Alexander Theroux
"True and sincere traveling is no pastime, but it is as serious as the grave. . . . I do not speak of those that travel sitting, the sedentary travelers whose legs hang dangling the while, mere idle symbols of the fact, any more than when we speak of sitting hens we mean those that sit standing, but I mean those to whom traveling is life for the legs, and death too, at last. The traveler must be born again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements, the principal powers that be for him."
- A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Henry who was a jack-of-all-trades was a real wonder walking.
He had a tin cup strapped to his belt, with a saucepan on his back
and on his ramblings carried a dipper, a big spoon, a fish-line,
some Indian meal, salt, and sugar. He would buy bread en route
for four pence a loaf. Traveling for him was never riding trains
like some flannel-mouthed loafer with two limousine feet up,
fobbing off with pretense he is Fremont or Bridger facing trials.
He beat through the thorny woods with unbent trousers of duck
or kerseymere or corduroy, wore a furry hat, serviceable shoes,
a thick pepper-and-salt waistcoat. He repaired through forests!
A stranger seeing him fix one, thought him an umbrella-mender.
(Henry might carry a brolly abroad, even when the sun shone.)
Perambulating taught him ingenuity. He was known in Concord
for his handy manner, repairing clocks, surveying, horseshoeing,
haying, but it was his oaken legs he worked as hard as his mind
on the road in the elements, in the rain, through snow, windblown,
just the sort of the weather some dilettante amateur Holofernes
wordy, peering through train windows is glad that he is out of!