I just finished reading Alice McDermott’s novel Someone, in which twice appears a favorite quotation (motto? adage?) of mine: “It is solved by walking.”

When I wrote about this in an earlier blog post, I used the Latin “Solvitur Ambulando,” a term beloved by pilgrims and poets, and mentioned that I might have given this name to my blog had it not already been taken. Still, the spirit of “Solvitur Ambulando” fills this space. I can’t count the number of times my mood, my priorities, even my energy level, have been “solved,” have been set right, by walking.

According to some sources, the phrase originated with Diogenes, who disputed the unreality of motion by walking away. In that sense, solvitur ambulando not only means walking but any practical proof of an argument.

In The Tao of Travel, Paul Theroux attributes the adage to St. Augustine. “Walking to ease the mind is also the objective of the pilgrim,” Theroux writes. “There is a spiritual dimension, too: the walk itself is part of a process of purification. Walking is the age-old form of travel, the most fundamental, perhaps the most revealing.”

For me, it’s the most essential. Not for locomotion — but for sanity.