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Association celebrates tramping tradition

Subculture with roots in Wild West survived decades of persecution

By Markéta Hulpachová
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 12th, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST

Members of the Czech Camping Association, founded in 1968, gathered Sept. 8 in Lipnice nad Sázavou to "honor the values of camping" and "respect nature."

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST

Each September, the Czech Camping Association (ČTU) gathers amid the brambles of remote forests to celebrate yet another year of successfully instilling its values into the consciousness of younger generations.

Founded in 1968, the organization is an offshoot of the tramping movement, a deep-seated national subculture of “romantics” who identify with the wilderness, honor humanitarian ideals, and, above all, share an affinity for the American Wild West.

“The ČTU has its spores in the late 1960s, when the relaxed social climate made it possible for youngsters to wander about aimlessly,” says ČTU Director Petr Křivohlávek. “The organization sought to give these young people direction by teaching teambuilding skills and lessons in wilderness survival.”

Like all tramping communities, the ČTU has its own set of established rituals.

On the chilly night of Sept. 8, a camouflage-clad cluster of ČTU representatives from all corners of the country circles a blazing, meter-high campfire in the shroud of an evergreen forest near Lipnice nad Sázavou, a rock-mining hamlet in the Czech-Moravian Highlands.

While U.S.-style military gear from army shops is the clothing of choice for most participants, the array of headgear spans continents and centuries: from Turkish fezzes to Boy Scout campaign hats, German field commanders’ caps and imitation Stetsons.

With about 50 ČTU members staring into the flames, Křivohlávek, “the Chief,” accompanies the ceremony with a brief oration reminding those present to “honor the values of camping” and “respect nature.”

He concludes the ritual with a moment of silence to commemorate “departed campers.”

The rest of the evening is less solemn: The silence is soon broken by the first strums of an acoustic guitar, kicking off a beer-fueled evening of tramping songs and campfire games.

“The atmosphere is a bit more lax than if the children were here,” Křivohlávek explains. “Dozens of ČTU members come here every year to celebrate the end of the camping season.”

But ČTU members aren’t mere summer-camp councilors, says member Iveta Skalská, nicknamed “Gypsy,” who has worked for the organization for more than 10 years.

“We’re in charge of a troop of kids that meets regularly, plays games and goes on excursions,” she says. “It’s a year-round responsibility.”

Skalská joined the ČTU in the 1970s, after years of participating in a children’s troop. To become an adult ČTU member, she completed a two-week training course taught by seasoned members, who coached the then 17-year-old in pedagogical principles, teambuilding strategies and basic survival skills.

“We ate everything from worms to ant larvae to rats,” Skalská says. “I could have a complete meal just by walking through a grassy field.”

While supported by the Education Ministry, most ČTU work is voluntary. “The compensation is just enough to cover expenses,” Skalská says. “We invest all of our free time into this, not to make money, but because we love it.”

Under the wide-brimmed hat

The roots of the tramping tradition are nearly a century old, says ČTU Superintendent Milan Lebeda.

The movement originated around 1918 in the First Republic, when the liberal culture was first introduced to early Western films. Mesmerized by the rugged prairie scenes and the heroic adventures depicted in the movies and pulp novels, Czech youth sought out the works of romanticist authors such as James Fenimore Cooper and Karl May.

The term “tramping” itself is derived from Jack London’s 1907 novel The Road, a story of a trans-American journey that became known as the tramping bible, says Lebeda.

While the traditional use of the term somewhat negatively alludes to the American hobo, Czech tramping focuses on traveling through the wilderness, or “wandering.”

With its spirit rooted in the romanticized concept of the Wild West, tramping was further fueled by the ideals of two U.S. Christian institutions: the Young Men’s Christian Association and the Boy Scouts, an organization whose clear morals and reverence for nature unwittingly gave birth to the first tramps.

“Scout troops were intended for young people between the ages of 11 to 17 [and] always unisex,” Lebeda says. “When scouts came of age, they wanted to continue going out into the wilderness … but without certain constrictions, and so they became tramps.”

The first tramps sought riverside retreats in the valleys near Prague, often sleeping in the open air, or, in early tramping terms, “under the wide-brimmed hat.”

As the movement flourished, so did tramping families, and the solitary tramp to shed his thicket and tarpaulin shelter in favor of small wooden cabins, which led to the establishment of permanent camps.

The first such settlement, known as Roaring Camp, or Lost Hope, was founded near the Vltava, or Grande River in Prokopské údolí, a valley that today frames Prague’s Barrandov, Radlice and Hlubočepy districts, Lebeda says.

Undercover Alaskan trappers

After experiencing a boom in the 1930s, when it briefly entered mainstream culture, the tramping movement shattered in 1939, when the beginning of the German occupation put an end to most weekend outings in the wilderness.

After World War II, tramps were persecuted during the communist regime, when the government viewed their freedom-loving nature and pro-Western sentiments as subversive, Lebeda says.

Nevertheless, underground tramping flourished under communism, morphing into a countercultural form of passive resistance against Bolshevik ideology.

“When the ČTU was banned as part of the normalization movement in 1971, the organization went undercover,” Lebeda says.

“In the official version of our games, we role-played as Yakutian hunters tracking caribou in the Siberian taiga,” he says. “But really we were playing Alaskan trappers hunting for grizzly bears.”

Aside from a few isolated, family-oriented settlements, tramping in its original form exists only in songs, nostalgic conversations in local pubs, and among Last Mohicans like members of the ČTU.

“People just don’t have the free time and the drive that they used to have,” Skalská says.

Despite their dedication, even ČTU members admit that the golden age of tramping is long gone, but, as Skalská points out, certain fundamentals still survive.

“It’s always the same,” she says. “We spend all weekend sleeping in the dirt and cozying up in the soot of the campfire, then go home, get somewhat civilized, and go to work as if nothing happened.”

Markéta Hulpachová can be reached at mhulpachova@praguepost.com

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