Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!”
The Japanese question to the Polar explorer: “What did you find when you got to the Pole?” is a foolish one. You may bring nothing back in your hands from an expedition, but you have garnered within. You have garnered for yourself and also for others. It is always worth while to quit for a time the rabbit hutches of civilization and do something which stay-at-home folk call flying in the face of fortune. “Is it not comfortable enough where you are?” they ask.
However, tramping, as I am writing of it, is not Polar exploration, nor footing it along the rocky ways of the mountains to Lhasa. It is a smaller, gentler, matter. It is merely accepting the call of Nature; taking those two weeks which Wells described in his Modern Utopia—and taking more. But it matters greatly where one chooses to go. Some countries are better than others, some districts better than other districts.
England cannot be said to be excellent tramping country; very good for a walking tour where one seeks an inn each night, but not good for a tramp in which one hopes to sleep à la belle étoile. Even when the weather is fine the dews are heavy. In the occasional dry, hot summers which occur it is however, delightful to adventure forth in the West Country or in Cumberland, or even in the Highlands. One or two jaunts are very attractive, for instance, to tramp the old Roman Wall from Carlisle to Wallsend at Newcastle, or to tramp the Scottish border from Berwick to the Solway. One passes over remarkably wild and desolate country. I think especially of the track from Jedburgh to Newcastleton, and a forlorn district called, if I remember rightly, Knot of the Hill, which, however, is very much of the hill. One meets upon occasion uncouth, friendly mountain shepherds with plenty of philosophy in them. There are some wild tramps in Wales, especially in the marches. The Shropshire border is most interesting. If, however, one dives westward for places such as Dinas Mawddy or Dolgelly, one should take provisions for a couple of days. It is easy to lose yourself, and when you come upon people they speak only Welsh, and one has some trouble in making oneself understood. Dartmoor and western Ireland and the mountains and coastways of Donegal afford remarkable scope for adventurers with pack on back.
One ought to be very careful in Great Britain about wayside fires. Even when one is careful to put them out thoroughly with water before leaving one is apt to get into trouble with the farmers, the police, etc. One should also remember that if found sleeping behind haystacks, or in barns, one is liable to be haled before the justice and charged with vagrancy. Not that the tramp need be ashamed, when motorists appear there in strings charged with obstruction and speeding and the like. As a practical detail, however, it may be mentioned that sleepers are very rarely discovered.
America is, of course, the tramp’s paradise, a country made by tramps. I do not mean the hoboes which infest the railroads to-day, but the Johnny Appleseeds of time past, who went exploring beyond the horizon and the sunset. The first thing to be said about the New World is its enormous stretch and variety. Many people have walked the three thousand miles from New York to San Francisco. I even came across a woman who had done it in high-heeled boots. It is no novelty. A more difficult transcontinental jaunt would be the four thousand miles of the Unguarded Line—the frontier of Canada and the United States. This is a good literary expedition, and any one who did it and described it well would make his name. My friend Wilfrid Ewart had it in mind to do, and he went prospectively over the details of such a vagabondage. But he was unfortunately killed in Mexico. Such a tramp would not be confined to frontier posts, but should be crisscross, now in the Republic, now in the Empire.
Another tramp which has seldom been done, except by laborers, is to follow the wheat harvest north from Texas. The harvesting starts in June in the South, and great gangs of harvesters work northward with the summer. This implies a readiness to work in the fields. It is arduous, but a great experience. You garner wheat: you garner gold. If you take lifts when offered you may get all the way to Oregon by September and find the corn still standing there.
In America, however, the roads are killing. You can only tramp in the early hours of the morning and the cool of the evening—at least, in summer. The noontide is too hot, the many cars throw up too much dust. Cross-country tramping is much happier and provides more adventures.
But the man in the car is much more hospitable in America than in any other part of the world. When tired of some waterless, treeless countryside, you can come on to the highway, hail a passing car, and be taken a long step further forward. The leisured and educated Americans do not tramp for pleasure and find some difficulty in understanding it. There is a well-known motto: Why walk if you can ride? And Americans without automobiles make their more fortunate brothers carry them. A hand wave from a pedestrian brings a car to a halt and you jump in. Journeys have been made from New York to Los Angeles, Boston to New Orleans, “stepping cars,” all the way. It is not to be recommended, however, as it is an abuse of a delightful hospitality.
Still, unless you are studying American civilization, it is hardly worth while to tramp from town to town. The wildernesses are so much more interesting. It is worth while for any one thinking out a novel walk to apply to the Department of Forests and National Parks at Washington. A National Park, conventional as it sounds, may easily prove to be a reserve of territory as extensive as an English county. They are commonly referred to by propagandists as “vast natural playgrounds”—but as yet they are but little used. Yellowstone Park is the only one which is visited by great numbers of people. The others are in nowise overrun. Indeed, the railway journeys to them are generally so long that the masses of the eastern cities cannot profit by them. There are two specially marvelous ones, Sequoia and Yosemite, notable for their trees; the highest and the oldest trees in the world are to be found in these primeval wildernesses.