The powerful impressions received at timber-line lead many visitors to return for a better acquaintance, and from each visit the visitor goes away more deeply impressed; for timber-line is not only novel and strange, it is touched with pathos and poetry and has a life-story that is heroic. Its scenes are among the most primeval, interesting, and thought-compelling to be found upon the globe.
The powerful impressions received at timber-line lead many visitors to return for a better acquaintance, and from each visit the visitor goes away more deeply impressed; for timber-line is not only novel and strange, it is touched with pathos and poetry and has a life-story that is heroic. Its scenes are among the most primeval, interesting, and thought-compelling to be found upon the globe.
The treeless moorlands and the crags that fill the sky above the limits of tree-growth form an extensive mountain-top world all by itself, a realm of plateaus and sky prairies, which only a few have explored. These regions stand out like islands in the sky; they are singular treeless expanses above the surrounding forest sea.
ABOVE THE TIMBER-LINE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARKABOVE THE TIMBER-LINE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARKLong's Peak on extreme left
This realm is not barren and lifeless. For a number of species it is home. The ptarmigan and the rose finch, the cony and the bighorn, live in the heights the year round. Many migrating birds and animals use the region for a nursery and a summer resort. Here, early in the autumn, Nature produces her last berries. Here assemble birds from the lowlands, and flocks from the North stop to feed and frolic while migrating to the Southland.
Here, too, along with peaks and moorlands, meadows and wild-flower gardens, are crags, plateaus, cañons, lakes, glaciers, and snow-fields. Countless small, clear streams originate in these island heights and from them start merrily down to the far-off seas. Singly and in clusters, with areas large and areas small, these sky islands are a feature of most of the National Parks.
In the Rocky Mountain National Park a few flowers bloom on the highest peaks more than fourteen thousand feet above sea-level. They are visited by numerous winged insects, even by butterflies. Let a cloud come over the sun, or a breeze start, and the butterflies, and perhaps other winged insects above timber-line, fold wings and drop and remain motionless till the sky clears. Evidently this is "safety first" from the short-lived but violent gales.
It is believed that the Arctic-alpine plants in these heights were brought to them from the Arctic region on the great ice flow. They bloom in both these zones at about the same date. Among the bright blossoms in the polar mountain-top gardens are the columbine, gentian, aster, daisy, shooting-star, bluebell, a few kinds of phlox, and that dearest of the heath blossoms, the cassiope. Numbers are dwarfed to unbelievable smallness. Think of bluebells perfectly formed and colored and yet so fascinatingly small and dainty that ahalf-dozen could be sheltered in the upper half of a thimble!
The alpine wild-flower garden on Mount Rainier is one of the most striking on the globe. Just above the timber-line and below and among the glaciers, colored flowers grow in tall and crowded luxuriance. They color broken distances for miles. It is doubtful if the world can show another hanging garden in which wild flowers so splendidly mingle their lovely hues with the broken picturesque forests, wild crags, and the grandeur of glaciers.
In the Rocky Mountain National Park there is an accessible empire in the mountainous sky, up more than two miles above the wide plains of the sea. Mountain-climbers pass through these scenes on their way up peaks into the sky without stopping to see the wonders. They have at best only an introduction, or a hurried traveler's impression, of a strange and varied exhibit.
A few centuries ago it was a common belief that high mountains were peopledwith monsters and demons. Those demons are gone from the popular imagination; but there still exists a most unfortunate superstition, commonly believed, that altitude is harmful! Yet it has a thousand benefits for the visitor.
In the heights dwell a bigness, a strangeness, a friendliness not felt in the earth's lower scenes. Altitude is ever refreshing. The dust-filled, noise-crowded air is far below. From these scenic mountain heights one commands a new world of mountainous cloud-scenery in the sky. Grand, deep, blue gorges lie open in the cloud plateaus and mountains. To the enraptured eye the shifting clouds sometimes become continents and islands, real lands where people live, landscapes upon whose sunny hills and forested mountains shadows of other clouds fall, and across whose expanding plains many winding rivers run. Often the largeness of view enables one to see vast cloud-pieces moved into place, shifted elsewhere, and others arranged. Often a number of these movements are seen at once. Here, too, the sunrise comes grandly before one, and from these mountain-rims the painted sky of evening is most intense and vivid. Cloud and color often mingle in paintings of undreamed vastness and glory.
