First things first: a tromp is not just a walk. I think that since I started using the term, I've known that I meant something different from it than just going on a walk. It wasn’t until my last tromp that I started to try to work out precisely what distinguishes tromping from casual perambulation.
My first tromp (or at least the first so designated) was in Michigan with my friend Amanda. We set off through the late spring woods crunching ice-rimmed puddles, nearly losing boots in mud, and climbing deer stands. We even found a perfectly good abandoned fork! The other tromps with Amanda almost always involved snow (no school...nothing else to do but tromp!). We’d head up along the train tracks, or down into the Ravine. Things that thread these memories together: places you don’t normally go, unscheduled time you don’t normally have, good company. But then, I figured, tromps are also wonderful with no company at all. Or the company of children (any child, anywhere knows how to tromp). All of these things fit within my notion of tromping, but I still couldn’t isolate a defining feature.
Keep in mind, I was mulling all this over as I tromped happily out to the little airport that lies five or ten minutes’ walk from my house, camera in hand. As I mused, I bent down to look in the grass at a little (tiny!) flash of red. And then I hollered inside my head, “LOOK AT THAT TINY RED LEAF!”
It was smaller than half of my pinky fingernail. I get excited about things like this. I don’t know why. So I took a picture of this tiny red leaf, and it dawned on me that discovery is one of the most beautiful things in the world. Discovery is the heart of tromping. A tromp is a walk with the purpose of discovering things. This is why children essentially tromp everywhere they go. This is also why I pretty much believe photographers are people who tromp for a living.
Without further ado, here are the rest of my discoveries from my solitary tromp.
“Here is a small, bright green tuft of grass. We’ve marked it for you with an arrow.”
“Emily, why do you take pictures of grass and dirt?”
Three words: Fresh Spring Grass! (Bambi, anybody?)
Mandatory self-documentation.
Yellow Jasmine (SC state flower) growing wild.
And the discovery that never gets old.
