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017 - XVII The Open · Gentle Art of Tramping

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  Speaker 1: Chapter seventeen of The Gentle Art of Tramping by Stephen Graham.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. The Gentle Heart of Tramping, Chapter seventeen.
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  Speaker 1: The Open. He is blooded to the open, in the sky,
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  Speaker 1: he is taken in a snare which shall not fail.
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  Speaker 1: I think of storms, and of heavy rain and biting
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  Speaker 1: wind as exceptional. They give feature in the midst of
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  Speaker 1: halcyon days and nights. The tramping life is not in
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  Speaker 1: caves and huts and holes and inns, but in the open.
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  Speaker 1: The life opens us with its very breadth. Is your
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  Speaker 1: friend too thin? Do not diet him under a white ceiling,
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  Speaker 1: but give him air. Air will fill him. It's not
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  Speaker 1: the air alone that cures and fills, but what you
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  Speaker 1: breathe in. With the air, you breathe in the spirit
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  Speaker 1: of the open. You breathe in the wideness of the sky,
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  Speaker 1: You reach out to the free horizon. It makes a
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  Speaker 1: man big, It builds a man within. The lark sings
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  Speaker 1: as it rises, conquering the world. It is sheerjo in
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  Speaker 1: the open, which causes that sweet bird breast to heave
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  Speaker 1: and music far in the heavens above. And as we
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  Speaker 1: rise and the earth, in its grandeur, falls away to
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  Speaker 1: right and left, our being heaves in a life which
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  Speaker 1: is joy Ours is a bird's happiness. It's a joyous
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  Speaker 1: moment which delivers us from the control of a narrow gorge.
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  Speaker 1: We wind in and out of the shadow of great rocks.
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  Speaker 1: Enormous cliffs hang over the way. I think, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: of the great gorge of Dariel in the Caucasus. It's interesting,
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  Speaker 1: but it's oppressive. You come to it from the glorious
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  Speaker 1: northern plateau that Terek steps, where there is space and
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  Speaker 1: sun for miles of Indian corn. You follow the river
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  Speaker 1: into the gloom of the way it has cut through
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  Speaker 1: the range. It is somewhat enchanting. You come in sight
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  Speaker 1: of a shut off corner and it calls to your feet.
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  Speaker 1: You must see what is round that corner. But when
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  Speaker 1: you get there you find a road merely to another
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  Speaker 1: magnetic shut off corner. You must go on. The next
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  Speaker 1: corner reveals another corner, always darker, gloomier. The noise of
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  Speaker 1: the rushing river increase as the great walls enclosing it.
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  Speaker 1: Come nearer together, you feel yourself becoming smaller and smaller,
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  Speaker 1: as if seen from above, you and your friend are
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  Speaker 1: a couple of small animals groveling at the bottom of
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  Speaker 1: a pit. On the right, you see the ruins of
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  Speaker 1: Queen Tamara's castle and that fatal window where her unfortunate
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  Speaker 1: guests were hurled into the river, the castle to which
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  Speaker 1: the demon came. You feel yourself on your guard, as
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  Speaker 1: if some mysterious fate were in store for you. I've
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  Speaker 1: slept several times in a recess below that castle, had
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  Speaker 1: experienced an eerie feeling which is not caused entirely by
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  Speaker 1: history and tradition, but by something dreadful in the actual
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  Speaker 1: geography of the place. Thence, however, it is a splendid
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  Speaker 1: tramp up to the slopes of the great Kasbeck Mountain.
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  Speaker 1: You get into an exalted region among stars and young clouds,
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  Speaker 1: and feel as if you had got away from the
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  Speaker 1: devil and come nearer to God. This grand, open upper
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  Speaker 1: mountain country is continued to Kobe, which is a little
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  Speaker 1: church and village hidden somewhere in a spacious basin of
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  Speaker 1: rose colored porphiry, an ideal place in many Ross. I
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  Speaker 1: have often thought of going there to live for a
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  Speaker 1: fair space of time, but since the war the region
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  Speaker 1: has become much more dangerous to strangers. Of course, it
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  Speaker 1: may be urged that for glorious open country, it's hard
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  Speaker 1: to rival Salisbury Plain and the Wilchhiir Downs. That's true,
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  Speaker 1: it's fine country for a short tramping expedition. It widens
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  Speaker 1: the mind. A great thing to have a mind as
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  Speaker 1: wide and tolerant as the great plane, as healthy as
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  Speaker 1: the downs. The steps, however, make a greater impression. Being
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  Speaker 1: so vast, so wild, so untamed, untameable. There is an
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  Speaker 1: exuberance of Earth which I would not miss. There is
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  Speaker 1: an infinity greater than our domestic infinities. It will soon
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  Speaker 1: strike you, when tramping that the word infinite does not
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  Speaker 1: always mean the same. There are grades in infinity and
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  Speaker 1: measures of the immeasurable. Thus there is a further and
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  Speaker 1: greater infinity upon the steps, upon the Velt, upon the
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  Speaker 1: Canadian corn lands than for instance, on a clear day
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  Speaker 1: in the Fens. There is also greater measure upward. The
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  Speaker 1: tent pole of the sky is longer, clearer air gives
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  Speaker 1: greater sense of the upward depth of space. At night.
