Wanderers

[stormdog]

"Wanderers this morning came by
Where did they go
Graceful in the morning light
To banner fair
To follow you softly
In the cold mountain air."
-Fleet Foxes, Tiger Mountain Peasant Song





People who do things like this fascinate me. More than that, they make me wish dearly to have this kind of experience. I don't think it could help but be transformative. I could be wrong; I thought that about my trip to Chiapas, and in the end, while it did widen my viewpoint on the world, transformative is too strong a word.

But these wanderers! These mystics! These adventurers! Someday, I want to do something like this, outside of my normal relationship with time and space.

There are some interesting bits of this article that make for interesting analysis. The way "psychologists" seem to stand in for science in general and, perhaps more to the point, rationality. People do these irrational things, it seems to be saying, and we don't know why. These wanderers are framed as a sort of exotic mystery, outside day to day understanding.

The line about the annihilation of space and time, given the Marxist origins of that view of technology, is quite surprising to me to see in a 1925 newspaper article!

One person's mileage figures, if you do the math, comes out to walking 54 miles a day, 365 days a year, for five years? Is that even possible? I'm skeptical.

Regardless, I couldn't help but read through this article when I found it. It fills me with that kind of longing that "psychologists can't explain," (though really I suspect they could do a pretty good job of it if they tried.)

If any of you know more about these people, or you're interested enough to want to research them and find out more, I'd love to hear about them!

Transcription of the text from the article:

Prompted by a strange urge so
Hither and to the men trek pushing wheelbarrows, baby buggies and such.

Many have seen him. Handcuffed to a bicycle Tony Pizzo has ridden from coast to coast.

