Word: tramper
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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ANYONE who has ever climbed with a pack on his back knows the drag on the shoulders, the seemingly endless upward effort necessary to progress. At such times, the tramper searches his memory for some poem to symbolize that steady, grinding advance, a perspiring conquest analogous in a small way to the sustained march of the pioneers across this country. No such uphill epic has, so far as I know, ever been written...
...surprising. Contrast a round of golf in foot-pounds of work, or a set of tennis in the lung power required with climbing a mountain under a forty-pound pack; compare chopping one big cross-log with the strokes of nine holes: and you will see why a seasoned tramper and axeman will "kill" a college athlete at this game...
What is the nature of the work? What is a trail; anyway? A trail is cleared "when it has been made so passable by removal of growth of all sorts that a tramper with pack and horizontal blanket-roll, proceeding steadily, upright will encounter no obstructions, and will be able to see the footway a few steps ahead." The work consists of subtracting from the natural growth of the forest along the route of the trail whatever is necessary to reduce it to the above qualifications...