Tramping With a Poet in the RockiesLindsay, Vachel
General
Tramping With a Poet in the Rockies
Lindsay, Vachel
Lindsay, Vachel, 1879-1931; Rocky Mountains -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
But how describe the charm of the little boy and girl, children of
twelve and thirteen, accoutred also for the horse and sitting on their
steeds with the grace of Indians. The old and middle-aged are stiff and
only the children look as if they could never get tired. In any case,
all is good humour and jollity. Mme. Censure is not here. There are
people with crumpled faces and there are people made of dimples and
curves--but happiness holds all.
* * * * *
WE did not see very much of the tourist life. There is not much of it
up here. There ought probably to be more. While Yosemite, Grand Canyon
and Yellowstone are visited by hundreds of thousands of Americans,
Glacier is left unused. We do not want its canyons also to be filled
up to the top with cans, but no one would grudge a few more people in
a wilderness where you can travel weeks without meeting a soul--a few
more sharers in the loveliness of the Northern Rockies.
A number of camps have been made with log-cabins and canvas tents, and
there are two large hotels on the fringe of the wilderness. But an
especial charm lies in the fact that the people in charge of the camps
and the little inns called “chalets” are mostly university students
and college girls of the institutions of Minnesota and Montana, and
they do the needful work on the self-help principle of earning a little
money in their holidays to pay their way during term. There is nothing
of the low commercial spirit, no one hanging around for a tip, no one
with any interest to treat you shabbily, but instead the natural good
manners of unspoiled people. You see the choleric “colonel” trying to
get more than his share of attention and service, but he doesn’t effect
anything, and you may see the millionaire cheerfully and shrewdly
recognising the fact that he must take his turn after his stenographer
and perhaps after a couple of ragged old tramps like ourselves.
* * * * *
VACHEL is devoted to the universities and high schools of America
and the life they represent. He has almost completely changed his
constituency from the “ladies’ club” and the heavy society of Mr. and
Mrs. Leo Hunter and is now a poetic voice of young germinal America.
He has “covered the map” of the United States singing his songs to
college youths. And in return college youth recognises him quickly. He
is a natural favourite among those who run the “chalets.” And they all
wanted him to “sing” to them.
Not that the visitors do not also make friends with us and we with
them. Such coats of sunshine as we have make ordinary sunburn pale and
give us much glamour. Souvenir huntresses grab us from a “big ballyhoo”
Western town. Likewise, a girl from Chicago, pronounced in three facial
contortions. And when we set off to vagabondise for some days we were
followed by a beautiful creature who wished for a minute to come with
us to the world’s end.
[Illustration]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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