TREES
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
III
WHERE TO WALK
Anywhere. Surely the pedestrian may claim for his recreation this advantage: it may be enjoyed when one will and wherever one may be. But this does not mean that there is no choice, no preference. Says Thoreau again, “If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man’s swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!” And Emerson has this fresh, breezy comment:
“The true naturalist can go wherever woods or waters go; almost where a squirrel or a bee can go, he can; and no man is asked for leave. Sometimes the farmer withstands him in crossing his lots, but ’tis to no purpose; the farmer could as well hope to prevent the sparrows or tortoises. It was their land before it was his, and their title was precedent.”
Stevenson would make the surroundings a matter of small import; the landscape, he says, is “quite accessory,” and yet, within a page after, he rallies Hazlitt, and playfully calls him an epicure, because he postulates “a winding road, and three hours to dinner.”
Choice of Surroundings
There is the region about home, the region one knows best. For muddy weather, macadam; but, when they are at all negotiable, then always country roads by preference. The macadam road is all that is unpleasant—hard, dry, glaring, straight, monotonous; overrun with noisy, dusty, evil-smelling machines, with their curious and often unpleasant occupants. It is bordered, not with trees, as a road should be, but with telephone poles; a fine coating of lime dust lies like a death pallor on what hardy vegetation struggles to live along its margin; it is commercial, business-like, uncompromising, and unlovely. But the country road belongs to another world—a world apart—and is traveled by a different people. It, too, has its aim and destination, but it is deliberate in its course; it neither cuts through the hills nor fills the valleys, but accommodates itself to the windings of streams and to the steepness of slopes. It is soft underfoot, shaded by trees; it finds and follows the mountain brooks; rabbits play upon it, grouse dust themselves in it, birds sing about it, and berries hang from its banks black and sweet. The people who live in the country travel upon it; it is instinct with the life of a hundred years.
If the day be clear, seek the hilltops; if not, the wooded valleys. The pedestrian learns the by-paths, too, and the short cuts across lots. He can find the arbutus in its season, the blackberries and the mushrooms in theirs. Here is a suggestive page from Thoreau’s Journal (August 27, 1854):
“Would it not be well to describe some of those rough all-day walks across lots?—as that of the 15th, picking our way over quaking meadows and swamps and occasionally slipping into the muddy batter midleg deep; jumping or fording ditches and brooks; forcing our way through dense blueberry swamps, where there is water beneath and bushes above; then brushing through extensive birch forests all covered with green lice, which cover our clothes and face; then, relieved, under larger wood, more open beneath, steering for some more conspicuous trunk; now along a rocky hillside where the sweet-fern grows for a mile, then over a recent cutting, finding our uncertain footing on the cracking tops and trimmings of trees left by the choppers; now taking a step or two of smooth walking across a highway; now through a dense pine wood, descending into a rank, dry swamp, where the cinnamon fern rises above your head, with isles of poison-dogwood; now up a scraggy hill covered with scrub oak, stooping and winding one’s way for half a mile, tearing one’s clothes in many places and putting out one’s eyes, and find[ing] at last that it has no bare brow, but another slope of the same character; now through a corn-field diagonally with the rows; now coming upon the hidden melon-patch; seeing the back side of familiar hills and not knowing them,—the nearest house to home, which you do not know, seeming further off than the farthest which you do know;—in the spring defiled with froth on various bushes, etc., etc., etc.; now reaching on higher land some open pigeon-place, a breathing-place for us.”
Another page, too, is worth quoting (July 12, 1852):
“Now for another fluvial walk. There is always a current of air above the water, blowing up or down the course of the river, so that this is the coolest highway. Divesting yourself of all clothing but your shirt and hat, which are to protect your exposed parts from the sun, you are prepared for the fluvial excursion. You choose what depths you like, tucking your toga higher or lower, as you take the deep middle of the road or the shallow sidewalks. Here is a road where no dust was ever known, no intolerable drouth. Now your feet expand on a smooth sandy bottom, now contract timidly on pebbles, now slump in genial fatty mud—greasy, saponaceous—amid the pads. You scare out whole schools of small breams and perch, and sometimes a pickerel, which have taken shelter from the sun under the pads. This river is so clear compared with the South Branch, or main stream, that all their secrets are betrayed to you. Or you meet with and interrupt a turtle taking a more leisurely walk up the stream. Ever and anon you cross some furrow in the sand, made by a muskrat, leading off to right or left to their galleries in the bank, and you thrust your foot into the entrance, which is just below the surface of the water and is strewn with grass and rushes, of which they make their nests. In shallow water near the shore, your feet at once detect the presence of springs in the bank emptying in, by the sudden coldness of the water, and there, if you are thirsty, you dig a little well in the sand with your hands, and when you return, after it has settled and clarified itself, get a draught of pure cold water there.…
“I wonder if any Roman emperor ever indulged in such luxury as this,—of walking up and down a river in torrid weather with only a hat to shade the head. What were the baths of Caracalla to this?”
It might seem that all the joys of walking are rural; but it is not so; the city dweller knows as well as his country cousin how to make his surroundings serve his need. Doctor Finley, veteran pedestrian though he be, delighting to walk to the ends of the earth, has no word of disdain for the streets of the city of his home. The following passage is taken from a paper of his which appeared in the Outlook and from which quotation has already been made:
“My traveling afoot, for many years, has been chiefly in busy city streets or in the country roads into which they run—not far from the day’s work or from the thoroughfares of the world’s concerns.
“Of such journeys on foot which I recall with greatest pleasure are some that I have made in the encircling of cities. More than once I have walked around Manhattan Island (an afternoon’s or a day’s adventure within the reach of thousands), keeping as close as possible to the water’s edge all the way round. One not only passes through physical conditions illustrating the various stages of municipal development from the wild forest at one end of the island to the most thickly populated spots of the earth at the other, but one also passes through diverse cities and civilizations. Another journey of this sort was one that I made around Paris, taking the line of the old fortifications, which are still maintained, with a zone following the fortifications most of the way just outside, inhabited only by squatters, some of whose houses were on wheels ready for ‘mobilization’ at an hour’s notice. (It was near the end of that circumvallating journey, about sunset, on the last day of an old year, that I saw my first airplane rising like a great golden bird in the aviation field, and a few minutes later my first elongated dirigible—precursors of the air armies.)…
“About every city lies an environing charm, even if it have no trees, as, for example, Cheyenne, Wyoming, where, stopping for a few hours not long ago, I spent most of the time walking out to the encircling mesas that give view of both mountains and city. I have never found a city without its walkers’ rewards. New York has its Palisade paths, its Westchester hills and hollows, its ‘south shore’ and ‘north shore,’ and its Staten Island (which I have often thought of as Atlantis, for once on a holiday I took Plato with me to spend an afternoon on its littoral, away from the noise of the city, and on my way home found that my Plato had stayed behind, and he never reappeared, though I searched car and boat). Chicago has its miles of lake shore walks; Albany its Helderbergs; and San Francisco, its Golden Gate Road. And I recall with a pleasure which the war cannot take away a number of suburban European walks. One was across the Campagna from Frascati to Rome, when I saw an Easter week sun go down behind the Eternal City. Another was out to Fiesole from Florence and back again; another, out and up from where the Saone joins the Rhone at Lyons; another, from Montesquieu’s chÂteau to Bordeaux; another, from Edinburgh out to Arthur’s Seat and beyond; another from Lausanne to Geneva, past Paderewski’s villa, along the glistening lake with its background of Alps; and still another, from Eton (where I spent the night in a cubicle looking out on Windsor Castle) to London, starting at dawn. One cannot know the intimate charm of the urban penumbra who makes only shuttle journeys by motor or street cars.”
Nature of Country
When it comes to the matter of choosing the region for a walking tour, all sorts of considerations enter in. This has been indicated already; your naturalist will fix upon some happy hunting ground where flowers or birds are abundant, or fossil trilobites or dinosaurs are to be discovered; the fisherman will seek out the mountain brooks; the antiquarian, some remote rural region, perhaps, or scene of battle; the genealogist will visit the graves of his ancestors. But, leaving for the moment such special and individual considerations out of account, what should influence the average pedestrian in his choice of locality?
