Ruminations on Walking and Timeless Love

So enticing...don't you just want to go for a walk?

Admit it, you have this fantasy too.
Darcy strides toward you through a misty morning...

He draws closer as your heart is beating madly...Walking is excellent cardiovascular exercise.

For some reason, I was thinking today about all the wonderful public access trails in England. When we lived in Ireland, we really enjoyed walking around villages and in the countryside. Shops were close together and it was easy to park and go from place to place on foot. We could get from one end of Westport to the other with no trouble. I really miss those places. Really, as in my heart hurts a little thinking about not being there.

Jane Austen wrote of heroines who liked to walk; she purportedly shared that characteristic. There's a great little Austen blog that gives a glimpse of her writing on the behavior here. Austen continues to gather fans almost 200 years after her death. I have one lucky friend - an enthusiastic hiker - who recently went on an Austen-themed tour in England, and another, Bee Drunken, who is a steward of Jane's house in Chawton. Though we three have different parents, our shared fanhood of Jane makes us sisters. Jane gave us terrific strong heroines who weren't afraid of a little mud on their shoes, and who "dearly love a laugh." Indeed, Jane's Elizabeth Bennett goes on to explain, "I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can."

True dat.

I love the walking scenes in Pride and Prejudice with Matthew MacFadyen and Keira Knightley. Thanks to the miracle of the internets, I can share a wonderful video with you all. A young woman who's as crazy about MacFadyen as me and far more talented with technical production created a wonderful piece that merges clips of P&P with Vanessa Carlton's great song "A Thousand Miles." Zeynep, the 26 year old who produced the video, is from a place much further away than a thousand miles. She lives in Turkey. Cool, huh?

Pop it out to full screen and savour the goodness.




Update: I contacted Zeynep to let her know I was mentioning her in my blog, and she wrote back, sharing the link to her own blog. It's called isfendan; the tagline is suffering is my bread and butter! Much of it's in Turkish, but thanks to my handy translator, I can read it.

The title is appropriate for a Forrest to read; isfendan is Turkish for a maple.