Tramping With A Poet In The Rockies

by Stephen Graham

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Genres: Poetry, British Literature

279 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Stephen Graham (1884 - 1975) was a British journalist, travel-writer, essayist and novelist. His best-known books recount his travels around pre-revolutionary Russia and his journey to Jerusalem with a group of Russian Christian pilgrims. Most of his works express his sympathy for the poor, for agricultural labourers and for tramps, and his distaste for industrialisation.

Librarian's note: There is more than one author on Goodreads with this name.

List of books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen...

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 3 out of 5]

May 29, almost midnight! ~~ Review asap.

May 30, 8pm ~~ This book popped up in the new additions section at Project Gutenberg in early May and I decided to add it to one of my lists of titles from that site. I am slowly working my way through my infamous lists by grouping them into ten books, reading those, then adding another ten. So here we are, in my first Ten Little Gutenberg Books challenge list.

I generally enjoy books written by people who have walked where they wanted to go, or at least walked around once they got to where they wanted to go. This book was entertaining in many ways but it was not your usual Walk Around And See The World type of book.

Tramping In The Rockies With A Poet was published in 1922 by Stephen Graham, who at the time was quite well-known, as was the poet he went tramping with, longtime friend Vachel Lindsay. But you have to understand what is meant by 'tramping'. For our two vagabonds, tramping meant wandering in the wilderness of Glacier National Park with little more than "a knapsack, a pot and a blanket". This is not modern day hiking and camping where people seem to have to take everything with them, even the kitchen sink.

The Poet had worked his way across the country once, really 'tramping', working for his supper and giving performances of his poetry now and then. So this visit to a National Park was a little easier, you would think. At least they carried their own food (but they ran out more than once) and were close enough to tourist camps to get more before they starved; and the author had money to buy some new clothes when his ended up too raggedy from the tramping to be respectable. The poet didn't care if he looked shabby, but the author did.

I enjoyed reading about the discussions these two creative minds had while out in the wild, but I also thought they were both more than a little stupid at times. They slid down rock falls, fed bears, got a little lost once, had a couple of small injuries and generally were damned lucky that nothing worse happened to them. Maybe they were embarrassed when they were seen bathing nude in a mountain river by a group of female tourists on a guided trail ride. But their heads were in the clouds so much of the time, arguing this or that point and discussing the other, that they most likely thought nothing of it at all after the first shock wore off.

The Poet published a 'response and sequel' to this book the next year, and I had planned to read it to see what he had to say, but naturally it was all poetry and after sampling a few verses, I decided that his style was not to my taste. It is there at Gutenberg should anyone else be interested. The title is Going-To-The-Sun.

I actually did not get as much of a sense of the country as I expected. We were all too busy making coffee and arguing about whether Patrick Henry was or was not a real person. (The poet was American and the Author was British: neither really knew about the other's heroes.) All I learned about Glacier National Park was that the mountains are very steep and the bears were hungry and no one was supposed to have guns. I worried about their safety in the wilderness, but I did still enjoy this little adventure with two very intellectual tramps.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I have the original first edition, published in 1922, and it has a warm, well-worn feel in the hands. Stephen Graham and Vachel Lindsay make something of an odd couple to be tramping in the Rocky Mountain wilderness, one tall and logical, the other short and full of fancy. Both men are in their forties; both are successful writers — Graham as a travel writer, Lindsay as a flamboyant performance-poet.

Graham's prose is a pleasure to read. Having done my share of backpacking, I could easily join their exuberant tramping and cheerful bohemianism. At the end of each chapter, Graham breaks into poetry himself.

It's summer in the Rockies, but there is always snow:

We cut off the top of the snow with a sharp piece of slate,
And took the purer under-snow to make our coffee,
To make ice-cream:
Fastidious creatures!
And then we stood in the snow-hole
And washed with warm water,
And rubbed ourselves all over with handfuls of sloppy snow—
Disgusting old tramps!
The discreet birds watched us,
The chipmunks squeaked at us,
You didn’t see us.

I don't know how to decode the sexual euphemisms of the 1920s (if any), but the two men are clearly fond of each other:

It is a romantic climb. We support each other up the steep, sitting down every twenty paces in breathlessness. Vachel sits with his head on my shoulder and I with my head on his. In a minute or so we recover and sit up straight, in the half darkness, and pick up flat stones and try to make them skid over the snow patches.

I shall never forget the poet as he looked in the dawn, with his red handkerchief tied over his old felt hat and under his chin, and the concentration of his gaze as he plodded about in three pairs of socks and half-laced boots seeking extra twigs to make that fire burn. He looked like a true dwarf or old man of the woods from a page of a fairy-book, but not really visible to human eyes.

We took off our clothes in the sun, and naked Lindsay took his shirt to wash in the stream. Naked, I made a fire by the water-edge, and put on the coffee-pot to boil. The water of the river was ice-cold, and surreptitiously dipping a limb in it, one registered the fact. Many brown comma butterflies danced in the sunshine, and settling on our arms and legs, tickled us, throwing their honey-tubes deep into our pores and getting their luncheon before we got ours. Evidently we were a couple of sweet boys.

Graham captures the magic of the back-country:

And we slept in a thicket and were made music to by the nymphs of the seven waterfalls of Shadow Mountain.

...in forests of firs, which lay against the steep mountain sides like feathers against a bird’s wing.

[On a mountaintop at night:] I lay and I lay, and Vachel sat unmoving, and we heard, as it were, the pulse of the world. We did not see humanity’s prayers going up to God. We only saw the stars and the night.

Occasionally they are idiotic:

When three bears came trundling down after our supper was over, I approached one with some bread, which he very gently took from my fingers, and I scratched his nose and put myself on speaking terms. …
You’d have had a different experience had they been grizzlies, we were told later.

They make a fetish of coffee, and it is not of the Starbucks variety:

We had our coffee, “Lindsay’s stone coffee,” as we named it, better than any other coffee in the United States. The first point is that you take a stone which has never seen either sunset or sunrise, a stone lying at the feet of trees not less than 100 feet high. It must have lain there not less than 4000 years and listened to the music of a waterfall. That is the important point. Any decent coffee beans ground in any kind of clean grinder will do. A pot that has seen more than one continent is preferred.
You then cut a square piece of white mosquito net sufficient to hold the coffee and the stone. Tie up carefully like a plum-pudding, but leave seven or eight inches of string attached to it so that you can pull the coffee sack up and down in the pot at will. It is prepared, moreover, in silence and without fear of flame and smoke. The pot stands on a funeral pyre, and is allowed to lift its lid several times before a hand swathed up in a towel darts in to rescue it.
We pour it out into our tin cups. It is black, it is good, it has a kick like a mule; it searches the vitals and chases out the damps; it comforts the spine and gives tone to the heart. And the poet, silent hitherto, sits holding his large cup before him. Then he takes a sip and looks at me.
“Thadd touches the spadd,” [That touches the spot] says he at last in a deep gastronomical gestatory voice…

Coffee should be made with love;
That’s the first ingredient.
It’s all very well about the stone,
Say I, but it needs a heart as well.
The coffee knows if you really care,
And will do its best if you lend it encouragement.
You can flatter the coffee whilst it is in the pot,
And it will rise to your persuasion.
But the commonest cause of coffee being just indifferent
Is your indifference towards the coffee.

It's a fun trek.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Brian and I visited my parents in London in February, we spent part of an afternoon browsing through used bookstores on Charing Cross Road. My dad came across a worn copy of this book, and thought it would be fun for me to read when we visited John in Montana this summer.

Written in 1922, it describes Glacier in its early years as a national park, and all the specific mentions of the mountains and lakes I love were what made it so enjoyable. The actual narrative, however, was extremely frustrating because the author and his friend were complete idiots--I'm talking feeding animals, running out of supplies, blindly foraging for berries, camping on mountain summits with only a blanket, and sleeping next to a pot of cooked eggs and bacon...then being surprised that bears came nosing around during the night! Unbelievable. Still, while it certainly wasn't a guide for how to safely conduct a backpacking trip, it was a fascinating glimpse into an earlier time and another fun excuse to reflect on that gorgeous corner of the country.