The choice of locality with relation to season has already been considered, page 43 above.
The choice will not fall upon a flat, undiversified region, particularly if the season be hot and the roads much traveled and dusty. Emerson, in a passage extolling the pedestrian advantages of his native Massachusetts, observes:
“For walking, you must have a broken country. In Illinois, everybody rides. There is no good walk in that state. The reason is, a square yard of it is as good as a hundred miles. You can distinguish from the cows a horse feeding, at the distance of five miles, with the naked eye. Hence, you have the monotony of Holland, and when you step out of the door can see all that you will have seen when you come home.”
Having said so much, Emerson adds, in order to put the Illinoian in good humor again:
“We may well enumerate what compensating advantages we have over that country, for ’tis a commonplace, which I have frequently heard spoken in Illinois, that it was a manifest leading of the Divine Providence that the New England states should have been first settled, before the Western country was known, or they would never have been settled at all.”
In Oklahoma, they say, one can look farther and see less than anywhere else in the world.
The pedestrian seeks wide horizons, but he seeks more than that. The only classical walk which the writer now recalls, taken in a level region, was Thoreau’s tour along the beaches of Cape Cod; but there was the sea—itself an unending delight and stimulus to imagination—and the sand dunes, with all the beauties of mountain form in miniature.
There are, of course, the great recreation grounds of the world: the Swiss Alps, the Tyrol, and in our own country the Glacier National Park, the Yellowstone, and the Yosemite. Such a place is the pedestrian’s paradise. But such a place is, for most of us, far away; ordinarily, the requirement is of something humbler.
Let the choice then be broken country. There is all of New England, the Adirondacks, the Appalachian region, the Ozarks, and the great mountain lands of the West. Some fringe of one or another of these regions is accessible to almost any holiday seeker. In addition to the mountainous areas, there are the drumlins and lakes of our glaciated northern states—New York, Michigan, Wisconsin; and, excepting only the prairies, there is diversity of rolling hills and winding streams everywhere.
The Goal and the Road
It is well to have an objective in a walk, a focus of interest, a climax of effort: a historical objective—the grave of Washington, perhaps, or the battlefield of Israel Putnam; or a natural objective—the summit of Mt. Marcy, or Lake Tahoe, or the Mammoth Cave.
Do not, however, set out from the point of chief interest; let there be a gradual approach; if possible, let the hardest work come near the end; let the highest mountain be the last.
Search out objects of interest within five hundred miles of home, choose one of them as the goal—be it mountain, trout stream, or Indian mound—and let the way lead to it.
On long tours, seek variety—variety of woods, rivers, mountains. Do not, by choice, go and return over the same road, nor even through the same region. Better walk one way and go by train the other.
In crossing mountain ranges, ascend the gradual slope and descend the steep. (On precipices, however, there is less danger in climbing up than down.)
Walk from south to north, by preference; it is always best to have the sun at one’s back.
Avoid macadam roads—except when country roads are muddy, or on a night walk. By night smooth footing is especially advantageous. Macadam is wearing to both body and mind—and sole leather; immediately after rain it is tolerable. Avoid highways, seek byways. Leave even the byways at times, and travel across country.
Maps
On map making, see page 111.
A map is useful, and, on an extended tour, almost necessary. Topographic maps, showing towns and roads also, of a large part of the United States are published by the United States Geological Survey. Better maps could not be desired. Different regions are mapped to different scale, but, for the greater part, each map or “quadrangle” covers an area measuring 15' in extent each way; the scale is 1:62,500, or about a mile to an inch. Each quadrangle measures approximately 12¾ × 17½ inches and displays an area of 210-225 square miles, the area varying with the latitude. To traverse one quadrangle from south to north means, if the country be hilly and the roads winding, to walk twenty miles or more.
