| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | Tramping Again | [ 1] |
| II. | Finding the Poet | [ 7] |
| III. | Taking the Road | [ 14] |
| IV. | First Nights Out | [ 21] |
| V. | Going Up to the Snow | [ 28] |
| VI. | Different Ways of Going Downward | [ 34] |
| VII. | Silenced by the Mountains | [ 40] |
| VIII. | Night and Nothing on the Mountains | [ 47] |
| IX. | “Wife, Give Me the Pain-Killer” | [ 54] |
| X. | Clear Blue | [ 62] |
| XI. | National Wilderness | [ 71] |
| XII. | Going West | [ 77] |
| XIII. | Climbing Red Eagle | [ 82] |
| XIV. | Doing the Impossible | [ 89] |
| XV. | People in Camp | [ 95] |
| XVI. | Visited by Bears | [ 101] |
| XVII. | Lindsay’s Stone Coffee | [ 108] |
| XVIII. | Making Maps of the World | [ 114] |
| XIX. | A Mountain Point of View | [ 121] |
| XX. | By the Camp Fire | [ 127] |
| XXI. | Down Cataract Mountain | [ 133] |
| XXII. | “Go West, Young Man” | [ 139] |
| XXIII. | The Sun-Worshippers | [ 146] |
| XXIV. | Two Voices | [ 151] |
| XXV. | Stopped by the Clouds | [ 158] |
| XXVI. | Lindsay on Roosevelt | [ 165] |
| XXVII. | The Willows | [ 171] |
| XXVIII. | Johnny Appleseed | [ 177] |
| XXIX. | Log-Rolling | [ 184] |
| XXX. | Toward the Kootenai | [ 190] |
| XXXI. | As the Sparks Fly Upward | [ 196] |
| XXXII. | The Star of Springfield | [ 201] |
| XXXIII. | Flat Top Mountain | [ 213] |
| XXXIV. | Crossing the Canadian Line | [ 221] |
| XXXV. | The Difference | [ 231] |
| XXXVI. | Dukhobors | [ 239] |
| XXXVII. | A Visit to the Mormons | [ 247] |
| XXXVIII. | “Bloom For Ever, O Republic!” | [ 274] |
TRAMPING WITH A POET
IN THE ROCKIES
HAIL TO ALL MOVING THINGS
I. TRAMPING AGAIN
Well, it’s good to be going tramping again. I’ve been sitting in European cafés and reading newspapers half a year, from Constantinople to Berlin, and I’ve only stretched my legs when in strange cities I needed to find a hotel, beating it pleasurelessly on asphalt. Last autumn, yes, I was tramping over the ruins and wreck of the war in France, and the year before that walked across Georgia on the track of old Sherman. But with a purpose, and in lands where after all there are hotels, and one pulls the blinds down when the stars appear.
But now I’ve had a real call from Hesperus and the wilds, and am off with a knapsack and a pot and a blanket, and a free mind—yes, and, I confess, a few yards of mosquito netting. I’ve left a notice, “Not at home,” at my Soho flat, though I don’t spend much time there, anyhow; “Back in half an hour or so,” and there are already four thousand miles between my arm-chair and me.
And as I hasten to the West the link stretches, stretches. Not that my flat could ever be lasting home. Where the lady of your heart is, there is home! And where is she not? The worst thing man ever did to man was to nail him down. So hail to all things and men which move and keep moving.
I am called by one of the most wonderful men who ever broke silence with a song. He belongs to the same sub-species. Yes, a tramping species. His hat has got a hole in it, and so have his breeches. But he is a poet, and he sings of what the world will be when the years have passed away. He can charm a supper out of a farmer with a song. And I who have tramped without music know what a miracle that is. They always said to me, “Chop this wood,” or “Turn that hay,” or “If a man do not work, then neither shall he eat.”