Wanderlust: A History of Walking (45 page)

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“Reagan had realized, he told us”: Michael Korda, “Prompting the President,”
New Yorker,
October 6, 1997, 92.

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“But why tramp?” Charles F. Lummis,
A Tramp Across the Continent
(Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 3.

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“But strange things do happen”: Robyn Davidson,
Tracks
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 191–92.

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“In properly developed countries, the inhabitants”: Alan Booth,
The Roads to Sata: A Two-Thousand-Mile Walk Through Japan
(New York: Viking, 1986), 27.

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“The Guinness Book of Records defines a walk”: Ffyona Campbell,
The Whole Story: A Walk Around the World
(London: Orion Books, 1996), unpaginated preface.

 

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“the first man to climb a mountain”: Kenneth Clark,
Landscape into Art
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 7.

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“a small mound of rock”: Clarence King,
Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1935), 287.

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Christian Europe seems to be alone: Both Francis Farquhar's brief bibliography of mountaineering literature and Edwin Bernbaum's
Sacred Mountains of the World
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) agree on the peculiar European attitude toward mountains before the eighteenth century. Edward Whymper also speaks of the legend of the Wandering Jew, in Ronald W. Clark,
Six Great Mountaineers
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1956), 14. The terms in which English writers described mountains come from Keith Thomas,
Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England
(Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1984), 258–59.

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drove his chariot up T'ai Shan: The First Emperor's ascent is described in Bernbaum,
Sacred Mountains,
31.

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“The Chinese phrase for ‘going on a pilgrimage”: Gretel Ehrlich,
Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Journeys of an American Buddhist
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 15.

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“the vast and very flat valley” and following:
Egeria: Diary of a Pilgrimage,
trans. George E. Gingras (New York: Newman Press, 1970), 49–51.

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“There is nothing to look up to”: Cited by Dervla Murphy in her introduction to Henriette d'Angeville's
My Ascent of Mont Blanc,
trans. Jennifer Barnes (London:
HarperCollins, 1991), xv. The first American woman atop Everest (the first woman was Japanese), Stacy Allison, similarly declared, “There was nowhere else to climb. I was standing on top of the world” (from www.everest.mountainzone.com).

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“We climbed up through the narrow cleft”: Dante,
The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio,
canto 4.

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“To the traveller”: Henry David Thoreau,
Walden
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 290.

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“To climb up rocks”: Charles Edward Montague, “In Hanging Garden Gully” (from his book
Fiery Particles,
1924), excerpted in
Challenge: An Anthology of the Literature of Mountaineering,
ed. William Robert Irwin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), 333.

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“Because it's there,” “We hope to show”: Murray Sayle, “The Vulgarity of Success,”
London Review of Books,
May 7, 1998, 8.

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Chomalungma: See Bernbaum,
Sacred Mountains,
7.

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“Whatever Western society regards”: Ibid., 236.

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“And before I started to move”: Gwen Moffat,
The Space Below My Feet
(Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1961), 66.

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slowest traverse: “We made an epic traverse of the Cuillin Ridge at the end of June. The main ridge is seven or eight miles long with about sixteen peaks of over three thousand feet strong along the chain. The average time taken for the traverse was ten to thirteen hours; some parties took twenty-four, others were bringing the record down to fantastic times, as on the fourteen-peak walk in Snowdonia. We hated records; we decided to be different. We would take our time, sunbathe, enjoy the views, carry food for two days, sleep out on top of the ridge; we would set up the record for the longest time spent on the Cuillen traverse” (ibid., 101).

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“turned his keen intelligence”: Eric Shipton,
Mountain Conquest
(New York: American Heritage, 1965), 17.

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forty-six parties . . . had reached the summit: Ronald W. Clark,
A Picture History of Mountaineering
(London: Hulton Press, 1956), 31.

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“The soul has needs,” “It was not the puny fame”: D'Angeville,
My Ascent,
xx–xxi.

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“For half a century”: Smoke Blanchard,
Walking Up and Down in the World: Memories of a Mountain Rambler
(San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1985), xv.

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“On Visiting a Taoist Master”: Arthur Cooper, trans.,
Li Po and Tu Fu
(Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1973), 105.

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“People ask the way”:
Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-Shan,
trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), poem 82, 100.

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“Before the sixth century
A
.
D
.”: Bernbaum,
Sacred Mountains,
58.

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“Every aspect of Shugendō”: H. Byron Earhart,
A Religious Study of the Mount Haguro Sect of Shugendō: An Example of Japanese Mountain Religion
(Tokyo: Sophia University, 1970), 31. Also see Allan G. Grapard, “Flying Mountains and Walkers of Emptiness:
Toward a Definition of Sacred Space in Japanese Religions,”
History of Religion
21, no. 3 (1982).

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“I . . . set off”: Bashō,
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches,
trans. and ed. Nobuyuki Yuasa (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1966), 125. Bashō was climbing Mount Gassan in the north, immediately after climbing better-known, adjacent Mount Haguro, a major focal point of Shugendō.

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“I had been introduced to the high snow peaks”: Gary Snyder,
Mountains and Rivers without End
(Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint Press, 1996), 153. Snyder also speaks about mountains, spirituality, and his mountaineering in the essay “Blue Mountains Constantly Walking,” in
The Practice of the Wild
(San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990); in
Earth House Hold
(New York: New Directions, 1969); and most recently in an interview with John O'Grady, in
Western American Literature,
fall 1998, among many other places.

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“I was given a chance to see”: Snyder,
Mountains and Rivers,
156.

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“The closer you get to real matter”: David Robertson quoting Kerouac in
Dharma Bums,
in
Real Matter
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997), 100.

