ON TRAMPING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 230, 29 September 1931, Page 6

ON TRAMPING.

The recent statement by the rector of a leading high school that he attributed his excellent heaith and_his freelom from illness to the fact that as a boy he was accustomed to spend his week-ends tramping in the mountains may perhaps remind us that tramping as a sport is by no means of modern orisin. Its phenomenal growth of lecent years and the world-wide interest now evinced in this pursuit might almost lead one who no better to imagine that the sport was essentially modern. One can hardly pick up an English paper now without seeing some illustration of tram pers or some allusion to the pastime. That excellent publication, '"Punch," hardly allows a

number to pass without a cartoon having lefeience to tramping. Indeed, the whole of Great Britain seems to be covered by a network of tramping clubs, all linked up to a central organisation. On the Continent tramping has longbeen popular in Germany, and the post-war impetus given to it in that country may well have launched it properly as a present-day world-wide

pastime. In this Dominion, though the average citizen knows it not, there are active tramping clubs in all centres, the number of those in Auckland alone probably now reaching to double figures. There has recently been formed in Wellington a federation of Xew Zealand mountaineering and tramping clubs, and this organisation has been joined by all the principal clubs in both islands. It is rumoured, too, that we shall shortly sec in Auckland something in the nature of a combined effort on the part of local clubs. Sometimes among unattached trampers or among those who spent their week-ends and holidays in this fashion years ago, one meets with a feeling almost of contempt for those who are club mombeis and partake in club outings. The older tramper remembers when all the roads in the ranges, m winter at all events, were practically nothing but muddy cattle tracks and when one could walk all day without being "hooted" off the road by some inconsiderate motor driver; how the advent of the motor car to regions the tramper had always regarded peculiarly as his own was viewed with disgust and as foretelling the spoliation and violation of his sanctuaries; how, too, many an old tramper had expressed strongly his conviction that all motor drivers should be compelled first of all to tramp for several years before graduating as drivers.

Meditating oil this wise, the older tramper sees parties of club trampers taken by motor to places from which to commence tramping, places which previously could be reached by him only as a result of several hours' walk, and sometimes his meditation is unduly disturbed by large club parties with leaders, resembling, so he thinks, nothing so much as "person ally-conducted tours. But let not the older tramper be hasty in his judgment. The younger brethren, when once they have properly tasted the joys of tramping, of searching out the lesser-known beauties. of Nature, of drinking to the depths the deep, pure draught of out-of-door life, they, too, in their turn will be no less enthusiastic than their predecessors. Joyfully will they learn to know Nature in all her moods, to take sun, wind and rain as they come, and to realise and understand something of the great healing, soothing forces of the open spaces.. They will learn to be selfreliant, to pit their stamina and intelligence against the forces of Nature, and being beaten, will learn from defeat how to conquer. They will experience the joy that conies from divesting themselves temporarily of all their possessions and setting forth into the less frequented places, carrying on their backs the. few things which they come to realise are all that are really necessary. Come rain, come sun, what matter? Led by Nature, they come to realise the infallible relation between cause and effect; how mistake, imprudence and bad judgment are followed by the inevitable consequences, and how careful planning, sound reasoning and correct action lead to success.

Thus schooled by Nature, the tram per gradually develops, till finally, if sufficiently attentive, he graduates into a self-reliant, clear-thinking, truth-telling individual, ever ready to help the weaker brother, capable of acting correctly and keeping his head in times of emergency or stress when all around are losing theirs and fitted to take the lead and direct the efforts of the rank and file. -HAVERSACK.