LOSING OUR LAND LEGS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22444, 13 June 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOSING OUR LAND LEGS

Joys of a Vanishing, Art

By MATANGA

A GOOD WORD for legs was spoken in the House the other ilny. It was a word in season. The pedestrian, as Mr. Lee then said, is danger of becoming " the forgotten man," but the risk is greater still —4he may become extinct. In two ways motor traffic is threatening to blot him out: one is by the silent death that suddenly cuts a corner and catches him unaware, the other is the slow killing that he suffers when he chooses to go about continually in a car rather than walk. The first ought always to be treated as murder in the first degree; the second is certain suicide. Either way means the passing of the pedestrian. Yes, yes; science, civilisation, procress,'the service of mechanism, the joy of the open road, the conquest of space, the seeing of the world, the saving of time the multiplying of social contacts —the arguments art* used so often and so noisilv'that we are tempted to think them true. At the best thov are white lies. Their terms need defining with reference to deep realities. What is civilisation, or progress? Of what value is this vulgar sort of triumph over space? How see the world when hurtling across it? What is"the good of saving time, trying to- get from here to there in a' flash—only to set out again in a lunacy of haste? What —come now —is really served by this fret of hurry that has produced breakneck travel and made it rule our very thinking? _ • Far too prevalent is the motorist's complex. It sits in tho seat of the scornful. Ift is prone to disobey law. See how it mJikes liplit of speed limits —as on Graftsn Bridge these days—as soon as the'eye of authority is removed or remote. There are angelic motorists, of course, patterns of good conduct and civility, and their claim to respect is ail the greater because of their experiencing, with the others, the fascinating lure of speed—without letting it get into their blood. Yet are there not others —a host of them—become hateful for their inconsiderate impudence. as with a frenzy worthy of Edward Hyde they drive their " damned juggernauts about the highways they are making crimson? Motorist's Complex

But let us get back to our legs. The human family'seems to have risen erect only to compromise witli its tree-perch-ing heredity by inventing new means to proceed sitting, by exchanging the swaying bough and floating log for wheeled or winged vehicles of increasing ease and pace and size. Once upon a time " the first man stood God-conquered, with his face to heaven upturned." Now it seems likely that the last lone man will collapse because no other will be near to hand him a chair or offer him a seat in a conveyance. A while agp we could use our legs well, we British. Old John Burroughs, clever naturalist, one of America's lovers of the open, has drawn a scornful contrast between his carriage-riding countrymen and our pedestrian folk. The English claim that they are a moTe hearty and robust people than we are. It iji certain they are a plainer people, have plainer tastes, dress plainer, build plainer, speak plainer, keep closer to facts, weaT broader ahoes and coarser clothes, place a lower estimate oft themselves—nil of which traits favour pedestrian habits. The English grandee is not confined to his carriage; but if the American , aristocrat leaves his, he is ruined. In the Britain of yesterday from which we came things were so. To walk to work, to walk for pleasure, to go to church on foot by many a street or bypath. were then common practice. And in old New Zealand deeds of travel were done afoot by Maori and missionary that make us pant to think of; it was no unusual thing for nearly the whole length of our North Island to be traversed thus, with few short-cuts to reduce the sinuous coast routes. That clay seems already a3 far away as Shakespeare's, so little inclined are we to Jog on, jog on. the footpath way. And merrily hent the stile-a. Blessings of the Footpath A beni?on descends on the footway. Burroughs avers that " all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride." He knew what his countrymen were losing through their" " crowding the street-car on a little fall in the temperature or the appearance of an inch or two of snow, packing up to overflowing, dangling to the straps, 'treading on each other's toes, breathing each other's breaths/' There is more wholesome company afoot. What fellowship the footpath holds! Not without reason are some ways known as " Lovers' Walks." Openhearted understanding needs something calmer than the jolt and rattle of a swerving vehicle. Deep friendships are not cemented on a water-chute or in a, hydroplane. " Will you take the long path with me?'' asks the Autocrat of the schoolmistress. No sincerer invitation to enduring companionship could his heart dictate: " Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" And this primal, personal means of locomotion keeps man sanely in touch with the earth. He finds it a means to natural life. " Man takes root at his feet," as Burrbughs put it in " The Exhilarations of the lioad," " and at best ho is no mo,re than a potted plant in his house or carriage till he has established communication with the soil by the loving and magnetic touch of his soles to it." Yet for all that it is so personal, this association with the earth admits to the widest fraternity that mortals know. The footpath implies some community of ownership in the land that is trodden, and on its level there is an equality. Sweetness ol Gravel

It is of the open road across fields and , moors, away from busy haunts, that men have mostly thought when pedestrian pleasure and protit have been in view. But other walks have their charm. Thoreau, loving the green marge of his Walden Pond, declared himsolf a I good horse but a poor roadster. But one wiser than he sfang of the sweetness of gravel, good sharp quartz-grit—tho proper condiment for tho sterner seasons, and urged that " many a human gizzard ; would be cured of half its ills by a suitable daily allowance of »t"— applied externally, of course. Ho thought Thoreau would have profited immensely by it; his diet was too exclusively vegetable. "A man cannot live on grass alone. . . . Those who have tried it know that gravel possesses an equal though an opposite charm. It spurs to ,®ction. Tho foot tastes it and henceforth rests not." By walking caihe tlie poet's rhythmic Periods, as each " foot " of a verso still tells. Philosophy flourished by the service of its Peripatetics—the teachers , R 'ho "walked about," that is. Ethics I and religion have'marched to victory in the company of this human exercise;* let Hawthorne's " Celestial Railroad " witness, bv its serious burlesque, to the wisdom that took Bunyan's pilgrims afoot to the Celestial City, and give the similes of Holy "\yrit quiet audience. H Let's go for a walk —but keep a sharp look-out when we cross the road 1