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  Speaker 1: This is especially noticeable. The stars are not pasted on
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  Speaker 1: black canvas, all one level surface. There is depth in
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  Speaker 1: the outer sky. You can see the planets poised. You
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  Speaker 1: can see behind the moon. One may dream of prison
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  Speaker 1: in a cave, or gain a morbid fear of the
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  Speaker 1: narrowing walls of a ravine, but open country disenchants the mind.
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  Speaker 1: Freedom room to breathe is at least suggested to the senses.
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  Speaker 1: The wind does not attack in storm battalions, but comes
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  Speaker 1: equably and large heartedly across the plane. The wind is
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  Speaker 1: a sane traveler, flicking the tops of the grasses as
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  Speaker 1: you do with your staff. It does not behave like
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  Speaker 1: a madman with a sword. It's not a wild cat
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  Speaker 1: springing from tree to tree. Not that you cannot get
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  Speaker 1: the worst of the wildness of a wind upon the moor,
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  Speaker 1: but it has a quality that gives courage, that puts
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  Speaker 1: heart into a man. Hence the Barrovian there's a wind
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  Speaker 1: on the heath, brother the wind. There is one's friend.
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  Speaker 1: Traveling on the Central Asian plane. I remember a steady
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  Speaker 1: wind that blew all night long, as if it were
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  Speaker 1: engaged on the whole time job of keeping the starry sky,
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  Speaker 1: polished and swept all night. The ends of my sleeping
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  Speaker 1: sack flapped in the wind, and I looked through trembling
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  Speaker 1: eyelashes at the moonlit snowy peaks of the great mountain
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  Speaker 1: wall between the table Land of Fools and India. A
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  Speaker 1: wind that came all the way out of the heart
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  Speaker 1: of China never ceased to blow, and yet never raise
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  Speaker 1: the desert sand. The great wind of the old world
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  Speaker 1: was blowing, as it has blown for ages. It blew
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  Speaker 1: out of the past, turning the monotonous page of history books,
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  Speaker 1: blew out of dreams and legends of forgotten man as
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  Speaker 1: out of the story books of the Caliphs. A wind
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  Speaker 1: which arose God knows where, far beyond the trails of
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  Speaker 1: the caravans. In the heart of the East, you lie
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  Speaker 1: in a marvelous stillness. The stars become your men and women.
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  Speaker 1: You become a man of Chaldea, and the constellations revive.
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  Speaker 1: There steals into your heart, and oh how you needed it,
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  Speaker 1: the sweet influence of the Pleiades. Spell Bound, you watch
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  Speaker 1: a ballet, a story. Up above, there are men on elephants,
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  Speaker 1: and men tending camels, long strings of camels ropes of camels,
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  Speaker 1: gulf streams of camels, wending their way out of the
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  Speaker 1: south of the universe into the bleak north. There are
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  Speaker 1: jeweled queens and striding harlequins and hesitating dwarfs. There are
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  Speaker 1: thirteen year old brides with streaming luminous hair, riding on
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  Speaker 1: high stepping ponies, riding the ways of the dark sky,
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  Speaker 1: till bid for by the heroes who come striding along
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  Speaker 1: the great ways from mark tourists. The civilized world has
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  Speaker 1: been removed, like a table that has been cleared, a
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  Speaker 1: table cluttered with papers and dishes. Civilization has been swept
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  Speaker 1: to one side. You cannot see it now. It's far away, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: out of your ken Entirely, you are reduced to a child,
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  Speaker 1: whatever your age, You are a petted child of the universe.
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  Speaker 1: You shall be all by yourself in the midst of
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  Speaker 1: the world, and the divine picture book shall be put
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  Speaker 1: in your hands for you to open, to look at,
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  Speaker 1: to turn the marvelous page. So you lie there, enthralled
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  Speaker 1: with dilated, excited, bright shining eyes, just so many feet
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  Speaker 1: by so many, and look up at infinite breadth and
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  Speaker 1: infinite depth. What is a cabinet thought about the stars,
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  Speaker 1: a whoever looked upon them shining, nor turned to Earth
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  Speaker 1: without repining, compared with the rapturous, poetic experience of having
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  Speaker 1: lived nights with them, reading them in the great open
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  Speaker 1: chamber of the universe. The end of Chapter seventeen