gently. Steps help, but don’t let numbers steal the wonder. The JAMA lesson: more steps matters; harder steps much less. Count if it keeps you honest; look up if it doesn’t.

6) Let slowness be the point. “The mind… works at about three miles an hour.” If your life is faster than that, a daily walk is not indulgence—it’s maintenance. The Marginalian

Why this still feels like freedom

Solnit’s walker is a maker of meaning: each footstep a sentence that says, I am here, with this world, now. The science says your heart, brain, and mood agree. And if you keep going, quietly and often, the culture changes too—one person choosing sidewalks over scrolls, neighborliness over numbness, the in-between over the next notification. Walking is ordinary; that’s its magic. Do it today, and call it what it is: A small, daily way to re-align a life.

What science says while we’re out there

Poetry doesn’t cancel data; it completes it. The body keeps score—and keeps the receipts.

• Longevity (small doses matter). A 2023 meta-analysis pooling 30+ million people found that just 75 minutes a week of moderate activity—about 11 minutes a day of brisk walking—was linked to a ~23% lower risk of early death, with additional reductions in cardiovascular disease (~17%) and cancer (~7%). In short: some is already powerful.

• Steps, not stress. In U.S. adults, simply taking more daily steps (think ~8,000 vs. ~4,000) was associated with lower all-cause mortality; step intensity mattered far less once total steps were counted. Translation: amble if you like—accumulation beats aggression.

• Blood pressure & heart. Meta-analyses of walking programs show meaningful drops in systolic blood pressure (around 5–6 mmHg), a shift big enough to matter for heart risk across a population.

• Mood & rumination. A 90-minute walk in nature reduced self-reported rumination and dampened activity in the brain’s subgenual prefrontal cortex—one hub of the stuck, self-critical loop—compared with an urban walk. (City strolls still have value; the green dose was simply stronger.)

• Creativity. In controlled experiments, walking boosted divergent thinking—the spark for fresh ideas—during and shortly after the walk. (Yes, even a treadmill helped.)

• Public-health baseline. Global guidelines ask for 150 minutes/week of moderate activity; walking is the most democratic way to get there. If that sounds heavy, start with Solnit’s pace and the Cambridge finding above: 11 minutes/day is already a win.

Sources & further reading

• Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking — hardcover (Viking, 2000); paperback (Penguin, 2001). search.library.wisc.eduPenguinRandomhouse.com

• The Marginalian’s review with key passages from Wanderlust (mind–body–world; rhythm of thinking). The Marginalian

Tags: #RebeccaSolnit #Walking #Wellbeing #Mindfulness #PublicSpace #Creativity #MentalHealth #SlowLiving #Wanderlust