Tramping

“ As a result of a week’s tramping you may find yourself only two steps from the place you started from. You feel like a lost ant that, after infinite trouble, has got back to the heap. It is dull to be an ant. ”

“ How splendid for you if, when the time comes to go away and resume your trampings you can carry away with you drawings you have made, songs you have learned to sing, stories which you can tell. You will carry that village with you to the ends of the earth. ”

“ Much travel frequently does it, and much tramping will do it also. Tramping simplifies out many of our foibles. It makes the artificial people more natural. I have seen a man afraid almost of his own shadow in town become a bold and smiling boy upon the road, not afraid to meet any one and hold frank converse with him. ”

“ So with all our hilarity, our joyous meetings, our madcap doings, with all the fun of the tramping expedition there is the deeper interest underlying all. Most people will make the tramp without one conscious deeper thought. It does not matter. Their nature is getting something intuitively, although the mind has no knowledge of it. The gay undergraduate, all vim and no soul, shies at religion and has no thought except about climbs, leaps, jumps, food, sporting chances, pedestrian [Pg 215] achievement! He may not see this glorious jaunt in a poetic light until years afterwards. ”

“ The virtue to be envied in tramping is that of being able to live by the way. In that indeed does the gentle art of tramping consist. If you do not live by the way, there is nothing gentle about it. It is then a stunt, a something done to make a dull person ornamental. ”

“ I THINK of storms and of heavy rain and biting wind as exceptional. They give feature in the midst of halcyon days and nights. The tramping life is not in caves and huts and holes and inns, but in the open. The life opens us with its very breadth. Is your friend too thin; do not diet him under a white ceiling, but give him air. Air will fill him. It is not the air alone that cures and fills, but what you [Pg 153] breathe in with the air. You breathe in the spirit of the open. You breathe in the wideness of the sky ”

“ Of all tramping the most delightful is in the mountains; the most trying is along great highways. Both have their place in the ideal tramp’s life. But experience teaches where the most fun is to be found. Mountain walking is really much less tiring because, first of all, there is no dust, then there is more contrast and mental distraction, and last, not least, one’s feet hit the earth at varying angles, employing more muscles. ”

“ Wanderlust (love of tramping, thieving, drunkenness) is the disease with which the newcomer in outcast life is supposed to be afflicted, and on allying himself with the brotherhood, the malady is "officially" recognized as having appeared, or broken out. "Squared it" I took to mean that a bargain or a quarrel had been settled, but I was again mistaken. It signifies that a tramp or criminal has reformed and become respectable. One who leaves the "road" for this reason is said to have "squared it," because he has settled his account with the brotherhood—he has finished with it. ”

“ It is no small part of the gentle art of tramping to learn to accept the simple and humble rôle and not to crave respect, honor, obeisance. It is a mistake to take to the wilderness clad in new plus-fours, sports jacket, West-End tie, jeweled tie pin, or in gaiters, or carrying a silver-topped cane. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are not pilgrims but outlaws, and many would be highway robbers had they the vitality and the pluck necessary to hold up wayfarers. Most of them are but poor walkers, so that the word tramp is often misapplied to them.
The tramp is a friend of society; he is a seeker, he pays his way if he can. One includes in the category “tramp” all true Bohemians, pilgrims, explorers afoot, walking tourists, and the like. Tramping is a way of approach, to Nature, to your fellowman, to a nation, to a foreign nation, to beauty, to life itself. ”

“ It may be good for the physical health, but that shall not be its object; it may be good for broadening the mind and deepening the sources of pleasure, but these are not the goal. Tramping is a straying from the obvious. Even the crookedest road is sometimes too straight. ”

“ The man you tramp with is not a foreigner, albeit foreign enough in himself, as you may discover before you discover he is kindred. You are thrown into intimate contact with him. Even if the two of you are a couple of egoists strongly self-centered, something is bound to get across in a long tramp. That is one reason why tramping is such a healthful spiritual experience. The too-too-solid flesh does melt a little, the too-too-solid heart does warm somewhat toward an outsider. ”

“ A khaki blouse and knickers, green putties or stockings, and a stout pair of shoes are almost everything; very simple, very practical, and if one must think of looks while on tramp, not unbecoming.
Materials are more important than shapes. A homespun, a tweed, a cord, are better than flannel or serge or shoddy cloth. Tramping is destructive of material; sun, rain, camp-fire sparks, and hot smoke seem to reduce the resistance of cloth very rapidly. ”

“ Or we will, if we like, but not upon the compulsion of filling time.
You will discern that going tramping is at first an act of rebellion; only afterwards do you get free from rebelliousness as Nature sweetens your mind. Town makes men contentious; the country smooths out their souls. ”

“ I have seldom gone on a tramp, or a long vagabondage, without seeing things that made the heart ache with their beauty or pathos, and other things that set the mind a-tingle with intellectual curiosity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is best to meet them face to face—but smiling—never let them get you scared. They may want to turn you back or force you to work in their fields. But a smiling answer turneth away wrath, and it is well to keep them talking and watch for your chance to escape. It should be remarked that the scope for tramping is not great before the middle of May, or after the middle of October. The passes, the lowest of which is over nine thousand feet, fill up with snow; you get into whirling blizzards and lose the only trail. ”

“ Consequently, in winter, one can see tramps sitting comfortably on benches drawn close to the fire, and reading their morning paper, and smoking their after-breakfast pipe, as complacently and calmly as the merchant in his counting-room. Here they find refuge from the storms of winter, and make themselves entirely at home. ”

“ Year after year they trudge on and on, and always on, seeking a goal which they never seem to find. Occasionally they halt for a while at some half-way house, where they have heard that there is a resting-place of their desire; but it invariably proves disappointing, and the tramp, tramp, tramp begins afresh. Young and old, man and woman, boy and girl, all go on together ”

“ As you come along the road at any time of day everything about you says, “Here I am, the tramp; take me as I am or not at all.” The Church covers the friar so that he is immune from pride and taunt, fashion and convention. He cannot be reproached; for his garments are a token that he is bearing the reproach of Christ. And Nature covers the tramp in a similar way. He has the chance to feel and be at home in any place in the world, under any circumstances and with any people. You are never ill-dressed in the King’s uniform; you are never ill-dressed in the tramp’s. ”

“ Life is a wandering and a seeking where it was once a sitting still and an adoring.
So the tramp’s life is a type of existence. I like the symbolism of the Jewish Passover, the standing dressed for departure into the wilderness. Man is not man sitting down; he is man on the move. Le tramp c’est l’homme. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During our rambles among the tombstones the sun has long since passed the meridian, and the streets and avenues of the cemetery are crowded with carriages and thronged with pedestrians, the tramping of horses' feet, the rumbling of wheels, and the voices of men fill the air, and the place which was so silent and deserted this morning is now as noisy and bustling as the metropolis yonder. And soon begin to arrive thick and fast the funeral trains. ”

“ The interior of the car sounded like a Scotch bagpipe a-drone ... what with snoring, breaking of wind in various ways, groaning, and muttering thickly in dreams ... the air was sickeningly thick and fetid. But to open a side door meant to let in the cold.
Softly my buddy and I drew off our shoes, putting them under our heads to serve as pillows, and also to keep them from being stolen. (Often a tramp comes along with a deft enough touch to untie a man's shoes from his feet without waking him. I've heard of its being done.) ”

“ It is to be remembered that tramping across country in the mountains one comes to steep and dangerous descents, and upon occasion one risks one’s neck on the grip of one’s feet. That is where the Army type of rubbers comes in. As an auxiliary it is not a bad plan to have a light pair of tennis shoes in the pack, as you can get over some obstacles in prehensile rubber shoes which one could never negotiate in boots. But hard rubber bars across one’s leather soles are in any case very good. These rubbers would “draw” your feet on an exposed level road. ”

“ And these are the kind of fellows, too, who jigger our ridin' on this railroad. They get drunk, and if they want to ride and can't find an empty car, they break a seal [a car seal] , and then there's the devil to pay about the tramps tryin' to rob the cars. If the bums would only keep sober once in a while, there wouldn't be a tramp pinched once a month. The bulls around here don't care to yank a tramp unless they have to. But what can they do when they find a bloke paradin' the streets with a jag on? ”

“ My companion tramps cursed the yegg and his ways....
"They're always raisin' hell ... an' we git the blame ... when all we want is not loot, but hand-outs and a cup o' coffee ... and a piece of change now and then."
The yegg, the tiger among tramps—the criminal tramp—despises the ordinary bum and the "gaycat." And they in turn fear him for his ruthlessness and recklessness. ”

“ This is the most notorious tramp-nest in the United States. I have walked along the Bowery of an afternoon, and counted scores of men who never soil their hands with labor, and beg on an average a dollar a day. Even the policemen of this city are often friends of beggars, and I have seldom met a hobo who was very angry with a New York "bull." As a rule, the police officer, when finding tramps drunk on door-steps or begging, says in a coarse and brutal voice, "Get out!" and possibly gives them a rap with his club, but it is altogether [Pg 98] too seldom that the beggar is arrested. ”

“ Then came a white tramp.
We stood around the stove, which shone red in the early half-light of dawn. We shivered and rubbed our hands. Then we fell into tramps' gossip about the country we were in.
The two negroes soon left to catch a freight for Austin. My fellow tramp and I stretched ourselves along the benches. He yawned with a loud noise like an animal. "I'm worn-out," he said, "I've been riding the bumpers all night." I noticed immediately that he did not speak tramp argot.
"And I tried to sleep on the bare boards of a box car." ”

“ This can be tried first of all as a haphazard tramp—a setting out to walk without the name of any place you want to get to. Hence the zigzag walk, of which I write later. Keep taking the first turning on the left and the next on the right, and see where it leads you. In towns this gives you a most alluring adventure. You get into all manner of obscure courts and alleys you would never have noticed in the ordinary way. But in the country, beaucoup zigzag, as they say in France, does not work. You get tied up in a hopeless tangle of lanes which go back upon themselves. ”

“ THE fire is the altar of the open-air life. Its wandering smokes go upward like men’s thoughts; its sparks are like human lives.
The coffeepot is the emblem of conviviality.
The roughhewn staff, the tramp’s third leg, is the emblem of his will to jog on.
The knapsack, like Pilgrim’s burden, is the confession of mortality, and of the load which every son of Adam carried on his shoulders.
Every door and gate which he sees means the way out, not the way in.
There are three emblems of life: the first [Pg 89] is the open road, the second is the river, and the third is the wilderness. ”

“ Success in vagabondage depends largely on distinct and indispensable traits of character—diligence, patience, nerve, and politeness. If a tramp lacks any one of these qualities he is handicapped, and his chosen life will go hard with him. ”