Muir isn't simply praising nature walks, though that's the surface reading—he's insisting that unplanned, unmeasured experiences are non-negotiable, not mere luxury. The dirt path has no schedule, no predetermined endpoint, no metrics of success, which makes it radically different from the paved roads where we can predict arrival times and measure progress. A accountant who spends Saturday mornings wandering a creek bed isn't being inefficient; she's preserving the part of herself that notices things, that gets delightfully lost, that remembers her own smallness. Without those unmapped hours, even the smoothest highway eventually feels like a trap.