Up here one appreciates the solemnity and the splendor of the moonlight. The lonely silver moon appears a wandering planet, almost within hailing distance. You call, and a hundred cliffs call with you. You listen, but there is only the murmur of a far-off waterfall, or the receding, echoing crash of some falling cliff. Everything is in half-tone. The chasm is concealed; peaks along the sky-line are suggested; the valleys lie in subdued and mellow light; strangely, from the silken shadow folds, the pinnacles peer at the moon. Through the clean, clear air, the infinite sky becomes a near, inverted field, crowded thick with stars.
This is a region worthy of multitudes of visitors, yet it has only a few. Most peopledo not dream of its existence. Some time throngs will come to these strange island shores in the sky as freely as now they crowd to the beach and the breakers of the sea.
With his glaciers the Ice King ground most of the soil in which now stand the forests, the grasses, and the flowers. In producing this soil he sculptured from the solid rock of the earth much of the scenery, shaped many of the flowing landscapes, and formed the excavations in which ten thousand lakes now rest in beauty. Long ice periods have had their sway, then vanished. Most of the earth appears to have been ice-covered a number of times. Then, after ages, the ice has returned. These periods appear to have alternated with others whose climatic conditions were similar to those now holding sway. The remaining glaciers, the world over, are growing smaller and smaller.
A glacier is a slow-moving mass of ice. It may be as small as an average steamship; it may be less than a mile wide and several miles long; or it may cover hundreds of square miles. It may be less than a hundred feet, or a thousand feet or more, in thickness. It may move only an inch or two a day, or it may move several feet. Commonly it moves downward, but occasionally one moves upward. The movement is due to gravity and to the plasticity or rubbery nature of the ice when under sufficient pressure or weight. In a large glacier the weight of the superimposed icy stratum is immense; it is greater than the bottom layers can support. Under the enormous pressure the bottom layers crawl or flow from beneath like pressed dough. This forced mass moves outward in the direction of the least resistance—commonly down the slope.
Glacier ice is formed by snow accumulating at a given point more rapidly than it melts. This is due chiefly to wind, snowslides, and heavy snowfall. The glacier, heavy and powerful, planes, polishes, and reshapes the surface over which it travels, or the walls with which it comes in contact. Most of the lake-basins were gouged out by glaciers. Mountain-ranges have been worn down to hills or plains; cañons and depressions have been filled, and extensive areas overlaid with ground-up rocky material. The gentle snowflake has been the earth's chief maker of scenery and soil. Snowflakes, workingen masseand through long periods of time, have formed glaciers and as such have wrought wonders.
A moraine is an embankment or delta of boulders and crushed rock deposited by a glacier or ice river. Though commonly at the end, it may be both along the side and at the end of a glacier, or of the channels which the glacier once filled. All the mountainous National Parks have important glacial records or ruins that almost entirely cover them. These are moraines, soil-deposits, glaciated cañons, and lake-basins.
Vast is the quantity of material picked up and transported by glaciers. Mountains are moved piecemeal, and are ground to boulders, pebbles, and rock-flour in the moving. Besides the material the glacier gathers up and excavates, it carries the wreckage thrown down upon it by landslides, and also the eroded matter poured upon it by streams from the heights. Most of the material that falls upon the top of the upper end of the glacier gradually works its way to the bottom. At last, with the other gathered material, it is pressed against the bottom and sides and used as a cutting, rasping, or grinding tool till worn to pebbles or powder.
A part of the rocky material gathered is carried to the end of the glacier, where the melting of the ice unloads and releases it. This accumulation at the end is called the terminal moraine, and corresponds to the delta of a river. For years the bulk of the ice may melt away at about the same place; thus at this point accumulates an enormous amount of débris. An advance of the ice may plow through this and repile it, or the retreat of the ice, or a changed direction of its flow, may pile débris elsewhere. Many of these terminal moraines are an array of broken embankments with small basin-like holes and smooth, level spaces.
Many of the lakes have been filled with sediment, and in them and on them forests now flourish. The glacier lakes were slowly created. Most of them are being slowly filled. Those most favorably situated may still live on for thousands of years, but an avalanche may extinguish one in a single day. Eventually all must be filled and lost. They come into existence as a part of the work of the glacier. For a period they lie beautiful in the sunlight; then they are gone forever.
