Still there are rewards. If you do not quarrel irreparably and part on the road you will probably find your friendship greatly increased by the experience of the wilds together. I like tramping alone, but a companion is well worth finding. He will add to the experience; perhaps double it.
You have naturally long conversations. You comment on Nature around you, and on tramping experiences. You talk of books and pictures, of poems, of people, but above all, almost inevitably, of yourself. Tramping makes you self-revelatory. And this is an enormous boon. If you have patience you will get to see your friend in a new light; you will fill in the picture which up to then you have but vaguely sketched. The richest people in life are the good listeners. If, however, you also must talk, must reveal your life, your heart, your prejudices and passions, it will often happen that you will express yourself to yourself, as much as to your friend. Self-confession is growth of the mind, an enriching of the consciousness. In talk which seems idle enough you may be reaching out toward the infinite.
The early morning tramp is a striving time, one of reaching out, of vigorous assertions. The afternoon may mock the morning with jesting, with ribald songs,
“Songs that make you cough and blow your nose,”
as Kipling says. But the evening will make amends. There is a great poetic time after the camp fire has been lit, the coffee brewed, the sleeping place laid out. You sit by the embers as the twilight deepens and talk till the stars shine brightly upon you. That is the time of confidences, of tenderness, of melancholy, of the “might-have-been” and the “if only.” You are full of the songs of the birds to which you have listened all day. Music will come out again.
But there are many types of companionship: the two undergraduates en vacance, the two cronies of the same town, the middle-aged man and his young disciple, sweethearts, bachelor girls, father and son, man and wife, friend and friend.
Young athletes will go to the furthest distance; lovers the shortest. But the lovers may be out the longest time. I am inclined to measure a tramp by the time taken rather than by the miles. If a hundred miles is covered in a week it is a longer tramp than if it is rushed in three days. There is great happiness in taking a month over it. However, it is hardly possible to walk less than seven miles a day if one sleeps out of doors.
A point to make sure about in companionship is distribution of kit. You do not need two coffeepots, two sugar bags—a number of duplicates can be avoided. See your companion has the right boots. The slower walker should set the pace. It is absurd for one to walk the other off his feet just to show what a walker he is. There is great difference in walking capacity. Some can do forty miles a day without turning a hair; many can hardly keep up fifteen. If your companion breaks his feet or turns an ankle you may have to wait some days with him while he recovers. The first days of tramping are in this respect the most dangerous. It is so easy to blister the feet if one marches too far in hot weather. One or two blisters may be remedied, but there comes a morning when you cannot get your boots on.
The best companions are those who make you freest. They teach you the art of life by their readiness to accommodate themselves. After freedom, I enjoy in a companion a well stocked mind, or observant eyes, or wood lore of any kind. It is nice sometimes to tramp with a living book.
Of course, one should carry a notebook or diary or some broad-margined volume of poems. You can annotate Keats from your life on the road. But whether you do that or merely record the daily life in a page-a-day journal, you are enriching yourself enormously by what you can write about.