For centuries, humans have always been on the move.
They have been walking, hiking, tramping, rambling, marching, and scrambling, even running at times. Other times they simply stroll, wander and slowly saunter along.
Their reasons for moving from one place to another are varied, as the days are long. Some were simply traders taking goods for sale to another town; soldiers marching to confront and conquer their enemies, and just plain ordinary folk wandering in search of work and a new life. Still others were in search of something; maybe a religious or spiritual journey, or wanting an better appreciation of the world that surrounds or a deeper understanding of themselves, or answers to questions.
Male Australian Aborigines used to undergo a journey during adolescence, a rite of passage, whereby they would venture into the bush for a period of up to six months; following in the footsteps of their ancestors took before them. They retrace paths or “songlines” as they are called, imitating the heroic deeds of those before them.
On the other side of the globe in Europe, Celtic tribes and later Christians made long arduous dangerous journeys to places of religious importance; Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Rome in Italy, and Jerusalem in Israel. These travelers were pilgrims; from the Latin word “peregrinusm” meaning stranger or foreigner and their journey that took called pilgrimages - journeys into the strange and the unknown.
Later the English coined a word called “wanderlust”; meaning “a crave for travel", derived from the German words for “wandern” (to hike) and “lust” (desire). Today, some of us call this “itchy feet,” an irresistible impulse to travel.
The routes they took were called by different names; paths or ways in England, camino or ruta in Spain, via or cammino in Italy; chemin in France and wanderweg in Germany and Austria. Back in Australia, those young Aborigine males followed tracks, a term still used today in Australia and New Zealand for modern day trampers. In North America, the routes are called trails, probably named after the legions of horses and wagons that crisscrossed the continent in the previous century, and now sometimes used by modern day hikers.
In the days ahead, we will discover several of those fascinating routes and learn about a few of the inspirational journeys taken by others.



