Christina G. Rossetti.
IV
WALKING CLUBS IN AMERICA
The walking clubs of Europe have had a long and useful history. The favored regions, particularly the Alps, the Bavarian highlands, and the Black Forest, have, time out of mind, been the holiday land for all the European peoples. Walking there is in vogue as nowhere else in the world, unless it be among the English lakes. Before the war it was interesting to an American visitor in the Tyrol to observe how many people spent their holidays afoot—and how many sorts of people: men, women, old, young. Sometimes one met whole families walking together. It was not a surprising thing to encounter a fresh-cheeked schoolgirl on the peak of the Wildspitze; and pedestrian bridal tours seemed to be, in some strata of society at least, quite the thing. But the impressive fact was that there were hundreds of people—men, women, and children—tramping the mountains together, and finding the inseparable desiderata, health and happiness.
This enthusiasm for walking has expressed itself in walking clubs; they are part of the “Movement”: The Alpine Club, Le Club Alpin Français, Il Club Alpino Italiano, Die Deutsche und Oesterreiche Alpenverein, Der Schweize Alpenclub, etc. These clubs lay trails and blaze them, through chasms, across passes, and to summits. (It is the pedestrian alone to whom the mountains reveal their extremest beauties.) The clubs maintain, at comfortable intervals, mountain huts, where one may find simple food and a clean bed; and they prepare and publish maps and guidebooks.
We are followers of the Europeans, and we have this advantage of followers, that we may see and profit by all that they have done.
Already there are many walking clubs in America; their memberships are greatest, as might be expected, in New England and on the Pacific Coast. Some of these organizations are concerned chiefly with feats of mountaineering; others with the needs of the greater number of ordinary people. It is of the clubs of this latter class that some account will here be given. But at the outset a word of apology is needed. The data from which this chapter is prepared are in the necessity of the case casually collected; it cannot be otherwise than that they are fragmentary; and the result must be faulty and ill proportioned. The chapter is offered as a provisional one. Organizations not mentioned, but which might have had place with those which are, are requested to furnish data respecting themselves; all interested are invited to note mistakes and give advice of corrections, to the end that a more useful and more nearly satisfactory chapter may ultimately appear. Communications may be addressed to the League of Walkers, 347 Madison Avenue, New York.
The Appalachian Mountain Club
One of the oldest and the most distinguished of the walking clubs of America, is the Appalachian Mountain Club, of Boston, with its two outlying “chapters,” in New York, and in Worcester, Mass. Following is the official statement of the Club’s objects and activities.