Psychologists tell us the human race moves in circles.
For instance, take the matter of transportation.
Man's first method of locomotion was his feet. If he wanted to go anywhere he made the journey on "Shank's Mare."
Then he evolved the idea of letting beasts of burden do the heavy work. He broke in oxen, horses, mules, camels, elephants, and any other animals that came in handy to barge him out.
He rode on their backs, or he attached them ot drags - rough sleds pulled over the ground.
Next came the idea of wheels - a big advance in solving the transportation problem.
The wheel made easier pulling. It enabled Man to transport larger loads and to transport them at much greater speed.
In time came automatic locomotion. Vehicles were developed which moved under their own power - the steam locomotive, automobile, and electric car.
At last came aircraft - the airplane and dirigible, capable of covering vast distances at incredible speed, annihilating Time and Space.
BACK TO HIS OWN FEET
Yet now, with locomotives, automobiles, electric cars, airplanes and dirigibles at his disposal, Man insists on reverting back to his first two means of transportation - his own feet and beasts of burden.
Time after time he uses them in preference to all other ways of getting about - and he uses them with "trimmings."
Not content to walk or ride around in the easiest way, he continually figures out unique and unusual methods of getting from place to place under his own or some animal's power.
Psychologists can't explain the "unique travel" complex. They only know it exists.
It exists to the Nth degree, for example, in Jackson H. Corwin of Philadelphia.
A TINY MIRROR GUIDES HIM
Corwin recently donned his army uniform - he is an ex service man - packed a few necessities in a knapsack, and started to walk from Philadelphia's City Hall to San Francisco.
Nothing remarkable about that -
BUT -
He's walking the entire distance BACKWARD.
Instead of looking where he's going, he plods along holding a mirror in front of his face to see if he's making it in the right direction.
Another hiker is Joseph Frank Wikulea, who is endeavoring to encircle the Globe "en hoof."
But Wikulea isn't making his trek for the purpose of seeing the world.
He's doing it for the purpose of collecting signatures.
To accomplish this end he is carrying on his shoulders a huge album, weighing about sixty pounds.
He started from the White House in Washington, with President Coolidge's "John Hancock" in the book. By the time he returns, he expects to have the autographs of 100,000 prominent persons.
J. C. Berring of West Chester, Conn., decided to journey to California.
"A LA FORTY-NINER"
Nothing difficult on the face of it - but Berring wanted to do it "a la Fortyniner."
The only way to travel like a Fortyniner is to travel by ox-cart - and Berring was shy on oxen.
Not daunted by this, however, he started raising a team of oxen. When the animals reached an age of sufficient discretion and maturity he hitched them to a wagon and started out.
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hoff of New York wanted to see the world, but at first their baby daughter seemed a barrier in the way of accomplishing this desire.
What to do with the girl?
Then the idea struck them that it would be pleasantly out of the ordinary to make it a baby-carriage tour!
They placed the child in a push-cart and started shoving it on a three-year jaunt over the United State and Europe.
PUSHES A WHEELBARROW
But "Happy Jack" Caves of Boston when them one better. On April 1, 1919, he started out to cover every state in this country and every country in Europe pushing a wheelbarrow.
Just why he wanted to take the barrow along is something for psychologists to ponder.
It was no ordinary barrow - exceptionally large, a small house built upon it, and no mean cinch to push!
Caves equipped his vehicle with a bell and an American flag, wrote his history on the roof of the house - referring to himself as "A Round the World Fool" - plastered up the sides with pictures of places through which he passed, and started out.
In five years he traveled 99,986 miles - and wore out thirty axles and nine wheels.
Henry Stewart of San Diego, Calif., takes his hiking "straight." He doesn't go in very much for trimmings. His long suit is mileage.
CROSSED OVER 15 TIMES
But the strange part of it is that he varies his hikes not at all. He has a "coast to coast" complex.
So far he has walked across the continent 15 times. The last time he made the trick was last year - and at that time he was 74 years of age!
Hikes into Canada, Mexico, or any lands overseas don't interest him. His one idea is to cross the country as often as possible - and his contention is that he has several more trips to get out of his system before he finally hangs up his walking shoes.
George D. Brown of Simsbury, Conn., like Stewart, has for his motto "See America First." Foreign lands can't lure him.
But Brown is a driver, not a hiker. His horse, a beautiful animal, is Handsome Dick. Dick wears a light harness and draws a light, rubber-tired runabout. In the runabout, along with Brown, rides a fluffy white poodle.
With this outfit, Brown has traveled 65,000 miles - a distance equivalent to nearly three times around the world - and all of it in the United States.
Brown claims, incidentally, to have the distinction of being the first person to drive a horse from coast to coast.
In contrast to the "normal" modes of travel adopted by Brown and Stewart, Tony Pizzo, a United States sailor, has a complex for freak locomotion.
HANDCUFFED TO A BICYCLE
His outstanding exploit was to make the round trip between New York and Los Angeles chained to a bicycle!
He started from New York where he was securely handcuffed to his wheel and the cuffs sealed by Mayor Hylan, pedaled his way to the southern California metropolis, turned around, and pedaled his way back.
Three Cleveland men, Stephen Nagy, Stephen Solnek, and Joe Ratz, left their homes in March for a trans-continental jaunt in a baby buggy.
Two are pushing the buggy while the other rides.
"Just an idea on how to spend a vacation," they explain.
For this trip they had a special buggy built. It is equipped with a speedometer, springs, pneumatic tires, and leather upholstery.
SHANK'S MARE
Walking is becoming a lost art. Autos, street cars, motorcycles, bicycles and trains are enslaving and weakening us.
Dr. John H. Finley, former university president and New York state commissioner of education walked from New York to Princeton. The spectacle of a man plodding along that auto highway was so unusual that Finley was arrested at Rahway, N.J., for vagrancy.
Walking is such a lost art, Finley points out, that he got a lot of space in the newspapers and set New York gossiping for weeks, by arriving recently from Europe and remarking that he had walked 100 miles on the boat on the way across.
When we need something, nature adds it to our bodies. Thus she grew a long neck on the giraffe so it could nibble the tender leaves and buds in treetops.
And when we no longer need a thing, when it becomes dormant by not being used, nature takes it away. For instance, the fish in Mammoth Cave, which are blind because they do not need eyes.
Imaginative artist have drawn pictures of men on Mars with huge heads and puny legs. That would be the natural result of a civilization of intellectual activity and physical inactivity.
It would be interesting to come back in another hundred years and see if habitual riding on wheels will have stunted and withered man's inactive legs. Our fingers are shorter than those of primitive man who had to have long fingers for tree climbing.
Whether future men have small legs or none at all does not bother us. But, most certainly, the majority of modern people suffer from a great deal of bad health that could be cured by a brisk walk daily. Various cities now have walking clubs, and it is a movement that should become national.
The world's walking record is one mile in six minutes and 25 4-5 seconds, held by G. H. Goulding of Canada. If you want to realize how you have neglected your leg muscles, go out and try to walk a mile in 15 minutes.
Right now - spring with its bracing air and its scenic beauties - is the best time for walking. Try it for exercise, for health. And, if you are a business man, inclined to get to the office in the morning with a fagged brain and jaded nerves, walking to work will rejuvenate you and double your efficiency.
To be sick less, walk more. Ask the Boy Scouts. the year for walking. Try it for exercise, for health. And, if you are a business man, inclined to get to the office in the morning with a fagged brain and jaded nerves, walking to work will rejuvenate you and double your efficiency.
To be sick less, walk more. Ask the Boy Scouts.