The extensive glacial records that show the past triumphs of the Ice King sometimes make the mind restless, and it wants to know: "Will the Ice King come again? Will mountains of white and silent snow again pile upon a lifeless world?"
Those who go up into the clouds and sky on high mountains will find a variety of lofty and magnificent peaks in the National Parks. These peaks rise amid and above wildernesses of superb scenes, splendid combinations of peaks, streams, lakes, passes, forests, and moorlands.
My three favorite peaks in the United States are Mount Rainier, Long's Peak, and the Grand Teton, which is near Jackson's Hole, Wyoming.
In many respects Mount Rainier is the noblest mountain in the world. It is high, and to reach its summit is to make a journey that requires preparation and care. Much ice work is necessary in order to attain the top. Once there, the climber looks down upon extensive landscapes of forests and sea, islands and rivers, and snowy peaks.
Long's Peak is a rugged, vast monolith of granite 14,255 feet high. Usually it is almost entirely free of both ice and snow. It is a rock climb. It stands not in but immediately in front of the Continental Divide, whose near-by ruggedness is tremendously impressive. Far away one looks out over seas of mountains and on ocean plains. Standing side by side with Long's Peak, and of almost equal height, is Mount Meeker, also a rock climb that reveals scenes of unusual interest.
The Yellowstone has three excellent mountain-top view-points: Mount Washburn, Mount Sheridan, and Electric Peak. One can motor to the top of Mount Washburn, and the climbs to the tops of the other two are not extremely difficult.
In the Yosemite, Mount Hoffman, not the highest peak, but centrally located, commands the extraordinary scenes of the Park. Of the higher peaks, Mount Lyell is an excellent example.
It is probable that Mount Whitney will become a part of the Sequoia National Park. It is comparatively easy of ascentand commands great views of the higher peaks of the Sierra. It is the highest peak within the bounds of the Union, being 14,501 feet high.
Among a wilderness of rugged mountains and lakes of the Glacier National Park are scores of peaks well worthy of the climber. To me Going-to-the-Sun Mountain and Mount Cleveland are two of the better ones.
Exercising in the heights quickly disinfects and reënergizes the system. A mental uplift, a broadening of the view, and a general lasting exhilaration come from the effort of mountain-climbing, together with the intimate human association and the soul-stirring scenes which it brings. Climbing a worthy peak ought to be listed among the proudest of our yearly accomplishments.
In "The Canoe and the Saddle" Theodore Winthrop thus translates the good tidings of the mountains:—
Exaltation such as the presence of the sublime and solemn heights arouses, we dwellerseastward cannot have as an abiding influence. Other things we may have, for Nature will not let herself anywhere be scorned; but only mountains, and chiefest the giants of snow, can teach whatever lessons there may be in vaster distances and deeper depths of palpable ether, in lonely grandeur without desolation, and in the illimitable, bounded within an outline. Therefore, needing all these emotions at their maximum, we were compelled to make pilgrimages back to the mountains....Mountains have been waiting, even in ancient worlds, for cycles, while mankind looked upon them as high, cold, dreary, crushing—as resorts for demons and homes of desolating storms. It is only lately, in the development of men's comprehension of nature, that mountains have been recognized as our noblest friends, our most exalting and inspiring comrades, our grandest emblems of divine power and divine peace.
Exaltation such as the presence of the sublime and solemn heights arouses, we dwellerseastward cannot have as an abiding influence. Other things we may have, for Nature will not let herself anywhere be scorned; but only mountains, and chiefest the giants of snow, can teach whatever lessons there may be in vaster distances and deeper depths of palpable ether, in lonely grandeur without desolation, and in the illimitable, bounded within an outline. Therefore, needing all these emotions at their maximum, we were compelled to make pilgrimages back to the mountains....
Mountains have been waiting, even in ancient worlds, for cycles, while mankind looked upon them as high, cold, dreary, crushing—as resorts for demons and homes of desolating storms. It is only lately, in the development of men's comprehension of nature, that mountains have been recognized as our noblest friends, our most exalting and inspiring comrades, our grandest emblems of divine power and divine peace.
John Muir arrived in San Francisco by boat from Panama in 1868. He was thirty years old. This was in the days of adventure. San Francisco Bay was alive with strange ships from every part of the globe. The city was filled with adventurers. On every hand were heard exciting tales of colonization and wealth in South America, Siberia, and Australia, stories of fabulous fortunes made in the islands of the South Seas, and rumors of rich strikes by the "Bonanza Kings" in the mines of Nevada. These things did not interest Muir. He became the Nestor of National Parks.
