Why I Prefer Solo Trail Running

...cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by church-going and prayer. I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get (the world) out of my head and be sane a part of every day.... I wish to forget, a considerable part of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men..., and therefore I come out to these solitudes where the problem of existence is simplified.

I get a mile or two away from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me. I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself....

This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of thoroughwort, or boneset, to my intellect. This is what I go out to seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him.

Each phase of nature, while not invisible, is yet not too distinct or obtrusive. It is there to be found when we look for it, but not demanding our attention. It is like a silent but sympathizing companion in whose company we retain most of the advantages of solitude, with whom we can walk and talk, or be silent, naturally, without the necessity of talking....

from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau – January 7, 1857 and November 8, 1858