"I think the word I would use for this particular kind of travel is “saunter.” I sauntered through the trails that day, and I liked it!

In “The Mountain Trail and Its Message,” Albert W. Palmer tells about a conversation he allegedly had with the great naturalist John Muir, in which Muir suggests:

“[The word ‘saunter’ is] a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers.”

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Photo by Angelo Pantazis on Unsplash