JOHN MUIR AT THE FOOT OF A DOUGLAS SPRUCE IN MUIR WOODSJOHN MUIR AT THE FOOT OF A DOUGLAS SPRUCE IN MUIR WOODS
The second day after reaching San Francisco, he wandered away alone into the wilderness. He heard Nature's bugle-call and was led on and on. He wandered farinto the flower-filled distances, threaded the forests, and climbed the heights where wild cataracts leaped and where the glaciers had left their story.
For forty years he spent the most of his time camping and exploring and studying in the wilderness along the Pacific Coast, chiefly in the Sierra of California. He neither fished nor carried a gun. He frequently went hungry; many times was without bedding; often he was entirely alone for weeks. These were glorious years!
He rambled through parts of Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and made five trips to Alaska. He also made visits to Australia, India, Switzerland, Sweden, South America, and Africa. Long and intimately he associated with Nature in the Yosemite National Park.
He married in 1879, and for ten years devoted a part of his time to business, amassing a fair fortune. But in each of these years he managed to have several weeks in the wilderness.
He had a large share in arousing the public interest that led to the creation of forest reserves. For years he splendidly led the movement for National Parks. His work and his writing glorified the scenic outdoors.
In his Autobiography he says, "When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures." In his boyhood Wisconsin home he was so enraptured with Nature that, as he says, he could hardly believe his senses except when he was hungry or his father was thrashing him.
In another case he says, "Every wild lesson a love lesson; not whipped into us but charmed into us." Commenting on leaving college, he declares, "I was only leaving one university for another, the Wisconsin University for the University of the Wilderness." Stevenson wrote, "There should be nothing so much a man's business as his amusements." John Muir'samusements occupied the major part of his life, and the result is an inspiring and ennobling influence on the world. More than anything else, his work is likely immeasurably to help the human race by getting us outdoors.
While ever enjoying the beauty of Nature, he was continually searching for facts. He had the poetic appreciation of Nature. He was the greatest genius that ever with words interpreted the outdoors. No one has ever written of Nature's realm with greater enthusiasm or charm. He once said, "In drying plants, botanists often dry themselves." He also felt that "dry words and dry facts will not fire hearts." Much that he wrote is prose poetry or is enlivened with the poetic fire of his genius.
His writings contain a wealth of National Parks material, and I wish that every child might know of them. His books are: "The Mountains of California," "Our National Parks," "Stickeen," "My First Summer in the Sierra," "The Yosemite,""The Story of my Boyhood and Youth," "Travels in Alaska," and "A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf."
In December, 1914, the grandest character in National Parks history and in nature literature vanished into that mysterious realm into which all trails inevitably lead. He had rendered mankind a vast and heroic service. His triumphs were of the very greatest. They were made in times of peace for the eternal cause of peace. We are yet too close to the deeds of this magnificent man to comprehend their helpfulness to humanity. His practical labors and his books are likely to prove the most influential force in this century for the profitable use of leisure hours.
He has written the great drama of the outdoors. On Nature's scenic stage he gave the wild life local habitation and character—did with the wild folk what Shakespeare did with man. He puts the woods in story, and in his story you are in the wilderness. His prose poems illuminate the forest, thestorm, and all the fields of life. He has set Pan's melody to words. He sings of sun-tipped peaks and gloomy cañons, flowery fields and wooded wilds. He has immortalized the Big Trees. His memory is destined to be ever associated with the silent places, with the bird-songs, with wild flowers, with the great glaciers, with snowy peaks, with dark forests, with white cascades that leap in glory, with sunlight and shadow, with the splendid National Parks, and with every song that Nature sings in the wild gardens of the world.
Why not each year send thousands of school-children through the National Parks? Mother Nature is the teacher of teachers, these Parks the greatest of schools and playgrounds. No other school is likely so to inspire children, so to give them vision and fire their imagination. Surely the children ought to have this extraordinary opportunity.
The percentage of children aroused and started to greatness by schools of prison-like policy is small indeed. The proper place for at least a part of every child's schooling is the great outdoors. In our great National Parks we have an unrivaled outdoor school that is always open; in it is a library, a museum, a zoölogical garden, and a type of the wilderness frontier. In thisschool-children are brought into contact with actual things, and become personally acquainted with useful facts, instead of merely reading about them. No better surroundings can be devised for developing common sense.
Learning under such conditions is delightful, yet it is discipline—a discipline that develops, not mere drudgery that discourages. Education cannot be separated from enjoyment. "Let us live for our children," said Froebel, the early exponent of the school of Nature. It is doubtful if we could do more for our young folk, for the nation, and for humanity than to have ample National Parks and opportunities for the children to enjoy them.
If each boy or girl—or any traveler—were to follow a particular line of nature-study during vacations, and give most of his time to one species of tree, flower, bird, or to the characteristic scenic feature of the region visited, each would return with a new and pleasant resource, and would havesomething definite and worth while to report to his friends.
One of the greatest inheritances of each individual is imagination. The child instinctively believes in fairies. Unfortunately, the imagination too often is stifled and extinguished in childhood. It is imagination that "bodies forth the forms of things unknown," and makes all objects interesting. It lights the path of education and throws changing color and romance over every act and scene in life. It gives a magic spell to existence. This matchless torch may be set blazing by a visit to the wonderland of a National Park where wilderness is king—where the fairies live.
Often, the chief incentive that starts a child toward the acquiring of an education is interest in this fairyland of Nature. Interest is the highroad to education. Interest the mind and it will grow like a garden. The National Parks have, through this fact, an educational value which entitles them to be ranked among the strongest potential forces of our pedagogical system.
I have never known any one who had enjoyed the pleasure that comes from even a little knowledge of natural history to sink into the empty-headed pastime of trying to see crude forms in Nature's story-book. Usually, an individual given to this, when on an outing, is a bore to his companions. I simply cannot understand how people find pleasure in trying to discover animal forms, or various zoölogical figures, in the geological formations of the mountains, while the beholders are in the midst of a thousand objects of real interest. Such an exercise may be called humbug imagination.
Playing in the outdoors—especially when there is intimate association with birds and flowers, trees and waterfalls, mountains and storms—is one of the best ways of training the senses. The study of geology and glaciology, of the manners and customs of the beaver and the bear, givesphysical and mental and spiritual development of the best possible kind. The outdoors gives originality and individuality, and develops that master quality called the creative faculty, with which usually are found associated courage and wholesome self-reliance.
Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, says:—
The best part of all human knowledge has come by exact and studied observation made through the senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. The most important part of education has always been the training of the senses through which that best part of knowledge comes. This training has two precious results in the individual besides the faculty of accurate observation—one the acquisition of some sort of skill, the other the habit of careful reflection and measured reasoning which results in precise statement and record.
The best part of all human knowledge has come by exact and studied observation made through the senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. The most important part of education has always been the training of the senses through which that best part of knowledge comes. This training has two precious results in the individual besides the faculty of accurate observation—one the acquisition of some sort of skill, the other the habit of careful reflection and measured reasoning which results in precise statement and record.
The pioneer men and women, and the children of pioneers, had few books, but they were wide-awake people and made excellent neighbors. Scores of great men and women with character as well as intelligence have known little of books, but they had the ability to think—they had individuality. They had courage and kindness.
Mother Nature is ever ready to train the growing child. By using our wonderful National Parks for schools, we may give the boys and girls of to-day even better nature training than the pioneers received from their environment. Huxley says, "Knowledge gained at second hand from books or hearsay is infinitely inferior in quality to knowledge gained at first hand by direct observation and experience with Nature."
Many of the noblest pages of history were made by grand men and women whom Nature inspired. A poet says that all grand and heroic deeds were conceived in the open air. A nation composed of park-using people is prepared for the emergencies of war and also for the finer achievements of peace. Park life will keep the nation young.
Some of our thoughtful people are saying, "Better playgrounds without schoolsthan schools without playgrounds." The Parks used as a part of the school system should develop, enrich, and equip with happy, helpful material the growing mind of man.
In "The Training of the Human Plant," Luther Burbank says:—
Any form of education which leaves one less able to meet every-day emergencies and occurrences is unbalanced and vicious, and will lead any people to destruction.Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, waterbugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries, and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education.By being well acquainted with all these they come into most intimate harmony with nature, whose lessons are, of course, natural and wholesome.A fragrant beehive or a plump, healthy hornet's nest in good running order often become object lessons of some importance. Theinhabitants can give the child pointed lessons in punctuation, as well as caution and some of the limitations as well as the grand possibilities of life; and by even a brief experience with a good patch of healthy nettles, the same lesson will be still further impressed upon them. And thus by each new experience with homely natural objects the child learns self-respect and also to respect the objects and forces which must be met.
Any form of education which leaves one less able to meet every-day emergencies and occurrences is unbalanced and vicious, and will lead any people to destruction.
Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, waterbugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries, and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education.
By being well acquainted with all these they come into most intimate harmony with nature, whose lessons are, of course, natural and wholesome.
A fragrant beehive or a plump, healthy hornet's nest in good running order often become object lessons of some importance. Theinhabitants can give the child pointed lessons in punctuation, as well as caution and some of the limitations as well as the grand possibilities of life; and by even a brief experience with a good patch of healthy nettles, the same lesson will be still further impressed upon them. And thus by each new experience with homely natural objects the child learns self-respect and also to respect the objects and forces which must be met.
The wild gardens of Nature are the best kindergartens. The child who breathes the pure air among the pines, and plays among the birds and flowers, has the greatest of advantages. The child stirred with ideal hopes to-day will create nobly to-morrow. Children from Nature's Book and School stand highest in the examinations of life and carry life's richest treasures: health, individuality, sincerity, wholesome self-reliance, and efficiency. Touched with nature, they are natural and, like Tiny Tim, they love everybody. Nature wins the heart of childhood. Children playing and dreaming in outdoor fairylands make one ofthe sweetest, dearest stories lived or learned on Nature's loving breast.
One of the best lessons gained from the wholesome atmosphere of the Parks is the duty of preserving natural beauties. We need Parks to prevent the extermination of our friends the wild flowers. A few years ago the following simple appeal for the wild flowers was written for me by Maud Gardner Odel:—
What will you with our bodies,Rude Ravishers of flowers,Despoiler of our lovelinessTo please your idle hours?The life you pluck so gaylyWill perish in a day;The form you praise so lightly,Turn swiftly to decay;But leave us on our hillsideWith wind and bird and bee,Insure us our inheritanceOf immortality,—Your sons shall know our fragrance,Your daughters feel our charm.Oh, Friend of Future Ages,Do not the Wild Flowers harm!Columbine,Gentian,Iris, and Others.
Photographs made in National Parks could be used in homes, schools, hotels, etc.; they might well displace many of the pictures now in use. These photographs should embrace the grander scenes and the lovelier landscapes. Among the subjects handled would be the Big Trees, Yellowstone Falls, Yosemite Falls, the Grand Cañon, wild flowers and glaciers on Mount Rainier, the lakes in Glacier National Park, timber-line in the Rocky Mountain National Park, Crater Lake, and the ruins in the Mesa Verde. Among the animals pictured would be the grizzly bear, the mountain sheep, the mountain goat, the antelope, and the beaver; among the birds, the water-ouzel, the solitaire, the cañon wren, the eagle, the hummingbird, and the ptarmigan.
We need to know our country. Purposeful travel is educational. Our National Parks should stimulate travel, and a trip to them is an educational advantage to any one making it. One can hardly beespecially interested in any single feature of these Parks without also becoming acquainted with others.
Each year every city should honor itself by sending a number of individuals to study one or more of these Parks. Each school should send its brightest pupil; chambers of commerce might send representatives; women's clubs, D.A.R. organizations, and even the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. might well be represented in such a delegation. This custom would give us nation-wide knowledge and sympathy.
It appears impossible to exaggerate the importance of knowing our wilderness lands—the frontier of yesterday.
During all the years—the long centuries between cave and cottage—our good ancestors ever traveled among Nature's inspiring pictured scenes. With interest and with awe they watched the silent movements of the clouds across the sky; they heard with speechless wonder the mysterious echo that lived and mimickedin the viewless air; they puzzled over the strange, invisible wind that shook the excited trees and whispered in the rustling grass. They saw the wondrous sunrise; the light of day; the darkness; the fireflies in the forest; the lonely, changing moon. They heard the echoing crash of thunder. Lightning,—the branched golden river in the cloud mountains of the sky,—the clouds themselves, and the silken rainbow, were woven into beautiful myths. Thus, through changing seasons and the passing years, these splendid facts and fancies in Mother Nature's school fired the imagination with poetic wonder-tales and built the brain for our restless, triumphant race. The pathway to the Heroic Age lies out with Nature.