On these maps water is printed in blue, contour lines in brown, and cultural features—roads, towns, county lines—in black. A contour line is a line which follows the surface at a fixed altitude; one who follows a contour line will go neither uphill nor down, but on the level. The contour interval, that is, the difference in elevation between adjacent contour lines, is stated at the bottom of each quadrangle. It is not uniform for all the areas mapped, and is greater in mountains and less in level regions. Every fourth or fifth contour line is made heavier than the others.
A little experience will teach one to read a contour map at a glance; the shape of the hills is indicated, and their steepness. In addition, these maps bear in figures (and in feet) actual elevations above sea level.
Besides the quadrangles on the unit of area mentioned, the Survey publishes maps to larger scale, of regions of exceptional importance: Boston and vicinity, for instance; Washington and vicinity; the Gettysburg battlefield; the Niagara gorge; Glacier National Park; industrial regions such as Franklin Furnace, N. J., and vicinity.
Application may be made to The Director, United States Geological Survey, Washington, D. C., for an index map of any particular region in which one is interested; the index map is marked off into quadrangles, and each quadrangle bears its distinctive name. Information regarding larger maps is also given. So that, on consulting the index map, one may order by name the particular quadrangles or larger maps he may desire. The price of the quadrangles is ten cents each, or six cents each for fifty or more. The larger maps units are of varying price.
For remoter regions, not yet mapped by Government, ruder maps may ordinarily be had.
Such foreign regions as the Alps are, of course, perfectly mapped. The maps in Baedeker’s guidebooks are good, and better still may be had, if one desires.
It is a good plan to have the maps of one’s home region mounted on linen and shellaced.
Map case. Maps of small size and constantly in use may be put in form for carrying by cutting them into sections and mounting them on linen, with spaces for folding left between the edges of adjacent sections. A map so mounted may be folded and carried in an oiled silk envelope. Leather is not a satisfactory material for such a case, for, when carried in one’s clothing, it becomes wet through with perspiration.
For a walk on which one has occasion to use a number of maps, it is preferable to provide oneself with a cylindrical case of sheet tin, in which the rolled maps may be contained. A suitable case for the Geological Survey quadrangles measures eighteen inches in length and two in diameter. A close-fitting lid slips over the open end, and there are runners soldered to one side, through which a supporting strap may pass. A small hole in the bottom facilitates the putting on and removal of the lid. Any tinsmith can make such a case in a short time. It should be painted outside. It may be suspended by a strap from the shoulders, and so be easily accessible, or it may, if preferred, be secured to or carried within the knapsack.
Walking by Compass
Where roads are many and villages frequent, one may easily find his way, map in hand. But in the wilderness the map must be supplemented by the compass. The beginner should go gradually about this matter of traveling by compass; he should gain experience in small undertakings. For one acquainted with the art, there is in its practice an alluring element of novelty and adventure. Most of all, one needs to teach himself to rely on his compass implicitly.
A few suggestions about walking by compass may be useful. First, study the map, and note the objective points; second, on setting out, have always a definite point in mind and know its exact bearing; refer to the compass repeatedly, directing one’s course to a tree, rock shoulder, or other landmark, and on reaching it, appeal to the compass again, to define a new mark; third, in making detours, around bogs or cliffs, use the wits, and make proper compensation; finally, and as has once been said, but cannot be too often said, trust the compass.
From a mountain top, if the destination can be seen, one may study the contour of the land between and, engraving it surely in mind, direct his course accordingly. But ability to do this is gained only through long experience. For a novice to attempt it were foolhardy, and might lead to serious consequences.
In making mental note of landmarks, one should, so far as possible, get two aligned points on the course ahead, for by keeping the alignment deviation may be corrected.
On a clear day, having laid one’s course, one may follow it by the guidance of one’s shadow. But here again, some experience is needed, before trusting one’s ability too far.
One’s watch may serve as a rude compass, remembering that at sunrise (approximately in the east and approximately at six o’clock) the watch being set to sun time, if the watch be so placed that the hour hand points to the sun, the north and south line will lie across the dial, from the three o’clock index number to nine. And at any succeeding time of the day, if the hour hand be pointed to the sun, south will lie midway between the point where the hour hand lies and the index number twelve. Manifestly, this improvised compass can be exactly right only at equinox, and only when the watch is set to meridian time.
