The Grand Canyon can afford at least a week’s walking. It is a mistake to go down it on horse or mule, and when down in the depths there is a marvelous journey for the pedestrian along the rocky flank of the fast-running Colorado River. If at Grand Canyon in August it is well to visit the Hopi Indians and see the Snake Dance. However, it is really better to visit the Canyon later in the year. At Christmas it is delightful. At midsummer it is really too oppressive down below. When I went down there was snow above and soft vernal airs three thousand feet under, spring flowers in bloom, and one could sit happily by one’s wood fire in the afternoon sunshine.
Tramping in the South of the United States is very pleasant in autumn and spring, especially in Florida and Alabama. In the summer it is too hot and the mosquitoes unusually thick. A very interesting November tramp is from Atlanta, the largest city in Georgia, to Savannah on the coast. In this way you can follow, as I did, the track of Sherman’s army in its famous march to the sea.
But there are places less far afield than these. There is hardly any wilder country anywhere than in upper New York State. A tramp through New England is likely to be congenial to most Englishmen: the people are so much nearer to the English. Canada also presents enormous fields for pleasure tramping, or for tramping which is almost exploration. The far Northwest especially is wild and little traversed.
Europe, however, has equally strong claims on those who tramp, being even more diversified than is America. The language difficulty is the chief drawback. There are a hundred or so tongues. Customs and laws are also bewildering. Still, the best way to see the Pyrenees or the Alps is pack on back. The charming works of Hilaire Belloc on the “Path to Rome” and the Pyrenees are memorials of excellent tramping in Europe.
A pilgrimage from inn to inn in France, especially going south through the wine country, is utterly pleasant. One dispenses with a coffeepot in these parts, a liter bottle is better. Fill it with the vin du pays wherever you go; a bottle of Chablis in the village of Chablis, a bottle of Nuits St. Georges in the village of Nuits St. Georges, a bottle of Pommard at Pommard, identifying the country by the wine of wayside inns. It is well to taste and try what any countryside, town, or hostelry is famous for, be it Creole gumbo or stuffed peppers, be it even snails, even frogs’ legs. I remember in younger days the disgust of the waiter in a little hotel opposite Chartres Cathedral when I rejected a plateful of snails which, with a clatter, he had put before me—a flagon of red wine, a chunk of bread, and a plateful of Roman snails. I said “No! Take them away!”
The waiter shrugged his shoulders. Que diable! If I didn’t want snails why did I come to that hotel? Snails were their specialty. However, I confess now I have eaten snails. The first time was at Pont de Vaux, near Mâcon of Burgundy fame. The snails came on as a third course at the Hôtellerie de la Renaissance, cleverly disguised, and before I knew it I was saying, “I like these; I wonder what they are!”
They were purveyed upon a silver tray, or nickel, I suppose; they had been taken out of their shells and put into tiny pots, one snail one pot. There were a dozen or so tiny pots on the tray, each no more than half an inch across the top, and in each a snail floated in a little bath of melted butter and spice. There was a slender two-pronged fork which looked like a toothpick, and you ate the snail with that.
Very tasty! Very novel! Perhaps that was how the Romans ate them. Perhaps in ancient Egypt they ate them in that way, and these are the original fleshpots. Be that as it may, I felt much amused and intrigued and turned with a friendly gesture to my bottle of local Mâcon. I was more pro-French after that, having got over a prejudice, I could no longer say, “Disgusting people; they eat snails!”
France is a delightful country for a spring escapade. Go South and stay in the country inns, and disenchant the Northern seriousness! It’s a great idea. Go out from Paris to Fontainebleau, where the birds are singing in choirs in the silvery lichened trees. You can sprawl at your length in the sun in May. It is cold sleeping out, but there are inns. You will walk amid wild daffodils and budding hyacinths. Summer is coming north to meet you at Joigny or Dijon. You enter the Côte d’Or country and spectacular stone villages among green hills. From Dijon by red-earth vineyards whence the well cut vines are sprouting an elemental eye-placating green. Your eyes need placating after the dreary North with its cities and industries. The vineyards have low stone walls which incidentally make excellent seats for the wanderer on which to munch his bread and Camembert and stand his bottle of Burgundy. You come to Beaune, a name on a bottle, on a wine list, now a place well established in your mind and heart. So also Pommard, Volnay, Mersault, Nuits, Mâcon, to mention but a few.
It is a longish distance, but another journey or a continuation might be from Lyons along the banks of the Rhône or eastward to Lake Geneva and Switzerland. It is very hot on the Rhône, but there is an added interest in the old Roman cities you pass through. Avignon might be your center, and from Avignon there are delightful pilgrimages to the fountain of Vaucluse, where Petrarch and Laura met, to Tarascon, the byword for obscurity in France, to famous Arles and its amphitheater. But certainly the most wild and delightful tramp would be over the mountains by compass to Cannes, through untraversed and solitary Provence. This can be done in later summer. For although it is extremely hot on the Riviera, the whole way there is at a height, and one drops down to the coast by a precipitous road from the perfume factories of Grasse.