The exraordinary ordinary ...

... Andrew Motion: The Poem and the Path. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... these tramper-writers wanted to assert the democratic rights that walking embodies, to prove their concern for environmental issues, and also to confirm the value of a connection with the ordinary. Or rather, to prove that what has a reputation for being ordinary is in fact extraordinary. ... Gary Snyder, the American poet, spoke for them all (in his own inimitable way) when he took Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, for an overnight hike to the sea and back across Mount Tamalpais, across the bay from San Francisco, in 1956. En route, he told Kerouac: “The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.”

Indeed.