For one contemplating a long twenty-five mile or so hike it is well to choose a route where it is never necessary to march very far in a day for lack of intervening accommodations. In most of our country this is easily accomplished. The annual vacation hike can be well spent in one of our National Parks, the walkers’ paradise. Here the pedestrian can start from one of the many noted tourist centers and be certain of accommodations before the next night’s resting place: he can obtain vistas of famous scenery and gain a storehouse of pleasant memories which fully discount any hardship he may have experienced on the trail.
To accomplish a hike in the most approved form the arrangement of meals and travel should be varied somewhat from the conventional customs. A fairly early morning start should be made with but two meals in view—a ten a. m. breakfast and a five p. m. supper with perhaps a brief midday pause and a prepared lunch. This gives the man who cooks his own meals a long stretch of time for getting over the ground without the worry and time of cooking a noonday repast.
A nine to ten hour sleep is none too little for anyone enjoying the healthful outdoor life, in fact the increased amount of sleep that one seems to require is one of the upbuilding features of such a trip and is not to be cut short for any reason. The amount of sleep needed is of course subject to individual peculiarities.
In real hot weather start at daybreak and you can get in a half day’s journey by the time the sun is hot. Slow down at the heat of day and hunt a shady retreat. On such days drink but little water and have it pure. One will perspire freely, which is good, for this is Nature’s way of cooling the body by evaporation: if one stops sweating there is real danger of heat stroke.
In wilderness travel the most dependable guides are the compass, combining with the North Star by night or the sun by day. Night travel is based on the North or Polar Star as the infallible guide. It is located by means of the big dipper which should be known to everyone. The two stars farthest from the handle and lowest are nearly in line and are called the “pointers.”
Of course, if the sun is shining you will have a reliable guide to direction, depending on the time of day.
The seasoned woods traveler goes principally by direction and he has developed to a higher or lesser degree the “bump” of locality or instinct of direction developed by his trained close observation. He gets the lay of the land, noting little things which are unusual, such as rocks, trees, sounds, course of stream flow, flora and fauna of the country and then he travels north, east, south and west of some special landmark, as a river, mountain, lake, etc. The use of the compass, North Star, etc., is much preferable to travel by landmarks, for north is always north whereas two landmarks may look alike and hence bewildering. If you expect to retrace your steps you should look frequently backward and impress the salient features of the landscape on your memory such as a cliff here, a distorted tree there, and the like.
In such a region, too, one should blaze the trail by chipping the bark off trees at intervals along the way and on both sides of the tree if one is to retrace the route. In a country covered by bushes blaze the trail by bending over a green bush in the direction in which you are going, snapping the stem or chopping it with an axe: the top pointing away from the trail. The underside of the leaves being of lighter shade than the upper marks such a sign conspicuously in the wilderness.
If you intend to hunt in unfamiliar territory where you must depend on your compass to get you out, a map showing the topography of the land is of great benefit. These quadrangles can be secured at the State Land Office, county seat or at the United States Land Office, the Post Office Department or of the United States Geological Survey, Washington. They are compiled from the field notes of surveyors and they indicate the location of streams, lakes, roads, mountain ranges, swamps, etc.