Thinking "consolidated in the act of taking steps, each step a meditation steeped in reality"—some photos of a walk across Grantchester Meadows

On Sunday I mentioned the walk over to Grantchester I occasionally take with my friend to talk philosophy and politics. Well, this morning (a lovely, bright and frosty one) I took the time to walk over there on my own and do some solitary thinking and looking. Gustav Landauer's mystical monism, Parmenides' eternal being, Spinoza's Deus sive Natura and the general spirit of Thoreau's essay, Walking, all intertwined as I slowly made my along the river accompanied by leaping fish, feeding swans and a darting kingfisher.

The whole day reminded me of some words of Henry Bugbee found in his book "The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form":

During my years of graduate study before the war I studied philosophy in the classroom and at a desk, but my philosophy took shape mainly on foot. It was truly peripatetic, engendered not merely while walking, but through walking that was essentially a meditation of the place. And the balance in which I weighed ideas I was studying was always that established in the experience of walking in the place. I weighed everything by the measure of the silent presence of things, clarified by racing clouds, clarified by the cry of hawks, waters of manifold voice, and consolidated in the act of taking steps, each step a meditation steeped in reality (The Inward Morning, p. 139).

As Daniel W. Conway says of Bugbee's philosophical walking:

Walking is not merely a calisthenic propaedeutic to the heroic labors of philosophizing. Rather, walking functions as the engine of immersion, which enables him to take the phenomenological measure of the wild he temporarily inhabits (Wilderness and the Heart, p. 6).

Like Bugbee, and Thoreau before him, I feel have done my best philosophizing whilst walking and today's thinking felt very fruitful indeed—especially after an unusually heavy week of pastoral duties.

All the photos were taken with my iPhone 6+ using the Hipstamatic app. The combination (combo) of "film" and "lens" is one put together by Ger van den Elzen which you can find at this link. As always, just click on a photo to enlarge it.