The gentle art of tramping

It is a gentle art; know how to tramp and you know how to live. Manners makyth man, and tramping makyth manners. Know how to meet your fellow wanderer, how to be passive to the...

The sad heart, in this case, often has just a thin sole. Two friends set out last spring to tramp from Bavaria to Venice, luggage in advance, knapsack on shoulder. But they had...

It is wonderful how much you can carry when it is for pleasure. Soldiers grumble like camels at the loads put on their shoulders. Under some one’s orders they shall march with p...

“Needy knife grinder,” said the poet, “your hat has got a hole in it, and so have your breeches.” That was not necessary. You should carry a housemaid’s tidy, or whatever it may...

“Put money in thy purse,” is often given to the young man as a jewel of wisdom. But we give the contrary advice: take it out. The less you carry the more you will see, the less...

“Give me a companion of my way, be it only to mention how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines,” wrote Hazlitt. An ideal companion is ideal. However, we all know that compan...

The principle motive of the wander-spirit is curiosity--the desire to know what is beyond the next turning of the road, and to probe for oneself the mystery of the names of the...

The world is large enough, or is only too small, as takes your fancy or speaks your experience. But blue sky by day and fretted vault of heaven by night give you the foil of the...

There are three emblems of life: the first is the open road, the second is the river, and the third is the wilderness. The road is the simplest of these emblems--with its milest...

Do not forget the matches! Our dear friends and the girl guides can imitate the savages, and strike a light by rubbing two sticks together, or they carry steel and flint and tin...

_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...

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...

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...

Man is a singing animal, but civilization has silenced many songs. In so many places I see exposed the lugubrious mourning card--SILENCE! Silence in court, silence in the office...

One might call it by a better name; it means getting a meal for nothing when you can. In certain unspoiled parts of the world there are outlandish folk who will take the wandere...

Sometimes, at high altitudes in the Alps, the Rockies, and elsewhere, one comes upon bleak empty shelters built for protection against wind and snow. Ordinary tramping is not mo...

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 hol...

I think Coleridge was annoyed by the man who interrupted him with the words “Them’s the jockeys for me,” referring to some steak puddings which had been brought before his eyes....

It has been said that whereas a pipe is a man’s wife, a cigarette is his lady friend. In these terms it is difficult to define a cigar, but it will be agreed that the cigar is u...

You need a book, but you cannot carry Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall_ with you, even if you feel the need. The tramp’s library is limited, for books are heavy. It is best to tramp w...

If your tramping expedition is long; if you have voted yourself plenty of time; if, for example, you are taking a wander year, you are under no compulsion to keep on tramping. O...

_“You are not taking up with a dirty foreigner?” “He’s quite a decent fellow, though he is a foreigner. Why do you say ‘dirty foreigner’?” “All foreigners are dirty foreigners.”_

_Holding but lightly to material things, Happy to stay, yet eager to begone, He is the poet, though he never writ A line of metre; he is God’s free man And has the franchise of...

Civilization is short of maps. It is not familiar with its own ground plan. This is due, no doubt, to the common handicap of commercialism. Maps ought to be free for all. When y...

You are going to be very ill-mannered and stray on to other people’s property. Granted that fundamental impertinence you must be as nice as possible about it; graciously lift yo...

I have mentioned the “zigzag” walk. Did you ever make one? Probably not, for it is my secret. I invented it. A frequent wish of the traveler and wanderer is to obtain genuinely...