some time under the impression that American women all have deformed
feet, they are so coy of them and so studiously careful to keep them
hid. That there is an astonishing difference between the women of the
two countries in this respect, every traveller can testify; and that
there is a difference equally astonishing between the pedestrian habits
and capabilities of the rival sisters is also certain.
The English pedestrian, no doubt, has the advantage of us in the matter
of climate; for notwithstanding the traditional gloom and moroseness
of English skies, they have in that country none of those relaxing,
sinking, enervating days, of which we have so many here, and which
seem especially trying to the female constitution--days which withdraw
all support from the back and loins, and render walking of all things
burdensome. Theirs is a climate of which it has been said that "it
invites men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the day than
that of any other country."
Then their land is threaded with paths which invite the walker, and
which are scarcely less important than the highways. I heard of a surly
nobleman near London who took it into his head to close a footpath that
passed through his estate near his house, and open another one a little
farther off. The pedestrians objected; the matter got into the courts,
and after protracted litigation the aristocrat was beaten. The path
could not be closed or moved. The memory of man ran not to the time
when there was not a footpath there, and every pedestrian should have
the right of way there still.
I remember the pleasure I had in the path that connects
Stratford-on-Avon with Shottery, Shakespeare's path when he went
courting Anne Hathaway. By the king's highway the distance is somewhat
farther, so there is a well-worn path along the hedgerows and through
the meadows and turnip patches. The traveller in it has the privilege
of crossing the railroad track, an unusual privilege in England, and
one denied to the lord in his carriage, who must either go over or
under it. (It is a privilege, is it not, to be allowed the forbidden,
even if it be the privilege of being run over by the engine?) In
strolling over the South Downs, too, I was delighted to find that where
the hill was steepest some benefactor of the order of walkers had
made notches in the sward, so that the foot could bite the better and
firmer; the path became a kind of stairway, which I have no doubt the
ploughman respected.
When you see an English country church withdrawn, secluded, out of the
reach of wheels, standing amid grassy graves and surrounded by noble
trees, approached by paths and shaded lanes, you appreciate more than
ever this beautiful habit of the people. Only a race that knows how
to use its feet, and holds footpaths sacred, could put such a charm
of privacy and humility into such a structure. I think I should be
tempted to go to church myself if I saw all my neighbours starting
off across the fields or along paths that led to such charmed spots,
and was sure I would not be jostled or run over by the rival chariots
of the worshippers at the temple doors. I think this is what ails our
religion; humility and devoutness of heart leave one when he lays by
his walking shoes and walking clothes, and sets out for church drawn by
something.
Indeed, I think it would be tantamount to an astonishing revival of
religion if the people would all walk to church on Sunday and walk home
again. Think how the stones would preach to them by the wayside; how
their benumbed minds would warm up beneath the friction of the gravel;
how their vain and foolish thoughts, their desponding thoughts, their
besetting demons of one kind and another, would drop behind them,
unable to keep up or to endure the fresh air. They would walk away
from their _ennui_, their worldly cares, their uncharitableness, their
pride of dress; for these devils always want to ride, while the simple
virtues are never so happy as when on foot. Let us walk by all means;
but if we will ride, get an ass.
Then the English claim that they are a more hearty and robust people
than we are. It is certain they are a plainer people, have plainer
tastes, dress plainer, build plainer, speak plainer, keep closer to
facts, wear broader shoes and coarser clothes, place a lower estimate
on themselves, etc.--all of which traits favour pedestrian habits. The
English grandee is not confined to his carriage; but if the American
aristocrat leaves his, he is ruined. Oh, the weariness, the emptiness,
the plotting, the seeking rest and finding none, that goes by in the
carriages! while your pedestrian is always cheerful, alert, refreshed,
with his heart in his hand and his hand free to all. He looks down
upon nobody; he is on the common level. His pores are all open, his
circulation is active, his digestion good. His heart is not cold,
nor his faculties asleep. He is the only real traveller; he alone
tastes the "gay, fresh sentiment of the road." He is not isolated, but
one with things, with the farms and industries on either hand. The
vital, universal currents play through him. He knows the ground is
alive; he feels the pulses of the wind, and reads the mute language
of things. His sympathies are all aroused; his senses are continually
reporting messages to his mind. Wind, frost, rain, heat, cold, are
something to him. He is not merely a spectator of the panorama of
nature, but a participator in it. He experiences the country he passes
through--tastes it, feels it, absorbs it; the traveller in his fine
carriage sees it merely. This gives the fresh charm to that class
of books that may be called "Views Afoot," and to the narratives of
hunters, naturalists, exploring parties, etc. The walker does not
need a large territory. When you get into a railway car you want a
continent, the man in his carriage requires a township; but a walker
like Thoreau finds as much and more along the shores of Walden Pond.
