Tramping and Human Values

Appeal to Students.

(By A. H. O'K.)

(Note.—This article was received for publication in the first issue, but was held over owing to lack of space.)

In this short space there is no room for details of the various activities of our Tramping Club, but I want to tell you something about the things that tramping offers you. Attractive word-pictures might he drawn of the splendour of the sun rising over mountain passes or of the beauty of unforgettable sunsets, but many of you would, no doubt, think them sorry gushing; mere lovers' rant. It is so hard for a true lover to get across the footlights to those who do not share his love. The unspeakably good things of life are the hardest to communicate.

I am told there are people who do not care for adventures among the mountains, and J find this hard to believe. It hurls to think of the pleasures that people turn away from their doors. Some never even hear the footsteps passing by. That is my excuse for attempting to describe a few of my thoughts about tramping.

To mount in steep places, to wrestle among the peaks, to taste danger, to fear, to feel hunger and thirst, and to learn to accept these as part of the scheme of things. To find merry little hopes of fine weather dashed to disappointment on rain-swept tops. To rely on our faculties more than the neat contrivances of our civilisation. To explore country seldom if ever traversed before. To discover the human values that count in tight corners where decisions must be made quickly and action resolute. This is tramping!

And then there is the joyous companionship with people who share your appreciation of these places and exploits. The companionship has a decency about it. There never was room on a mountain top for petty meanness or a doubtful yarn.

You who find the ordinary way of life restricting, come out and taste the freedom found out tramping! You need not do what the next man does. If you keen on botanising, botanise. If you find solace in the depths of wooded hills, go there. If rocks thrill you, climb them. There are so many diverse interests.

You who grow tired of the routine of the daily round—the numbing certainties of the social order come out and enjoy the unexpectedness of life among the mountains. A few inches of rain and a new route must be devised away from the swollen river. A deer track suddenly gives way to vast stretches of unbroken scrub and leatherwood. And hopeless days of rain and mist and hail clear in a few hours to unfold sights we expected not a glimpse of.

We discover more about ourselves, too, when we tramp. We rely upon ourselves more. There are no crowds to applaud or deride our efforts. There is no question of coming first or gaining a prize; no championship to secure. The mountains are aloof; the trees look on with a detached air; the rivers flow on heedless of our splashing feet. We find out our own adequacy or futility. In social life we are often so busy watching others that we lose sight of ourselves.

However. I feel somehow that this is all so ineffectual. Poetic rhapsodists—and even ordinary "coves" like me—can tell you of the joy and beauty of the mountains, but they cannot pluck the flower for you. You must wander out yourself and, in solitude or with companions, explore the earth. And it that something you seek is elusive, or the way desolate, do not waver and lose heart, but resolutely seek, toil, strive, and, mounting, you'll find there's a top to the highest mountain that ever spurned the low earth and mingled with the clouds.