Walking in the Nearby Woods: Why is Nature so Good for Us?

By Loran Joly

Walking is good for our bodies and overall happiness. Why? This book explores walking: walking in a semi-urban area, where we may find a wooded area nearby. More than a set of photos of woods, though, this is a book on the "philosophy" behind walking. WHY is walking so good for us, it seeks to speak to. The author, 64, has walked plenty, and spent plenty of time in nature. He spent his first five years of life in inner-city Detroit and attended an all-black Kindergarten in the ghettos there. However, after Kindergarten, his family moved to North Carolina, and he spent a year out of school. There, in North Carolina, he spent that year in the woods, while the other children his age were in first grade. The first book he ever owned was one that his grandmother bought him, at the age of six: he asked her for a book on birds. In North Carolina, he would sometimes walk on the wooded grounds of St. Thomas More Catholic School. He joined the Cub Scouts. Also, starting at the age of seven, he spent all of his childhood summers, until sixteen, on his grandparents'' farm in Michigan. They were war refugees from Eastern Poland - grandmother - and Ukraine - grandfather. She spoke German, and he spoke German and Ukrainian. She was a Baptist, and he was a Mennonite. After high school, he entered the Army, at West Point. There, it was required that he run daily, and do orienteering on their 16,000 acres of land. He also did as much as ten-mile-long hikes with backpack gear.... After West Point, he went to Germany and did more hiking there, on his time off. A year after departing the Army, he moved to California and joined the Sierra Club. He hiked every single Saturday, in the San Diego area. At the age of thirty, he moved back to Kentucky and focused on photography more. He also became engaged, then, to a woman from Eastern Kentucky, who had been born in Ashland, Kentucky, a small town of 20,000, in extreme eastern Kentucky, located near the border of Ohio and West Virginia. She would accompany him on his photography efforts, whether to Corbin, say, or to the Cumberland Gap. At the age of 37, he gave up his ownership of a car - and did not purchase another one for the next twenty years - and moved to a village of 800, near the Mississippi River, very close to Galena, Illinois. He took a Greyhound bus to get there, arriving with two duffle bags and one book, and knowing no one. He rented an apartment for $125 a month and hitchhiked five miles from the bus drop site to the village. He took one book with him: Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. He never purchased a bed the entire three years he was there, preferring to "rough it" on a mat on the floor. He would then walk a mile each direction, to the tiny village store or library, daily. After three years there, he moved to Berea, Kentucky, in Appalachian Kentucky, and fifty miles from his mother''s home, and started studying Mathematics there, at the age of 41. There, he met Warren Brunner, a local photographer.... He rented a converted garage for $200 a month, a block from campus, and again would walk a mile each way, to the store, daily. After Berea, suffering from injuries from a parachute injury in the military''s Fort Benning Airborne training school, he moved back to his mother''s home, and assisted her, in her life. He would take trips by Greyhound, such as a ten-day trip to Burlington, Vermont, staying there in a hostel. In the past five years, he has been avid, again, in camping and photography work. He linked back up with Warren Brunner and has been mentored by him during these years. He is now 97. This photographer-writer covers a five-state region these days: Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Virginia. He assists his mother, 87.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0F6392W64
• ISBN13: 9798281065023
• Release Date: April 2025
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 92 Pages
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.2" x 8.5"