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“This sentence states what is perhaps”: Ibid., 100, 108.

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“I translate space from its physical sense”: Snyder, interview with O'Grady, 289.

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“On Climbing the Sierra Matterhorn Again”: Gary Snyder,
No Nature: New and Selected Poems
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 362.

 

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“An excursion of this sort”: William Colby,
Sierra Club Bulletin,
1990.

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outdoor organizations had been proliferating: “The formation of the [British] Alpine Club in 1857 had been followed by the foundation of the Swiss Alpine Club—and of the Societe de Touristes Savoyardes—in 1863. The Italian Alpine Club came later during the same year, while in 1865 there was founded for the further exploration of the Pyrenees the Societe Ramond. The Austrian and the German clubs came in 1869 and the French in 1874, while across the Atlantic the Williamstown Alpine Club had been founded as early as 1863 and was followed in 1873 and 1776 respectively by the White Mountain Club and the Appalachian Mountain Club” (Clark,
Picture History of Mountaineering,
12). A Ladies' Alpine Club was founded in 1907.

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“There were solemn hours”: Ella M. Sexton,
Sierra Club Bulletin
4 (1901): 17.

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“Mr. Colby goes like lightning”: Nelson Hackett in oral history transcripts, Sierra Club files, in Bancroft Library, letters of July 5 and July 18, 1908, transcribed at end of Hackett's interview.

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“We were shocked to discover firsthand”: Michael Cohen,
The Pathless Way: John Muir and the American Wilderness
(Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1984), 331.

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“The Friends of Nature were founded”: E-mail from Manfred Pils to the author, October 1998.

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“On the main thing—rambling”: Walter Laqueur,
Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement
(New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books, 1984), 33. This and Gerald Masur,
Prophets of Yesterday: Studies in European Culture, 1890–1914
(New York: Macmillan, 1961); Werner Heisenberg,
Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations
(New York: Harper and Row, 1971); and David C. Cassidy,
Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg
(New York: W. H. Freeman, 1992), were my principal sources.

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“After 1919, the militant dictatorships”: Masur,
Prophets of Yesterday,
368

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eighteen million Britons head for the country: Shoard,
This Land Is Our Land,
264; ten million walkers from
Country Walking
magazine editor in chief Lynn Maxwell, in conversation with the author, May 1998.

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“Almost a spiritual thing”: Roly Smith, conversation with the author, May 1998.

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accessing the land has been something of a class war: Information on trespassing, poaching, and gamekeepers in various parts of Shoard,
This Land Is Our Land.

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Association for the Protection of Ancient Footpaths: Tom Stephenson,
Forbidden Land: The Struggle for Access to Mountain and Moorland,
ed. Ann Holt (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 19), 59.

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Forest Ramblers' Club: Hill,
Freedom to Roam,
21.

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not impressive compared to those of other European countries: Steve Platt, “Land Wars,”
New Statesman and Society
23 (May 10, 1991); Shoard,
This Land Is Our Land,
451.

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“Land is not property”: James Bryce, quoted in Ann Holt, “Hindsight on Kinder,”
Rambling Today,
spring 1995, 17. See also Raphael Samuel,
Theatres of Memory
(London: Verso, 1994), 294: “The Commons, Open Spaces and Footpath Society, founded in 1865—the remote ancestor of the National Trust—was a kind of Liberal front, championing the claims of villagers and commoners against the encroachments of landlords and property developers. . . .”

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“It is the one thing that is unpleasant”: Crichton Porteous,
Derbyshire
(London: Robert Hale Limited, 1950), 33.

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“a little judicious trespassing”: Leslie Stephen, “In Praise,” 32.

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“By the last quarter of the nineteenth century”: Hill,
Freedom to Roam,
24.

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“Hiking was a major, if unofficial, component”: Raphael Samuels,
Theatres of Memory, 297.
The passage continues, “and ‘freedom to roam' was a left-wing campaigning issue. It had been given a mass basis, in Edwardian times, by the Clarion League, the 40,000 strong organization of the young who combined Sunday cycle meets with preaching the socialist message on the village green. In the inter-war years it was forwarded by the Woodcraft Folk—a kind of anti-militarist, co-educational version of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides who combined pacifist advocacy and nature
mysticism; by the Youth Hostels Association, formed in 1930; and by that great army of hikers who on high days and holidays went rambling on the mountains and moors. Hiking had a particular appeal to working-class Bohemians, as a mainly intellectual alternative to the dance hall, and one that cost no money.”

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“a genuine hatred of ramblers”: Ann Holt,
The Origins and Early Days of the Ramblers' Association,
booklet published by the Ramblers' Association from a speech given April 1995.

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“Town dwellers lived for weekends”: Benny Rothman,
The 1932 Kinder Scout Trespass: A Personal View of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass
(Altrincham, England: Willow Publishing, 1982), 12.

 

Philip Lopate's essay “The Pen on Foot: The Literature of Walking Around,” Parnassus, vol. 18, no. 2 and 19, no 1, 1993, pointed me to Edwin Denby's writings and to specific poems of Walt Whitman's.

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“On Saturday night . . . the city joined in the promenade”: Harriet Lane Levy,
920 O'Farrell Street
(Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1997), 185–86.

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Kerouac managed to have two visions on [Market Street]: see
Atlantic Monthly,
reprinting a May 1961 letter, November 1998, 68: “It [
On the Road
] was really a story about two Catholic buddies in search of God. And we found him. I found him in the sky, in Market Street San Francisco (those 2 visions).”

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how a popular, well-used street is kept safe: Jane Jacobs,
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
(New York: Vintage Books, 1961), throughout the chapter “The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety.”