The Compleat Walker

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 78, 20 December 1940, Page 5

The Compleat Walker

{tT was in America... One of my friends there, who was a poet, and one of the best fellows that ever jumped a ditch or climbed a stile, asked me suddenly if I liked walking. Notice what he said-walking. Being a poet, and a professor of English to boot, he used the appropriate word. "Oh, yes, rather," said I, and I dare say I boasted a little about past achieve-

ments among the Gram-« pion Hills, on the York-« shire moors, or along foote paths lying deep in beech-mould-in leafy Buckinghamshire. "That’s just fine," he said, in the American idiom; and promised to come by for me in his car the following Saturday

afternoon, drive me out to a farm which made a good starting-point for a walk, and there meet others who also delighted in the same gentle recreation. Figure.to yourself my dismay when the whole party assembled, and I found that all the others, including even my friend the poet, had donned a kind of uniform for the occasion. Heavy boots, rough woollen socks, wonderful knickerbockers tucked into the socks, even more wonderful caps, and firmly grasped in each hand a veritable alpenstock"Merciful. Heaven!" thought I, casting sideways glances at all this elaborate get-up, and contrasting it with my own shabby jacket and shabbier flannel trousers--"Merciful Heaven! Have I made a mistake? Are we really bound for some glacier in the vicinity that I haven’t heard of?" I couldn’t believe they’d have dressed themselves up like this for anything short of 35 miles of good, hard going; and I knew, alas, that I was out of training, Well, it proved quite a pleasant stroll. We covered about six miles in a circle, and got back to the farm in time for fried chicken and hot biscuits. So you see I didn’t "hike"; I just "walked." One might almost say I "sauntered.*--

(Professor

J. Y. T.

Greig

"The Vicious Practice of

Hiking,’ 2Y A, December 5),