The Pursuit of Health

Let nothing divert you

Let nothing divert you

Walt Whitman, supreme poet of the body, prophet of American nonchalance, has not been heard here anymore than nature itself has managed to make itself heard:

Let nothing divert you from your duty to your body. Up in the morning early! Habituate yourself to the brisk walk in the fresh air.

Brooding and all sorts of acrid thoughts, "the blues," and the varied train of depressed feelings, are among the most serious enemies of a fine physique — while the latter, in turn, possesses a marvellous power of scattering all those unpleasant visitors, and dissipating them to the winds.

The observance of the laws of manly training, duly followed, can utterly rout and do away with the curse of a depressed mind, melancholy, "ennui," which now, in more than half the men of America, blights a large portion of the days of their existence.

from "Manly Health and Training"


Whenever I talk about my devotion to hiking or how long I went without internet, I find that the collective defenses here are immense, impenetrable, almost invincible. Folks don't want to hear "I walk every day and chop wood", instead of "I go the gym and live on goji berries".

For example, since I moved offgrid into the high desert, I haven't had a well. I collect rain and snowmelt to bathe in. I expected this to be a temporary arrangement, but I've found my makeshift ritual to be so invigorating that I don't plan to stop: I stand outside on a wooden pallet, and pour water on myself from an old soupcan. Often the snow beneath my bare feet is melted away as I pour. Often my breath is caught for a moment in the shock of a stiff breeze. The contrast of the nearly boiling water pulled from the top of my woodstove, is what a German would call "herrlich". I feel strong, I feel healthy, those "acrid thoughts" are blown away, nothing can stop me.

Whitman's little homage to health is generally considered a joke, but I can't find anything I disagree with:

This is all so obvious, it's almost embarrassing. "On such little things much depends."


A few supplementary guidelines:

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