The 12-Mile Radius

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

The 12-Mile Radius

By

MARION WALKER

frjgS’JPJß' l HE perfect holiday would be one in i A&FTm' which one could get completely |Q*T*Q| away from oneself. If there is anyone who dissents it must be that he finds himself more loveable than most people find themselves. Of course the ideal way would be to deposit one’s troublesome organs in various glass-stoppered bottles, ring up the hospital to take delivery of them and go forth unencumbered to enjoy a disembodied existence. There are, however, the usual difficulties in the way leading to the ideal, and we must content ourselves with the second best—but a second best that is by no means negligible. For it is difficult to find a holiday comparable to that spent in making expeditions on foot—not a long tour in which each day’s march is but an item in an addition sum, the correct answer being the name of a fixed destination, but a series of walks from a given centre. To explore the country within a twelve-mile radius in every direction is an enticing occupation promoting health in mind and body. Some eloquent man should preach a series of sermons on the fallacy of the holiday idea. “They change their sky who scour the sea, but not their mind," sang a caustic poet of ancient times. This habit of travellers persists up to the present day. It is better to jettison one’s usual cargo cf idiosyncrasies and go forth free from a stuffy mental atmosphere, thereby ceasing to bore or to be bored. The trouble is that one’s friends will not allow one to discard from the long suit of one’s weaknesses. This perverseness is a cogent reason why I favour walking tours. None of my immediate friends is enamoured of exercise, so it follows that my choice leads me among strangers where I am at liberty to be myself as I am, not as my friends expect me to be. It is difficult to be an interesting personality when in close pioximity to those who know one in one’s bath, as it were. Of course strangers have their, drawbacks. Who has not been a victim of that after-dinner curiosity appeased only by the production of a genealogical table? But inquisitive strangers are, on the whole, less detrimental than bosom friends to the complete holiday. My special kind of holiday has this additional advantage, that no special raiment is essential. Neither time nor money need be spent on those externals which are after all usually displayed mainly for the edification of the other fellow. So — into my bag go my old braces and bravely enduring flannels, along with a sweater that has seen brighter days. I may have to declare a new tube of toothpaste, but if there happens to be a new tie along with it, it is there at the dictates of self-respect, not vanity. This business of getting acquainted with ofce’s legs is a profitable one. It is curious that walking should be so neglected in an age when legs are so much in evidence. One is nearer the Greek ideal of a sane mind in a healthy body after such a holiday. The bodily fatigue is a perfect anodyne for a too restless mind overworked during the greater part of the year. The mind becomes comotose. And it is not only muscularly that I find my body profits. That fatigue—remember that a twelve-mile radius gives a twenty-four mile walk, and I am out of training!—abates the, appetite; mine in such circumstances varies from normal to subnormal, whereas on any other kind of holiday it increases so that obviously there is no holiday for the dark interior of my person. Hilly, if not mountainous country, is dear to my heart for several reasons. Conversation during a walking expedition is. as Stevenson pointed out, a bane. But even the most loquacious fellow surrenders at discretion when the grade is one in three. The little, vacuous, teasing comments cease and one’s mind expands unchecked. Wide spaces, viewed from great heights, liberate the mind miraculously; and if there b» snow upon the heights, I, a dweller in n sub-tropical town, am transported to a new land thousands of miles beyond the destination to which my ticket entitled me to travel. I have shining memories of Ruapehu’s white summit and steep ascents where I renewed myself body and soul in an all-too-short holiday. As nearly perfect as one could expect. No other kind of holiday will ever suffice for me.