To the Holy Land
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived from "idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages and asked charity under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, until the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer" -- a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks as they pretend are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from "sans terre," without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
-- Henry David Thoreau
To the Holy Land
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived from "idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages and asked charity under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, until the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer" -- a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks as they pretend are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from "sans terre," without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
-- Henry David Thoreau