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021 - XXI Long Halts · Gentle Art of Tramping

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty one of the Gentle Art of Tramping by
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  Speaker 1: Stephen Graham. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
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  Speaker 1: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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  Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. The Gentle Art of Tramping,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty one. Long halts. If your tramping expedition is long,
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  Speaker 1: if you have voted yourself plenty of time, If for example,
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  Speaker 1: you are taking a wander year, you are under no
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  Speaker 1: compulsion to keep on tramping. One advantage of being a
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  Speaker 1: true bohemian is that you are under no compulsion except
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  Speaker 1: that of the heart. You stop when you like, You
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  Speaker 1: go on when you like. You surely come to places
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  Speaker 1: in which you are tempted to remain. Be it only
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  Speaker 1: for a few days. You stay a day, and the
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  Speaker 1: place grows on you. You stay longer, and then when the
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  Speaker 1: spirit moves, you move with it, move on, enriched by
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  Speaker 1: your delay, by your idleness. There are short halts and
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  Speaker 1: long hauls. The short ones are simple and natural, the
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  Speaker 1: longer ones more difficult to make, but not to be foregone.
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  Speaker 1: On that account, you come at last to the ideally simple,
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  Speaker 1: or beautiful or alluring village you ought to stay there
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  Speaker 1: a while, make home there for a while, and you
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  Speaker 1: have only your tramping kit and no word to recommend you. Still,
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  Speaker 1: it can be arranged, and the very modesty of your
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  Speaker 1: approach should help you. You come from below, not from above.
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  Speaker 1: The villagers will not hide their life from you. They
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  Speaker 1: may be shy of the stranger, but shyness will wear
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  Speaker 1: off as they watch you in their midst Do not
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  Speaker 1: go to the local priest, who, being a responsible person,
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  Speaker 1: is likely to tell you that it is impossible to
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  Speaker 1: stay there and to fill your mind with difficulties. You
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  Speaker 1: want to get taken in and hire a room. You
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  Speaker 1: have money to pay for it. You should make your
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  Speaker 1: appeal direct at the house where you would like to stay.
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  Speaker 1: You shall be very civil to the lady and drink
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  Speaker 1: with mine host. It can be arranged. They will even
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  Speaker 1: put themselves to trouble on your behalf. It is so
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  Speaker 1: much better to be in a family than in an inn.
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  Speaker 1: Inside the little family of a home, you are inside
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  Speaker 1: the bigger family of the village, and if you are
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  Speaker 1: a sociable soul, you will soon have many friends. You
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  Speaker 1: will get to know the village characters and gossips, the
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  Speaker 1: village children, the village musicians, the stories of the village,
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  Speaker 1: its legends, its superstitions, and then its love affairs, its entanglements,
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  Speaker 1: its coming weddings and fates. All this is worth while
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  Speaker 1: in the science of living. It is part of a
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  Speaker 1: true tramping jaunt to come back from nature to man,
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  Speaker 1: not of need to civilization, but to men and women
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  Speaker 1: and children. The village children will prove as near to
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  Speaker 1: the wanderer's heart as the birds in the woods nearer,
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  Speaker 1: for they are wood fairies incarnate, trapped on the edge
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  Speaker 1: of the forest and made to live human lives in
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  Speaker 1: the villages. The written pages of your note book grow
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  Speaker 1: in the village on the long halt as do also
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  Speaker 1: the unwritten yet unfading memories. Within days and weeks, tramping
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  Speaker 1: in the open crystallize in impression, and your past is
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  Speaker 1: like a tapestry on your bedroom wall. There is a
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  Speaker 1: space cleared for human life and love and happiness, for
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  Speaker 1: dance and for song, for sociality and talk. Here is
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  Speaker 1: opportunity for learning new ways of life and new stories
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  Speaker 1: and songs. You may soak in folklore and folk music
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  Speaker 1: for weeks. How splendid for you if when the time
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  Speaker 1: comes to go away and resume your trampings. You can
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  Speaker 1: carry away with you drawings you have made, songs you
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  Speaker 1: have learned to sing, stories which you can tell. You
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  Speaker 1: will carry that village with you to the ends of
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  Speaker 1: the earth. And then, of course, a village is not
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  Speaker 1: merely a village, not merely the broad and rutted roads
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  Speaker 1: and the cottages planted among the pigs and fowls. The
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  Speaker 1: village has its ways out, its views, its hillsides and streams,
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  Speaker 1: its loveliness on all sides. Your long halt is not
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  Speaker 1: a sitting still in a human settlement, but a star
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  Speaker 1: wise tour of all the country round about, going on
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  Speaker 1: and on in a line of route has its drawbacks.
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  Speaker 1: The world is not a straight line, not even a
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  Speaker 1: crooked line, not even the line of a man steps
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  Speaker 1: upon it. It is an area, a broad surface. Length
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  Speaker 1: cannot exist without some measure of breath. But at the
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  Speaker 1: risk of a paradox, one may say the world is
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  Speaker 1: breath without length. So also man's life. We think of
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  Speaker 1: it in length of years, but that, in a way
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  Speaker 1: is error. Life is not length of time but breath
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  Speaker 1: of human experience. Life is not a chain of events,
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  Speaker 1: but an area, something spreading out from a hidden center
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  Speaker 1: and welling at once towards all points of the compass.
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  Speaker 1: In the long halt. Therefore, one has not stopped living
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  Speaker 1: because one has ceased going onward. You get poised on
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  Speaker 1: your center. You feel the origins of joy and pain,
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  Speaker 1: deep down at the heart's core, the place from which
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  Speaker 1: something in you is welling up, all the while, welling
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  Speaker 1: up and overflowing, flowing away in waves and tides, to
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  Speaker 1: break on a mystical shore. BELI like you have a
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  Speaker 1: child's happiness into which you are unwilling to probe. You
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  Speaker 1: ask not whether it is more in one thing than
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  Speaker 1: in another. You tramp and you are happy, and halt
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  Speaker 1: and you are happy. Or happiness is not your word
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  Speaker 1: for what you feel, not your vein, you muse. You
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  Speaker 1: are at one with life. You are content. You ask
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  Speaker 1: only to go on in the way in which you are,
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  Speaker 1: or your happiness is to feel a divine melancholy. Wherever
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  Speaker 1: you are, it is the same for all the long halt,
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  Speaker 1: the dwelling among strange kindred, the choosing of some spot
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  Speaker 1: to be beloved in preference for a while. That also
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  Speaker 1: enters into the art of life, of the life of
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  Speaker 1: the true Bohemian and life Wanderer, end of chapter twenty
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  Speaker 1: one Long Halts, read by John Brandon, September ninth, twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty four