Travel
1 Many people have asked me what, all
2 things considered, is the most valuable quality
3 a wilderness traveler can possess. I have
4 always replied unhesitatingly; for, no matter
5 how useful or desirable attributes such as
6 patience, courage, strength, endurance, good
7 nature, and ingenuity may prove to be,
8 undoubtedly a person with them, but without a
9 sense of direction, is practically helpless in the
10 wilds. Therefore, I should name a sense of
11 direction as the prime requisite for those who
12 would become true foresters, those who would
13 depend on themselves rather than on guides.
14 The faculty is largely developed, of course, by
15 practice, but it must be inborn. Some people
16 possess it; others do not—just as some people
17 are naturally musical while others have no ear
18 for music at all. It is a sort of extra, having
19 nothing to do with criteria of intelligence or
20 mental development: like the repeater
21 movement in a watch. A highly educated or
22 cultured person may lack it, while the roughest
23 may possess it. Some who have never been in
24 the woods or mountains acquire a fair facility
25 at picking a way in the space of a vacation, but I
26 have met a few who have spent their lives on
27 the prospect trail, and who are still, and always
28 will be, as helpless as the newest city dweller. It
29 is a gift, a talent. If you have its germ, you can
30 become a traveler of the wide and lonely
31 places. If not, you may as well resign yourself to
32 guides.