The Piute Indians have a legend which says that just at the close of creation the woman was consulted. She at once called into existence the birds, the flowers, and the trees. That is the kind of a woman with whom to start a world. We still need park places full of hope and beauty, with birds, flowers, and trees, that with their help we may live long and happily and harmoniously upon a beautiful world.
Scenic parts of this poetic and primeval world—parts rich in loveliness and grandeur—are saved for us in our National Parks. The National Parks and Monuments are filled with Nature's masterpieces, and contain splendid scenic and scientific features not elsewhere to be seen. The traveler might spend a lifetime in them without exhausting even their best attractions.
A National Park is an island of safety in this riotous world. Splendid forests, the waterfalls that leap in glory, the wild flowers that charm and illuminate the earth, the wild sheep of the sky-line crags, and the beauty of the birds, all have places of refuge which parks provide.
A National Park is a fountain of life. It is a matchless potential factor for good in national life. It holds within its magic realm benefits that are health-giving, educational, economic; that further efficiency and ethical relations, and are inspirational. Every one needs to play, and to play out of doors. Without parks and outdoor life all that is best in civilization will be smothered. To save ourselves, to prevent our perishing, to enable us to live at our best and happiest, parks are necessary. Within National Parks is room—glorious room—room in which to find ourselves, in which to think and hope, to dream and plan, to rest and resolve.
Nature, like our best friends, will haveus do our best. King Lear led the typical purposeless indoor life. He was surrounded with pomp and senseless ceremony. He was in the midst of enemies of sincerity and individuality. He decayed. He was turned outdoors. Across the stormy moor he wandered, followed by his faithful Fool. At the door of the hovel he hesitated. Urged by the Fool, he agreed to take shelter inside. In a brief time with Nature on the moor he had become acquainted with himself and had developed universal sympathy. Standing in the storm at the entrance to the hovel, he uttered this noble cry of compassion:—
"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend youFrom seasons such as these?"
National Parks provide climate for everybody and scenery for all. If we play in the scenes where fairies live, for us all will be right with the world. Parks give purpose, noble purpose, to life. They arethe "Never-Never-Land" in which we shall ever be growing, but never grow up.
The great peaks with age-old ice and snow, the mountain-high waterfalls that rush and roar, the waveless lakes that show the cloud and the blue, the waves of wind that shake the steadfast trees, the songs of birds that ring through the wilderness, the many-colored flowers and glorious sunsets—these waken and inspire us. We are glad to be living, and life's duties are done with happiest hands. We need these enchanted places. I am thankful to the pioneers who saw the wilderness scenes and were thoughtful enough to save the National Parks for us.
Robert Louis Stevenson says, "A man's most serious business is his amusements"; and some one else has said:—
We need more plain pleasures, for recreation rightly used is a resource for the common purposes of daily life that is entitled to rank with education, with art, with friendship. It is one of the means ordained for the promotion of health and cheerfulness and morality. Vicemust be fought by welfare, not restraint; and society is not safe until to-day's pleasures are stronger than its temptations. Amusement is stronger than vice and can strangle the lust of it. Not only does morality thus rest back on recreation, but so does efficiency. One half of efficiency and happiness depends upon vitality, and vitality depends largely upon recreation, especially the simple recreation of the open air.
We need more plain pleasures, for recreation rightly used is a resource for the common purposes of daily life that is entitled to rank with education, with art, with friendship. It is one of the means ordained for the promotion of health and cheerfulness and morality. Vicemust be fought by welfare, not restraint; and society is not safe until to-day's pleasures are stronger than its temptations. Amusement is stronger than vice and can strangle the lust of it. Not only does morality thus rest back on recreation, but so does efficiency. One half of efficiency and happiness depends upon vitality, and vitality depends largely upon recreation, especially the simple recreation of the open air.
How and where people play determines the character of individuals and the destiny of their country. Success in life-work depends upon play and relaxation. Blue Monday did not originate outdoors. It is doubtful if any other influence produces so many good habits as a park. Parks keep a nation hopeful and young.
The better and stronger nation of the future will be a park-using nation. Many wrecked nations have tried to get along without outdoor parks and recreation-places. It is but little less than folly to spend millions on forts and warships, on prisons and hospitals, instead of givingpeople the opportunity to develop and rest in the sane outdoors.
The population of the United States now numbers a hundred millions and is growing with amazing rapidity. The harassing, exacting life of to-day makes outdoor life more important than ever before. Even in the country, more play places are needed. Most of the parklike places in the country have fallen into private hands to the exclusion of the public, but in every State in the Union a number of scenic places are available. These might well be secured by the public and made into city and county, state and national parks.
The intensity of love for native land depends chiefly upon the loveliness of its landscapes—upon its scenery. The great scenic places of a land should be owned by the public and often seen by the public. We cannot love an ugly country. Beauty satisfies the world's great longing. Hatred and prejudice may be taught, but the love of land must be inspired—and inspiredby the scenic loveliness of that land. "The beautiful is as useful as the useful." Some time a Secretary of Parks and Recreation may be the most honored member of the President's Cabinet.
Develop National Parks, and there is no danger that the people will fail to use them. They will help us to build a vast travel industry. In each of the years immediately preceding the European war, more than half a million Americans went to Europe. Each individual spent not less than a thousand dollars, a total of five hundred million dollars—this exclusive of large sums spent for works of art, jewelry, and clothing. Why should not such vast expenditures be made in our own country instead of in foreign lands? Scenery is an asset, and parks, multiplied and properly managed, would greatly help to keep our money at home as well as to educate and refine our people.
The existing National Parks—and there will be others—are a vast undeveloped resource of enormous potential value. Theyare a golden field that will grow the more with reaping! The Parks have the power to change and better the habits of a nation. They may arouse in us the desire to spend most of our spare time, and lead to the fashion of holding most of our social gatherings, outdoors.
Lack of national unity is perilous. A nation divided against itself is not strong. Internal strife sometimes is worse than foreign war. The people of the United States are united in name, but are they doing good team-work? The mingling of people from all quarters in their own great National Parks means friendly union. The Westerner ought to know the Easterner; the Easterner should be acquainted with the Westerner, and he ought also to see the magnificent distances in the West. Travel to National Parks will promote such acquaintance in the happiest circumstances. Greatly it would help the general welfare of the nation if the citizens of the United States were better acquainted with theirown country, its resources, its people, and its problems. The debates on various public measures in Congress show a lack of national unity that arises from a lack of national information. A people united is a nation well prepared.
I sometimes think that getting really acquainted with some person, or with some fact, is a great event. There is nothing like acquaintance for promoting friendship, sympathy, and coöperation. To bring the capitalist and the laborer—all classes—together in the Park's august scenes, is bound to encourage acquaintance and to prevent misunderstandings. All this means unity, friendship, and will keep war drums in the background.
He who feels the spell of the wild, the rhythmic melody of falling water, the echoes among the crags, the bird-songs, the wind in the pines, and the endless beat of wave upon the shore, is in tune with the universe. And he will know what human brotherhood means; will understand theheart of the democratic poet who declares, "A man's a man for a' that."
In Nature's ennobling and boundless scenes, the hateful boundary-lines and the forts and flags and prejudices of nations are forgotten. Nature is universal. She hoists no flags of hatred. Wood-notes wild contain no barbaric strains of war. The supreme triumph of parks is humanity. And as I have said elsewhere, some time it may be that an immortal pine will be the flag of a united and peaceful world.
John Muir felt that National Parks were the glory of the country and should make this country the glory of the earth. I feel certain that if Nature were to speak she would say, "Make National and State Parks of your best wild gardens, and with these I will develop greater men and women."
National Parks will insure the perpetuation of the primitive and poetic pathway, the Trail.
The trail is as old as the hills. In every wild corner of the world it is the dim romantic highway through "No Man's Land." Ever intimate with the forest and stream, this adventurous and primitive way has an endless variety. Its scenes shift and its vistas change. It has the aroma of the wilderness. It always leads to a definite place over a crooked and alluring way. With eager haste it may go straight to some poetic point, but usually it winds with many a delightful delay. I think of it as watching the white cascades, listening to the echoes, delaying by the lonely shore, spending hours in the forest primeval, leisurely crossing the grassy, sun-filled glades, skirtingthe time-stained crags and vanishing into the heights, looking down into the valley, and tarrying where artists would linger. Somewhere it leads to a lake.