be got going even in the wettest weather, granted, of course, that
there is suitable fuel. The secret is to possess plenty of paper. You
prepare a number of balls of paper and put them in a dry place until
you have collected fuel. Your fuel will be first of all withered stems
of weeds and bits of perfectly dead wood. If there are trees about
look for dead branches in them. A dead branch in a tree is always
drier and more combustible than a dead branch in the grass. The wet
on it will prove to be surface damp, easily dried off. Be careful to
avoid a very wet base for your fire. A rocky ledge or heap of stones
is better. Having that, then even in drenching rain you may start your
fire, carefully sheltering it with waterproof cape or blanket, while
with the burning paper balls you dry and inflame the withered weeds and
dead wood. Very soon you will have a flaming fire which has the heat
in itself to dry its own fuel, even if it be both substantial and very
wet. Get a big fire going, and you can defy the elements. Should you be
traveling in the vicinity of a railway line you will often find many
bits of coal scattered from locomotives. These are not to be disdained
on a rainy day, as they greatly add to the heat at the bottom of your
furnace. You fight the wet with heat rather than with flame. It is a
pleasant triumph on a rainy day to watch your pot boil on a gay fire,
and to feel the clothes on your back a-drying all the while.
The fire in the rain is a triumph; the night fire in darkness under the
stars is the happiest, but it disputes happiness with the dawn fire.
Remember that on the black patch of your evening fire you will rebuild
the bonfire next morning after your night _à la belle étoile_. It is
commonly more easy to light the fire in the morning. There may be dew,
but you have a dry patch to build on. If you have had forethought you
have covered both the place and some dry fuel to make easy your morning
task. You are less tired, less excited, in the morning, and you know
just where to look for the auxiliary fuel, the stuff that makes the
first little fire burn up well.
I love to see the blue smokes crawling upward in the dawn, while, with
bare legs, one struts about doing the domestic work of morning out of
doors. It is part of the very poetry of the tramping life. You give a
proper affirmative then to Browning’s
_Morning’s at seven
All’s right with the world._
Only morning is apt to be at five, and then the world is even more all
right than at the bourgeois hour of seven.
The good tramp does not spend too long, however, by his morning fire.
It is his best time for being on the move. All Nature’s loveliness
awaits him as, with gossamer in his hair, and light burden on heart
and shoulder, he fares forth for the day. He makes his coffee, and
then carefully puts out the fire, so as to be sure not to start some
conflagration on the waste or in the forest. And he goes onward toward
midday, and that other fire which is midday between the other two. Then
he seeks a shady place, a happy resting spot, viewing the mountains, or
beside a stream for preference. And once more, God’s open-air kitchen
is smoking.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE BED
_Rise with the lark and with the lark to bed,
Observe some solemn sentimental owl;
But first, before we make ourselves a fool or fowl,
Let us enquire if the larks have any beds at all._
They have, they have. The tramp is a lark of a kind, and makes a
little nest each night. It is apt to be a pleasant place. There are
few “restless pillows” in the open-air bed. England, of course, is not
the country for it. There is so much rain and dew that the sleeper
out of doors is like to develop fungoid. But in America the ordinary
population is so _épris_ of the fresh, uncovered night, that nearly
everyone outside the great cities sleeps at least on the porch, or in a
garden hammock slung between trees.
I am prejudiced in favor of that kind of tramping where one sleeps
out. Strictly speaking, if one sleeps in hotels or houses, it is not a
tramp but a walking tour. You cannot afford to be divorced from Nature,
and the winds at sundown. The continuity of day and night in the open
is golden gain. The objections against it in a dry healthful climate
are commonly trivial. For instance, danger. Some think it dangerous.
They believe they may be attacked by robbers or by wild beasts. But
robbers do not search the woods and the wilderness for likely victims.
Unless, by your behavior you should attract attention, there is not
the slightest risk of interference on the part of man. I can imagine
some rather rich dandified intemperate pair going singing along the
road from some wayside pothouse when they have incontinently advertised
their intention of sleeping out. The bad lad of the village, or some
local wag, has overheard, and determines on a hold-up. The victims
have themselves to blame.
As evening comes on, the tramp should become more shy. It is a mistake
to choose one’s evening camp in full view of the highway. For one’s own
subsequent peace of mind it is better to have been unobserved. Though
if you are a stout fellow, why worry? I have had midnight visitors
before now, and have stirred up the embers of the fire to make another
pot of coffee, but it has generally been pleasant and interesting, a
diversion.
As regards wild beasts, that is a danger greatly overestimated. If you
are thoroughly wild, the wild beasts will know it and respect you.
They much prefer to bite the white, the soft, the civilized and the
timid. The puma is an unsociable lady but she may generally be reckoned
upon to leave you alone, even if she does resent your sleeping on her
grounds. The bear, with his inquisitive snout, may come snuffing for
your provisions, but he will not attack you unless you are going to
attack him. It should be understood that wild animals have an uncanny
power of sensing your state of mind and your intentions. They know if
you are scared, and they know if you are going to jump up and strike at
them. They know also if you have no fear, and if you are friendly. If
you are calm and easy-going you can often make up to a bear and feed
him. I imagine that was the secret of those early Christians who were
famous for their friendship with the fiercest of animals.
More dangerous, however, are reptiles, and one should avoid lying
down in a basket of snakes. In a snake-swarming country it is as well
to avoid caves, especially those with many ledges. Dry ditches also,
though sometimes attractive hollows for the spreading out of bedding,
are often the home of snakes. You have observed them there by day. They
remain at night. As regards the open, it is easy to beat out the brush
so as to make sure that no rattler is going to be disturbed later on.
Sleeping against walls has also its dangers, not only from snakes but
from scorpions. The scorpion is a loathsome creature; even seeing one
is rather a shock, and the bite is reputed to be specially poisonous.
In tarantula country a sleeping bag or a hammock is preferable to a
bed spread on the ground. But when all hazards have been considered, a
bed out of doors is safer than a bed in a house. The roof will not fall
in; there is no danger of fire.
Experience, however, tells when it comes to choosing a resting place
and making it comfortable. It is not a happy thing to plump down at
the end of the day at random upon feeling tired. You cannot sleep
pleasantly on a heap of stones, or in a marsh, or on a canting surface.
You need to think of the chances of rain, or of mosquitoes, or creeping
damp.
The commonest mistake is that of leaving the choice of a resting place
till too late. It is sometimes fantastically difficult to make oneself
comfortable if one starts about it after nightfall, or in the late
twilight. You need time. Any time after five o’clock in the afternoon,
should you come upon an ideal spot for spending the night, it is better
to give up tramping for the day there and then and take over your
billet.
If it is raining you need the shelter of heavily foliaged trees, or of
a cave, or of an overhanging rock, or of a bridge over a river, or of a
barn. If it is at all likely to rain you need to have such refuges near
you, so that you can decamp readily and easily, and without mislaying
half your kit. Of all these, the overhanging rock is the most pleasant,
and like it, the large slanting tree trunk, or some protruding bank of
earth and turf.
Rain is not such a calamity in the tramp’s night as might appear,
though a long spell of rainy weather may be depressing. Even if one
gets a little wet at night it is not too unpleasant. I have known
pleasure in a soaking night out of doors. One reckons, however, upon
sunshine next morning and the chance of drying off before ten o’clock.
Much discomfort is caused by stones at night.
“Stones Thy pillow, earth Thy bed,” says the Lenten hymn, but earth
thy pillow, stones thy bed, is more in the natural order. The tired
body finds the stones but the hand does not. It is well to make a good
clearance of stones from the natural hollow you have chosen. A goodly
stone may help at the head, but the best pillow is generally one’s
pack, or one’s boots with a softer covering.
If possible, it is better not to settle down to sleep on sloping
ground--for you slide all night and may slide into a much worse
position than that originally chosen. In the mountains, where there
is little level ground, it is better to seek a hole or a hollow
or a natural shelf or recess. If you have to sleep on the edge of
a precipice, it is as well to choose a place which has the chance
barricade of a tree or a bush or a rock. Tramps are much afraid of
rolling; but if proper precautions are taken one can sleep even where
the eagle builds.
In the valleys, it is well to avoid sleeping too low. Inviting dells
are often covered with but a thin carpet of sun-dried earth under which
is bog. Marsh damp creeps upward in the early hours of the morning,
and you wake in an unpleasant fog. Insects and reptiles abound in such
places, and a bad night with them may spoil a good day.
There are so many ideal spots for sleeping the night, and they are so
diverse that it would be folly to catalogue or to enumerate. You see
them as you go along. You get into the habit of spotting them. Even in
the morning you remark as you go along: “Ah, a good place for spending
a night!” It is a little like choosing villas in a locality generally
agreeable. One has this point, the other has this special convenience.
The view counts for a good deal. Night is a visit to the opera. You
want to see all the stars; you want a good stall. The views of the
landscape, of the trees, of the sky--these are charms of residence.
You suit yourself regarding shelter from the wind or exposure to the
wind, southern aspect, and all that. Some like to lie in the wind,
others in the calm. As regards aspect, it is not where the sun shines
at noon that interests you, but from what gap it dawns. Moon aspect
also is not an inconsiderable matter.
As regards mere comfort, much may be done if there is time. You can
make yourself a mattress of wild flowers, and wallow like a tramp in
clover. You can pile up dried weeds under you. You can improve on your
pillow, smooth down your lonely pillow, in fact. You can ingeniously
use various contents of your knapsack to give more warmth or softness.
Those who feel the cold can put in hot rocks.
The hot rock is a cowboy device. You take some fair-sized stones, heat
them in your camp fire, then wrap them up in whatever comes handy and
place at the foot of the bed--this gives a sort of hot-water bottle.
When tramping in high mountains you almost inevitably approach the
snow line at times, and it is cold even in July. The hot rocks come in
useful. Personally, I do not feel cold much, but I have tried hot rocks
and have been surprised to realize that they retain their warmth even
till morning. Their chief drawback is the scorch they may give you if
by chance you undo the wrapping and put your leg on a naked stone. Some
walkers get so enamored of hot rocks that they will sleep hugging a big
one to their bosom.
Of course, one soon discovers that a night in the shelter of a great
rock is warmer than a night in the unprotected open, and a night in a
cave warmer even than that. Caves facing westward over the sea keep the
sun low in them all night; caves on the western sides of mountains do
the same. But this does not apply to profound caves which may be very
cool. A night in a cave is an adventure, but it is likely to be less
pleasant than a night outside. The floor of a cave is uncommonly hard,
and a ridge in the floor may wear you out if you try to sleep across
it. The pleasant part of a cave for sleeping is the mouth of it. It is
just as well, by the way, to make sure that the cave is uninhabited
before establishing yourself for the night.
In more civilized parts I have spent very pleasant nights under
bridges. I cannot recommend railway bridges, as the trains shake down
dirt, but river and road bridges have frequently very sweet natural
homes for wanderers, close in where the first timbers meet the ground.
One should, however, arrive in time to choose a place which has not
been used before you by some domestic animal, since you may find
insects in such places.
In certain countries the hammock is an ideal convenience for sleeping,
but it needs getting used to, and there are some people who always
fall out of them in the night. In the jungles of the tropics or of
subtropical countries, it is the accepted mode. You need enough
mosquito netting to swathe your body three times and, wrapped in that,
you swing in your boat of rope.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE DIP
Some tramps have a groundless fear of water. In Russia they call it
_vodaboyazn_, which means simply “water fright,” and is a better
word than hydrophobia, which means the same thing, but is connected
in the mind with mad dogs. Here, no mad dog is in question. Water: a
liquid recommended for external use, is greatly despised by certain
winebibbers who affect to be afraid that it will get into the wine. The
fact is, most of them have got the water fright. After a stout bottle
of Burgundy and a cigar, what more dreadful torture can be imagined
than sitting under a fountain of water. It is better to sit in an old
leather chair in a Piccadilly window than on a chair in the rocks
under a flowing cascade. “I am for that Piccadilly window,” says the
confirmed lizard--and not a few tramps are at one with the clubman.
However, once you get the water fright it is almost incurable, and
perhaps not worth writing about.
Coldness of the water is a prejudice. The coldest dip in the sea is
easier to take than the ordinary cold bath in a cramped bathroom. The
immediate activity of the body conquers the cold. In a bathroom most
people have to be painfully passive. But truly, in those seasons of
the year when one is able to sleep out of doors one need not fear the
temperature of the water.
The morning swim is such an embellishment of the open-air life that
many are tempted to plan their whole expedition with that in view. Thus
they would rather tramp along the sea-shore or in a region of many
lakes than traverse a region of little rivers and springs, but no water
of depth. The dip means a great deal extra in happiness, health and
vigor. I think I prefer the lake to the sea--that is, after a night out
of doors. It is colder and fresher. Its unruffled gray and silver seems
to have been spread specially for you to plunge into.
It is a different matter to come from an hotel bed out to the margin of
the mere and wade into early morning loveliness. That is good, but it
is not the best. You miss the continuity of experience. A night with
the moon and wild flowers, with fleeting clouds and seeming-fleeting
stars, with cool and warm airs wandering, with wood whispers and the
nightingale’s song, has its fitting _envoi_ in twenty minutes’ plashing
after dawn. Nature learns that the tramp is awake.
You scoop a coffeepot full of water from the same pool wherein you
bathe. You see the coffeepot standing on the bank like a faithful bird
awaiting your return from the water. Mother-naked, you plunge and
strive and indulge in various forms of joyous excess. The gray dawn sky
above is gentle as loving eyes. The blue smoke of your fire has lost
itself and plays with the morning air as you do with the water.
After that, still dripping, you carry the coffeepot to the fire. You
dry as you walk. It may be your pleasure as a man to return to the
lakeside and shave. You stand in the freshness with no one near and
brandish a lathered shaving brush; you may not get all the hair off,
but what more delicious shave than this!
The next item in the program may be the morning wash. You can wash
out a shirt, a pair of socks, a towel, the sugar bag, what you will,
and dry them as the morning sun warms up. This is a necessary matter
now and then. It is not convenient to save up bits of washing for
some village lass to do, or for some town laundry; it means delay in
uncongenial places.
The dip is also associated in the mind with fishing. Dawn is the hour
when they jump, and the angler-tramp loves the dawn shadows of the
morning twilight. He catches his breakfast before he bathes, guts his
fish, gets ready his frying pan--for you do not want to wait too long
for food once you have been in the water.
But it is not only at dawn that one bathes. Any good stream or pool at
any time is a good pretext for a dip. There is some danger of overdoing
it at the beginning, especially when it is sea bathing. The afternoon
bathe is sometimes tiring, if one has bathed also before noon. A good
plan is to bathe morning, noon and night, but not too long at any time.
If you are a thoroughgoing lazy tramp you can sun bathe for an hour
or so also, but of course you will not get far along the coast in the
course of a day. In lake and sea there is the temptation of swimming,
but most commonly, in mountain tramping, swimming is not possible. The
rivers are too tumultuous, the lakes are boggy or shallow. But there is
considerable pleasure. No happier noontide can be imagined than on the
stairs of a cascade where a little river, plunging from a pass, makes
its rocky and foaming descent to gentler levels. You sit well inside a
water-worn slippery armchair, while living crystal comes down on your
head and neck, on shoulders and back. In the Rockies and in the Alps,
in the Caucasus, and in the Carpathians--wherever there are mountains,
there are such places and such delights.
When you reach the snow line there is pleasure enough in snow bathing,
though one should beware of it when the body has got very hot with
arduous climbing. The snow often has a comparatively solid crust,
but when this is broken it is soft underneath. It depends on your
constitution whether you can stand it at a high altitude, but otherwise
it is pleasant sometimes in mid-July to plaster oneself with the
so-unfamiliar snow.
The evening swim, too, is a pleasure, taking the tiredness out of your
limbs and adding to the happiness of your relaxation when, later, you
lie with your blanket over you under the stars. It has not the joy of
the dawn swim, not the _joie de vivre_ of that of noontide. But it has
the peace of an evening hymn or child’s prayer. If you are a Celt or a
Slav, it has melancholy, the poetry of sadness. It tunes the soul to
the night mood and the awakening of the dim stars and the coming on of
that intense silence, that stopped breath of Nature, which one senses
in the first hours of the night.
From baptism comes grace. The spirit of the water has found place in
the bosom of the wanderer. He may be a pagan at heart, but he has come
nearer to being a Christian if he has thus bathed three times a day.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DRYING AFTER RAIN
Wet weather is not the tramp’s worst enemy, but it leaves him with the
problem of drying his clothes. It may not damp his spirits, but will
probably damp his attire. The walk in the rain, or worse than that, the
walk through rain-laden thickets after the rain has ceased, the night
slept in the rain when it begins to drizzle at eleven and you think
naught of it, and to rain steadily at twelve and there is no refuge,
and to pour gently at one and in torrents at two, and it is all the
same because you are already as wet as can be--these are modifications
of Nature’s blessings, pleasant or unpleasant in themselves according
to taste and breeding, but having, as a natural sequence, the common
duty of drying.
The wet dawn peers through the trees; pale morning looks faintly upon
a washed-out camp, and two Rip Van Winkles, feeling a hundred years
older, lift up heavy and rusty limbs, and reflect that it has been a
wet night. The problem is to get dry.
The first means is a fire. Grant the matches have kept dry; or if
they have not been kept in a canister, that one of the tramps happens
to have a _briquet_! With a petrol lighter one is independent of wet
matches. Then the fire must be carefully begun, nursed and nourished.
Perhaps one can find an old ruined and red-rusty bucket on the waste--a
gift of Providence. The fire may be well started in that. If you
feel cold you may bring fuel to the fire spot on the run--dead fuel
of branch and withered weed, heaps of it. One needs to get a good
fire going, a big fire, a drier. “It can be done,” as a millionaire
self-made man used to say. “Can’t must be overcome.”
You know at sight when your fire has got the upper hand of the
surrounding damp. That is your moment for executing a war dance around
it. The longer you dance the quicker you dry. But do not forget
reserves of fuel. You need a fire on which you could roast a sheep. For
you have to dry, not only your clothes, but the blanket, the knapsack,
and your spare linen. You find a corner for your pot. It will boil and
provide coffee while you are engaged with drying.
Somehow or other the blanket has to be hoisted up on to a line. You
need string, which I hope you have brought. If there is a tree or a
telegraph post or any other post, or preferably two convenient trees,
two convenient posts, you can tie up the blanket and let it dry in the
heat of the fire. If these are absent there may be a corner of a wired
enclosure. You must shift your fire to the place where you can rig up
the blanket. It is seldom that absence of uprights of any kind reduces
you to holding the blanket in your own hands in front of the fire and
drying it so.
Indeed, if no convenience offers, you may simply dry off your clothes
and then tramp on till you find a spot better equipped for blanket
drying. You will not, as a rule, have to tramp far.
Clothes, however, do not dry as quickly as expected. Especially the
tweed jacket and its shoulders take an unconscionable time a-drying.
It is not good for one’s health to tramp with a heavy knapsack on wet
shoulders. The weight drives the damp inward, and as the back warms and
perspires it takes potential rheumatism from the steam of the jacket. A
night out in the rain will not give you rheumatism; many nights in the
wet will not give you rheumatism. It is not getting wet which gives you
these pains, it is the way you dry. You are, in fact, safer scampering
naked in the wet than drying slowly in a heap of wet clothes. Perhaps
it is not amiss to remark here that a waterproof worn over wet clothes
is a sure way to cultivate rheumatism. The damp cannot escape
outwards--and so goes inward to your very bones.
Your shirt will dry quickest and easiest. Wearing that, you can dry the
rest of your clothes at the fire, the lightest first. If your boots are
soaked it is better not to try and dry them by a fire. Leather liketh
not fire. There is little harm in wearing wet boots and trusting them
to dry themselves as best they can.
It is a happy occasion, this of drying off. One’s spirits are naturally
exalted by it. It is victory of a kind. The tramp sings as he circles
the fire. There is a music which belongs to the mood, and it is a pity
no great musician has composed “While waiting for my clothes to dry by
an early morning fire.” The musicians have not tramped enough.
However, in this light-hearted frolic, let us not allow our linen to
be ruined. Beware of the long flames which try to lick your trousers
as they hang there in the wind; beware of the scorching heat which
browns and ruins a shirt; beware of the showers of sparks which rise
when you throw a new log on the fire. For some good reason, sparks are
more plentiful after rain than in the dry. Your fire may be sending up
sparks all the while, big, substantial living sparks, which, settling
on your drying blanket, may fret it with holes. I have had a blanket
made holey by this before now. The spark settles on the wool, ignites
it gently, and starts a hole which may be as big as a cigar end before
you notice it. As the blanket gets nearer being perfectly dry you need
to retire it from the intimate ardors of the fire. Your fire, in any
case, has been getting hotter and hotter. You have not noticed that it
is beginning to scorch your clothes and your wraps.