Truth or Beauty

In her wonderful book Crow Planet, Lyanda Lynn Haupt states (p. 91):

"We have been told that walking is a way into our own intelligence and creativity. It is commonplace for modern writers to agree with Thoreau, who claimed to write best, both in terms of quality and quantity, in direct proportion to how much he walked. In If You Want to Write, the book first published in 1938 that continues to mentor so many writers across genres Barbara [sic] Ueland recommends walking as a way into thoughts we don't even know we have: "If when I walk I look at the sky or the lake or the tiny, infinitesimally delicate, bare, young trees, or wherever I want to look, and my neck and jaw are loose and I feel happy and say to myself with my imagination 'I am free,' and 'There is nothing to hurry about,' I find then that thoughts begin to come to me in their quiet way."

According to Ueland's entry in Wikipedia,

Brenda was very physically active well into her old age. She regularly walked up to 9 miles a day, and liked to spend time improving her handstands. She enjoyed swimming and set an international swimming record for people over 80 years old. She died at the age of 93

Ueland also asked:

"Why should we use all our creative power and write or paint or play music, or whatever it tells us to do? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. Because the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?"

And this:

“I learned... that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.”