Walking on Thin Air

Geoff Nicholson has been walking his whole life. Part urban explorer, part psychogeographer, rambler and flaneur, wherever he is and wherever he goes in the world, he walks and writes about what he sees and feels. Here he reflects on the nature of walking, why we do it, how it benefits us and, in some cases, how it damages and even destroys us. Walking is seldom a safe and benign activity. People injure themselves while walking; people fall, get lost, they get attacked by people and by animals; some die while walking. Geoff's recent diagnosis with a rare, incurable form of cancer has made him all too aware of his own mortality. Geoff vows to continue to walk for as long as he can, although he knows that sooner or later there will be a last step, a last excursion, a final drift, for him just as there is for everybody else. This moving, vital book about walking and mortality describes Geoff's own walks and relates them to the walks of others - to the walking of street photographers such as Gary Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Daido Moriyama; artists Richard Long, John Baldessari, Sophie Calle; and writers, Jose Luis Borges, Kathy Acker, Teju Cole, Lauren Elkin and Virginia Woolf.