He had recently lost the tip of his middle finger when, carrying his boat across the icy ground, the boat slipped and tore it off. In “Interlude III,” my favorite section of Six Walks, Shattuck rewinds a few years to one of the coldest freezes in Massachusetts since 1918. Shattuck first encountered Thoreau during a snowed-in Massachusetts winter. Because Shattuck felt bolstered by this experience, he returned home certain that if he followed further in Henry’s footsteps, he would discover “hidden, unexpected goodness.” Strangers offered him a place to stay so he wouldn’t have to spend the night on the beach. He saw a whale break through the surf and gulls dance on the breeze. Shattuck didn’t find the absolution he was seeking, either when he located the house where Thoreau stayed on his own walk down Cape Cod, Shattuck “felt no sense of transcendence.” He did, however, walk until he was too tired to dream. His duct-taped running shoes fell apart within the first mile of trudging through sand, and he didn’t bring sunscreen or a sleeping bag in which to spend the night. He was much less prepared, and the icy wind of that cold May morning stung his legs beneath the swim trunks he had chosen to wear on the beach. Shattuck’s initial walk on Cape Cod was a far cry from Thoreau’s. Six Walks is the moving account of Shattuck’s journey to find peace by undertaking six of Thoreau’s nineteenth-century walks: along Cape Cod, up Mount Katahdin and Mount Wachusett, from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, through the Allagash, and then, a few years later, back to the Cape. Without considering consequences, Shattuck packed bread, cheese, and the copy of Cape Cod he had been reading into his backpack, then set off to recreate Thoreau’s 1849 walk along the Cape. Reeling from another nightmare about his ex-girlfriend, Shattuck took a shower and, as the water washed disturbing dream scenes from his mind, imagined Thoreau smiling on the beach.
Ben Shattuck puts that to the test in his debut, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau.
Taken literally, the phrase suggests that walking is the physical key to gaining understanding of others-and ourselves. Maybe you’ve heard the adage inviting you to walk a mile in someone’s shoes before you judge them.
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