However, according to Thoreau, as modern connivances evolve, people become removed from nature. This removal from nature therefore causes people to not understand the importance of preserving it. Without preserving nature, people will loose their historic connection to nature and thus fail to truly understand their existence. To prevent this, Thoreau argues that everyone must learn the true art of walking. Walking is from the naturalist and transcendentalist genre of writing. This is typical of most of Thoreau's work, as a common theme in his writing is nature, its role in human life and the increasing problem of human beings disconnection from it. Thoreau was also a classic transcendentalist and thus generally wrote on the protest against the state of culture and society. His basic premise in most of his writings, including Walking, was that an ideal spiritual state (discovered only from walking in nature) transcends the physical and empirical and can only be found through an individual's intuition. For this reason, Thoreau's tone is rather conversational...

It is for this reason that Thoreau's essay and tone is not argumentative, but instead he makes his point to his audience, or society in general, by appealing to the emotions (pathos). Thoreau accomplishes this by making his argument in descriptive words that place the audience into his scene, or his walk in the woods. By doing this, the reader is able to see him or herself in the woods, become relaxed by the act, and thus easily understand Thoreau's overall argument.
As a result of all of the afore mentioned techniques, Thoreau makes in argument in a manner that is relaxing and exemplary of why humans must take walks in nature. Once he has his audience on the walk alongside him, he intermixes examples of the problems of living a life sheltered in modern conveniences throughout his images of nature. The reader therefore gets a compare and contrast argument and is easily able to see the importance of the simple saunter through the woods.