The former, as it were, has merely time to glance at the headings of
the chapters, while the latter need not miss a line, and Thoreau reads
between the lines. Then the walker has the privilege of the fields, the
woods, the hills, the by-ways. The apples by the roadside are for him,
and the berries, and the spring of water, and the friendly shelter; and
if the weather is cold, he eats the frost grapes and the persimmons,
or even the white meated turnip, snatched from the field he passed
through, with incredible relish.
Afoot and in the open road, one has a fair start in life at last. There
is no hindrance now. Let him put his best foot forward. He is on the
broadest humane plane. This is on the level of all the great laws and
heroic deeds. From this platform he is eligible to any good fortune. He
was sighing for the golden age; let him walk to it. Every step brings
him nearer. The youth of the world is but a few days' journey distant.
Indeed, I know persons who think they have walked back to that fresh
aforetime of a single bright Sunday in autumn or early spring. Before
noon they felt its airs upon their cheeks, and by nightfall, on the
banks of some quiet stream, or along some path in the wood, or on some
hill-top, aver they have heard the voices and felt the wonder and the
mystery that so enchanted the early races of men.
I think if I could walk through a country I should not only see many
things and have adventures that I should otherwise miss, but that
I should come into relations with that country at first hand, and
with the men and women in it, in a way that would afford the deepest
satisfaction. Hence I envy the good fortune of all walkers, and feel
like joining myself to every tramp that comes along. I am jealous of
the clergyman I read about the other day who footed it from Edinburgh
to London, as poor Effie Deans did, carrying her shoes in her hand most
of the way, and over the ground that rugged Ben Jonson strode, larking
it to Scotland, so long ago. I read with longing of the pedestrian
feats of college youths, so gay and light-hearted, with their coarse
shoes on their feet and their knapsacks on their backs. It would have
been a good draught of the rugged cup to have walked with Wilson the
ornithologist, deserted by his companions, from Niagara to Philadelphia
through the snows of winter. I almost wish that I had been born to
the career of a German mechanic, that I might have had that delicious
adventurous year of wandering over my country before I settled down
to work. I think how much richer and firmer-grained life would be to
me if I could journey afoot through Florida and Texas, or follow the
windings of the Platte or the Yellowstone, or stroll through Oregon,
or browse for a season about Canada. In the bright inspiring days of
autumn I only want the time and the companion to walk back to the natal
spot, the family nest, across two States and into the mountains of a
third. What adventures we would have by the way, what hard pulls, what
prospects from hills, what spectacles we would behold of night and day,
what passages with dogs, what glances, what peeps into windows, what
characters we should fall in with, and how seasoned and hardy we should
arrive at our destination!
For companion I should want a veteran of the war! Those marches put
something into him I like. Even at this distance his mettle is but
little softened. As soon as he gets warmed up it all comes back to
him. He catches your step and away you go, a gay, adventurous, half
predatory couple. How quickly he falls into the old ways of jest and
anecdote and song! You may have known him for years without having
heard him hum an air, or more than casually revert to the subject
of his experience during the war. You have even questioned and
cross-questioned him without firing the train you wished. But get
him out on a vacation tramp, and you can walk it all out of him. By
the camp-fire at night or swinging along the streams by day, song,
anecdote, adventure, come to the surface, and you wonder how your
companion has kept silent so long.
It is another proof of how walking brings out the true character of a
man. The devil never yet asked his victims to take a walk with him.
You will not be long in finding your companion out. All disguises will
fall away from him. As his pores open his character is laid bare. His
deepest and most private self will come to the top. It matters little
whom you ride with, so he be not a pickpocket; for both of you will,
very likely, settle down closer and firmer in your reserve, shaken
down like a measure of corn by the jolting as the journey proceeds. But
walking is a more vital copartnership; the relation is a closer and
more sympathetic one, and you do not feel like walking ten paces with a
stranger without speaking to him.
