If this work seems incomplete, that is because an entire series of books on the topic of walking in cinema would probably not exhaust the subject. As I have argued, film-making and walking have been inextricably linked together since the birth of cinema. By way of conclusion, I want to map out some territory for future research on the subject that this work has not covered by citing a few case studies.

Hiking Films

In his 1861 treatise Walking, Thoreau proclaimed the true essence of walking lies in the art of sauntering:

If we can master the art of sauntering, then ‘every walk is a sort out of crusade’. Since Thoreau regards man as ‘an inhabitant, or part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society’, he extols hiking long distances in the wilderness as a spiritual exercise and the highest form of sauntering. He claimed he could never preserve his own spiritual health unless he spent at least four hours a day ‘sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields’. Hiking in nature, the walker reaffirms that, ‘Wildness is the preservation of the World.’

Over the past two decades, there have been a slew of feature films about long distance wilderness treks. Below are short case studies of three of these. All share roughly the same theme of broken characters who set out on a long distance hike as a form of healing or self-discovery.

Southbounders (2005, dir. by Ben Wagner)

This low-budget Indy feature follows a young woman named Olivia as she attempts to walk the entire 2,170 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia.