Rebecca Solnit

I'm sure anyone who enjoys walking about in the hills, and is remotely literate, would have their tramping enhanced by reading Rebecca Solnit's book "Wanderlust: a History of Walking".

Solnit does an excellent job of showing how this fine activity of pointless wandering developed. It was a review in Salon.com that first put me onto it.

Solnit has done a lot more since Wanderlust. Her books, "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" and "Yosemite in Time: Ice ages, Tree Clocks & Ghost Rivers" being another two for the thinking tramper.

However what got me going here is an article by Solnit in TomDispatch. Solnit writes about Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton purchasing Kindred Spirits, one of the paintings that marked the beginnings of America's love of wilderness for its own sake.

Read The Wal-Mart Biennale.

You'll see there's more to Solnit that just a love of walking (like all of us), and her heart is absolutely in the right place.