Walking Fro and To

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 851, 20 December 1929, Page 8 (Supplement)

Walking Fro and To

By

K. M. KNIGHT

FIRST PRIZE ■ NCE there was an old beat—l do not know whether he was a polar bear, a teddy bear, or a brown bear — but he was an old bear; and when he got too utterly fed up with walking to and fro, he used to reverse it, and walk fro and to. Someone with a sympathetic mind observed his actions, and wrote a limerick about him. And that is how I came to know of him. . . . But there is more in the story than meets the eye. Most of us have far more in common with the old bear than we realise. Do we not tire of walking to and fro in the little cages where we spend our daily lives, and long for a change of work? We don’t want rest on our holidays—we only want to exchange cages with someone else — but we do want to reverse things somehow, and lo walk fro and to for a while. And so you rush out of your hectic city for a holiday in the heart of my country, and I hie me off to your city to get fresh impetus for the game of life. I'm tired of placidity, and the eternal patience ot Nature, and you long for cool nights to come down over you; to shut you in with the scents of wild grasses and the sound of the wind in the trees. And slrangely, by reversing the business like this, we are both satisfied. What do I like about your city? Why, its old grey streets, stored with the footsteps of countless folk who have walked there before me; its great grey buildings; its factories; its warehouses and market places that smell of oil, and dust, and manures; its wharves, with little boats coming and going, and big boats resting awhile from their journeyings to other lands; its theatres, its shops, and its ceaseless stream of traffic. Why do I like these things': Because they come so near to me, press so close about me, make me one with them; I don’t like to have a definite programme to live by. I like to wander at will. This freedom is part of the joy. I go down to watch a Pacific Mail boat going out, and stand close beside it as it tugs gently at its moorings. So much power there is in this ship; so much strength, and yet so much patience. I stand in the noisy, excited crowd, close to the side of the big ship, and listen to a band playing. No one cares if I have tears in my eyes, for whose eyes are quite dry? Not the eyes ot the man beside me, hiding behind a newspaper; not the eyes of this woman who is on the other side of me, waving goodbye to her sons on board. And that band . . . that dreadful band. Why does it play at such a time? And why does it play waltzes, the saddest music on earth? All around me Is: this chattering crowd. An eager crowd, waiting for the boat to sail. Waiting for tho throbbing engines to throb to some purpose, and to churn up the green harbour; waiting for the boat to pull slowly out into the stream with its impudent, determined little tug pressed close into its side: waiting, as we are all waiting on the threshold of life, for something to happen. I stand back in the crowd, and feel myself a part of some strange experience, some great adventure that I am sharing consciously with everyone else there. I have come to matter, tremendously, in the scheme of life. Back under the stars, with the grass under my feet, I was no more to Nature than the birds and the trees; here 1 have come into my own. Am I not Man, the creator of ships like this great swaying thing, the creator of cities like the one that lies behind us. of cities like those that lie across the sea? Have I not built wharves, and streets, and great civilisations? . . . And so I come to know a holiday I love better than any other. I feel this sense of nearness to the heart of things. There is nothing in it. you say? Your boats go out every day. you always have your grey buildings and your pulsing streets? Ah, yes, so you may. So have I my cool, quiet countryside always with me. But it is not ur til I suffer myself to grow tired of your town that I turn again to the hills, and pray them to fold me in quietness, and let me rest again with them.