Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a man of multitudes: philosopher, novelist, composer, essayist, botanist, autodidact, fugitive, political theorist, masochist. Most of all, he was a walker. He walked often and he walked alone. Yes, a stroll with a close friend has its pleasures, as do walking clubs, but at its heart walking is a private act. We walk by ourselves and for ourselves. Freedom is walking’s essence. The freedom to depart and return when we wish, to meander, to, as Robert Louis Stevenson put it, “follow this way or that, as the freak takes you.”