Hence the fastidiousness of the professional walker in choosing or
admitting a companion, and hence the truth of a remark of Emerson that
you will generally fare better to take your dog than to invite your
neighbour. Your cur-dog is a true pedestrian, and your neighbour is
very likely a small politician. The dog enters thoroughly into the
spirit of the enterprise; he is not indifferent or preoccupied; he is
constantly sniffing adventure, laps at every spring, looks upon every
field and wood as a new world to be explored, is ever on some fresh
trail, knows something important will happen a little farther on,
gazes with the true wonder-seeing eyes, whatever the spot or whatever
the road finds it good to be there--in short, is just that happy,
delicious, excursive vagabond that touches one at so many points, and
whose human prototype in a companion robs miles and leagues of half
their power to fatigue.
Persons who find themselves spent in a short walk to the market or
the post-office, or to do a little shopping, wonder how it is that
their pedestrian friends can compass so many weary miles and not fall
down from sheer exhaustion; ignorant of the fact that the walker is a
kind of projectile that drops far or near according to the expansive
force of the motive that set it in motion, and that it is easy enough
to regulate the charge according to the distance to be traversed. If
I am loaded to carry only one mile and am compelled to walk three,
I generally feel more fatigue than if I had walked six under the
proper impetus of pre-adjusted resolution. In other words, the will or
corporeal mainspring, whatever it be, is capable of being wound up to
different degrees of tension, so that one may walk all day nearly as
easy as half that time if he is prepared beforehand. He knows his task,
and he measures and distributes his powers accordingly. It is for this
reason that an unknown road is always a long road. We cannot cast the
mental eye along it and see the end from the beginning. We are fighting
in the dark, and cannot take the measure of our foe. Every step must be
preordained and provided for in the mind. Hence also the fact that to
vanquish one mile in the woods seems equal to compassing three in the
open country. The furlongs are ambushed, and we magnify them.
Then, again, how annoying to be told it is only five miles to the next
place when it is really eight or ten! We fall short nearly half the
distance, and are compelled to urge and roll the spent ball the rest of
the way.
In such a case walking degenerates from a fine art to a mechanic art;
we walk merely; to get over the ground becomes the one serious and
engrossing thought; whereas success in walking is not to let your
right foot know what your left foot doeth. Your heart must furnish
such music that in keeping time to it your feet will carry you around
the globe without knowing it. The walker I would describe takes no
note of distance; his walk is a sally, a _bon mot_, an unspoken _jeu
d'esprit_; the ground is his butt, his provocation; it furnishes him
the resistance his body craves; he rebounds upon it, he glances off and
returns again, and uses it gaily as his tool.
I do not think I exaggerate the importance or the charms of
pedestrianism, or our need as a people to cultivate the art. I think it
would tend to soften the national manners, to teach us the meaning of
leisure, to acquaint us with the charms of the open air, to strengthen
and foster the tie between the race and the land. No one else looks out
upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else
gives and takes so much from the country he passes through. Next to the
labourer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the
soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to Nature because
he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Man takes root at his feet, and at best he is no more than a potted
plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication
with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it. Then
the tie of association is born; then spring those invisible fibres and
rootlets through which character comes to smack of the soil, and which
make a man kindred to the spot of earth he inhabits.
The roads and paths you have walked along in summer and winter weather,
the fields and hills which you have looked upon in lightness and
gladness of heart, where fresh thoughts have come into your mind, or
some noble prospect has opened before you, and especially the quiet
ways where you have walked in sweet converse with your friend, pausing
under the trees, drinking at the spring--henceforth they are not the
same; a new charm is added; those thoughts spring there perennial, your
friend walks there for ever.
We have produced some good walkers and saunterers, and some noted
climbers; but as a staple recreation, as a daily practice, the mass
of the people dislike and despise walking. Thoreau said he was a good
horse, but a poor roadster. I chant the virtues of the roadster as
well. I sing of the sweetness of gravel, good sharp quartz-grit. It is
the proper condiment for the sterner seasons, and many a human gizzard
would be cured of half its ills by a suitable daily allowance of it.
I think Thoreau himself would have profited immensely by it. His diet
was too exclusively vegetable. A man cannot live on grass alone. If one
has been a lotus-eater all summer, he must turn gravel-eater in the
fall and winter. Those who have tried it know that gravel possesses an
equal though an opposite charm. It spurs to action. The foot tastes
it and henceforth rests not. The joy of moving and surmounting, of
attrition and progression, the thirst for space, for miles and leagues
of distance, for sights and prospects, to cross mountains and thread
rivers, and defy frost, heat, snow, danger, difficulties, seizes it;
and from that day forth its possessor is enrolled in the noble army of
walkers.
_John Burroughs._
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH.