IT had been as glorious a week-end hike as ever a tramper could desire. New ground had been covered, with all that that means in the way of mild discovery. For weather there were ideal autumn days of the golden sort, with rain considerately with­held until shelter for the night was at hand. Hostels of genuine homespun hospitality, re­freshingly free from lackeyed fashionability, had greeted us nightly. After half a hun­dred miles afoot across the highlands of southern Vermont under such conditions, and at the height of autumn's glories, what manner of man could fail to return elated?

It is not often at this, the best of all walk­ing seasons, that holidays so fall as to lengthen a week-end into a young vacation. When that happens, the impulse to roam, born of sprightly autumn weather, is too strong to be resisted, especially if you have a passion for seeing new scenes in our own little New England. According to the map this is a very tiny corner of the earth that we live in, but to those who make a practice of searching out its attractive spots it soon becomes evident that one life will not be suf­ficient to exhaust the possibilities.

After sampling the walking routes of northern Vermont on a brief summer holi­day, our thoughts turned naturally to the nearer southern trails of the same State when the autumn opportunity loomed up on the calendar. From the Bennington Sec­tion of the Green Mountain Club had come a seductive little pamphlet and an accom­panying topographic map, descriptive of the trails through the near-by hills. With the aid of this suggestive material we chose a block of country that scaled up approxi­mately one hundred and fifty square miles in extent as our field of operations. The course of the trail lay through the very heart of the Green Mountain range, at elevations of from fifteen hundred to nearly four thousand feet above sea, up ravines, across ridges, through high valleys, over mountains.

We found it on the ground, as it appeared upon the map, a region full of rugged beauty that was intensified by the superbly rich coloring of the old hardwood forests. It would be a charming walking region at any season, but we found it in what must be the time of its supreme attractiveness  — flyless, free from enervating humidity, and painted to suit the most exacting colorist. If envy were a virtue one would cherish it toward the fortunate Bennington folk who have this playground lying at their door. Happily the field is not so far removed in point of railroad hours as to be beyond the reach of others, and envy turns to gratitude that the Green Mountain boys have shown so keen an appreciation of their native hills as to develop the tramping possibilities so adequately.

Here, then, is one opportunity at least for that friend who asked for hints as to weekend walking routes. He had tired of the oft-repeated country jaunts that lay within the scope of metropolitan trolley lines, and longed for fresh woods and pastures, even if he had to run after them a little. There are doubt­less others like him that even a hundred miles of rail will not discourage, especially if they can be covered comfortably while they sleep. To one who objects to being routed from his bed in the early hour of dawn, to seize a frugal breakfast at an all-night lunch counter in order to catch the millhands' trolley, this plan will scarcely appeal. However, tramping trips are not for the sybaritic. It is merely a part of the game, and the experience is not bad fun  —  once in a while.

The first stage of the journey was by sleeper train from Boston to North Adams. In that flourishing town people rise betimes to begin their work, and even on a holiday morning we found them stirring. Breakfast and the starting-point of the 5.45 trolley to Bennington were closely associated on the main street. An hour later we had crossed the line into Vermont, and had engaged an auto.. mobile that already stood conspicuously for hire where the car dropped us in front of the hotel in Bennington.

Presumably any one sufficiently interested to make this trip, made possible through the activities of the Green Mountain Club, would be inclined to join that organization in ad­vance, especially as that membership carries with it the use of a tidy and well-equipped camp that is an essential element to his crea­ture comfort in the remotest corner of the woods. With the key to that retreat secured from its custodian we whirled out five miles into the edge of the hills, and the real day began at the timely hour of eight, where the Club's Long Trail leaves the head of wheel navigation in the depths of Hell Hollow.

Here at slightly more than fifteen hundred feet above the sea the map showed us a choice of two routes, and the signboards on the ground bore out the map. One follows the main stream to its source and crosses a low divide, but our choice was for the other that leads up a side ravine, which, though slightly longer, gives more variety, and passes a viewpoint or two along the higher ridges. The Club's little pamphlet stated that the trail up the ravine is rough, hence we wondered if we had blundered off the right track when we found ourselves plodding steadily up on a good wood-road along the north bank. But doubts are not allowed to last for long on the Club's trails, for the little sheet-iron signs, red-painted hereabouts, with "G.M.C." lettered in white, or frequently just plain red discs nailed to the trees, inva­riably shine out ahead before any nervousness can begin to assert itself. It is like following a string of coral beads that leads on mile after mile along an invisible thread.

Two miles up the ravine, and one more across a spruce-grown saddle, and the trail emerges upon an old farm clearing at the top of Hagar Hill, a rise of twelve hundred feet in three pleasant miles. To the south the vista opens toward the rolling hills along the Massachusetts line, but it is in the east and north that the chief interest lies, for that way are seen the landmarks of the first two days of the excursion. Along the eastern side of a wide valley stretches the long ridge of Hay­stack Mountain, its culminating southern summit being almost as high as Chocorua of New Hampshire's Sandwich Range.

North, beyond a little dip, rises an unnamed wooded height over which our trail is about to lead, and just to the right stands Stratton Mountain, our main objective.

Back in the early eighteen hundreds this ridge, like many another upland clearing, supported its farming family. Highroads ran along the lower crests, as here on Hagar Hill, or followed the high valleys between the ma­jor ranges. Some are passable for wheels to­day, but others, like this, are safe only for pedestrians.

Another hour of leisurely walking suffices to cross the dip where Little Pond lies dimp­ling among the hills, and up to the summit beyond, while another thirty minutes of winding down a steep ravine, with glimpses of mysterious blue mountains showing dimly through the trees ahead, lands one at a de­serted lumber camp in the shadow of Glas­tonbury Mountain's bulk.

A circle of blackened stones and charcoal intimated that previous voyagers had here called it half a day, and our own tea-pail was soon merrily simmering. To follow an old lumber road, much of it corduroyed, through five miles of twistings and turnings, is not exciting, but it was a pleasant after­noon's ramble. Like all long roads, this has its inevitable final turning where it emerges upon the highroad at the Somerset Bridge over the Deerfield River. Our lodging for the night lay behind a neighboring ridge on the main East Branch, one mile uphill and two more down the farther side, all of it on the road. Here again there had been farms in days gone by, and not so long past either, for the houses still stood, though tottering, only two or three being occupied. From the hill above the East Branch the final landmark of the day appeared, the long dam of the New England Power Company, spanning the valley ahead, storing the energy that turns the machinery, drives the trolleys, and il­lumines the nights for people in four States. Here, too, was to be found the energizing sleep and food that would carry our self-propelled machinery over the hills another day, for in the cheery dam-keeper and his genial wife was hospitality personified.

Several things were possible for that second day's programme, but approaching rain nar­rowed our plans to a single course. It is a three hours' march due north through the woods to the abandoned sawmill village at the head of the valley in which lies the Som­erset reservoir. The ancient highway that served the one-time little community of farms that lay along these slopes ran straight, but the rising waters behind the dam have sub­merged a mile of that, and the trail's forced detours add a brace of miles to the distance. It is a pleasantly varied up-and-down route across old weed-grown hillside farm clearings that yield views of the near-by mountains, and through long lengths of forest aisles. From the upper end of the reservoir, with its gaunt dead marginal trees, every lower limb and twig of which fluttered with ghostly rags of bleached slime that the receding high spring water had left adhering, there is a cut-off trail toward Stratton Mountain via Grout's Pond. For one bound to the Club camp in the old mill village that trail would add perhaps a mile of distance, though that, indeed, might be sufficiently compensated for by its greater attractiveness.

Six miles to the camp by the shortest route brought us shelter just as the vigorous southeast rain set in. With fair weather, and relieved of packs left to hold the camp, it would be a reasonable afternoon's walk thence to the top of Stratton Mountain and return. Although the distance is long, ten miles for the round trip, nearly a third of it is on a good mountain road, and the bal­ance by an excellent trail that lifts one up the sixteen hundred feet of elevation on horse grades. Happy beneath a tight roof, the after­noon for us was one of busy housekeeping. Provender the Club camp does not afford, but forwarned of this our packs had brought the makings of three square meals from home. Likely enough some one may wonder what constitutes a liberal larder for one who does not enjoy a weighty pack. Like his boots, the tramper's grub-stakes need not be fancy, but must be husky. Be it known, then, that with a basis of bacon, rice, and hard bread, powdered pea soup, raisins, prunes, sweet chocolate, and tea, many appetizing as well as nourishing changes can be rung.

Early on a frosty morning that was bril­liant with a sharp west wind, we strolled up Stratton Mountain (would that it could re­cover its Indian name of Manicknung) in a couple of hours. The dense timber on the summit precludes all outlooks, but the sixty-foot steel tower of the State Forest Service effectually remedies that defect. It was tan­talizingly provoking to realize that from that little platform up above a pair of eyes could see long ranges in the sparkling air of that morning. But we straightway found that the view was not for us, for the ice-coated steel shivered in the heavy gusts of the wind. It was enough to climb the slip­pery ladder rungs until the eyes were barely level with the surrounding forest crown, and to catch glimpses, through the swaying tops, of Greylock to the south, and of Equinox nearer at hand to the northwest. But a little higher and the Green Mountain Range to the north, the Adirondacks to the west, and the White Mountains to the east, would have been in view. All that had to be left for some future visit under less boister­ous conditions.

From Stratton Mountain summit the main trail leads northwest through the forest toward Manchester at the foot of Equinox Mountain, a matter of eight or ten miles afoot. For us the plan was to double back to camp, with an added five miles saunter westward along the country road leading over a five-hundred-foot divide, to the an­cient tavern at Kelly Stand for the night.

Everywhere along the road are further evidences, in the shape of farm clearings, of an early attempt to bring civilization into the hills. To-day, save for an occasional sport­ing camp, such as that which gave us shel­ter, and the inn at Kelly Stand, there is not an occupied habitation of any kind over a distance of fully fifteen miles. Yet a recently erected tablet by the roadside not far from camp, declared that in July, 1840, Daniel Webster there addressed "about 15,000 people" at a two days' Whig convention. Even in that day the lumberman had begun to invade the region, for the first mill was erected here on the headwaters of the Deer­field, two years before Webster's visit. Meantime not only has the farmer gone, but the big modern steam mills, with their attendant villages of hands' houses, have had their heyday, and are now, for the most part, falling into squalid ruin. For nearly a score of years the forests have been free from the shriek of saw and whistle. The slashings have rotted away to nourish the rejected forest veterans in a sturdy old age, and a new generation of successors; The bear and the deer are in residence once more, and the only man-employing industry is found in the annual autumn fern-pickers' camps, where the graceful and fragrant fronds are gathered by the million for the florists' markets of the cities.

After a night at Kelly Stand a moder­ately early start will see the tramper home next day in time for a late evening din­ner. Six miles down the narrow winding canyon of the Roaring Branch furnishes a happy climax, which is not bedimmed by the final two miles across the Arlington val­ley to the railroad, and to the motor-bus line that plies south from Dorset to Ben­nington, an hour's run. There the hourly trolley service connects with the east-bound expresses at North Adams, and the day and the trip are done.

Our path had followed the main Long Trail as far as Stratton Mountain summit, but the possibilities of the region are in no wise confined to that link in the Club's through­-to-Canada route. This is made clear by the Green Mountain Club's map of this section, which shows many an accessory trail, and other avenues of approach than that through Bennington. A branch of the Fitchburg Railroad will land one at Wilmington at the southern end of the Haystack Range, while from Wardsboro, on the Central Ver­mont, a stage runs to the western village of that town, which has a trail all its own to the top of Stratton. When the Club's pro­posed extension across the summits of the Glastonbury group has been completed, yet another, and perhaps a more interesting, line will be open. Especially would this be true if a link is furnished from the main sum­mit that will connect with an existing trail due north into Kelly Stand. There are also trails to the east and south of Bennington, as well as north. In short, we had seen but a small sample of that attractive play­ground.

THREE DAYS IN THE SOUTHERN GREEN MOUNTAINS

* The mileage and elapsed time are cumulative for each day, dis­tance and time being figured from point last named in previous line. The times here given are sufficient for leisurely walking.

MAP: Topographic trail map published by Bennington Section, Green Mountain Club, Bennington, Vt.