Your National Parks Part 17

From the time of the creation of the Yellowstone Park till 1914 there was no official head to the National Parks, but that year Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane used his right and appointed the first Superintendent, Mark Daniels.

The year 1915 was memorable in National Park history. In that year Secretary Lane appointed Stephen T. Mather a.s.sistant to the Secretary of the Interior, with authority to do all that he could for Parks. Mr.

Mather, a business man, sympathetic, well acquainted with the Parks, saw their extraordinary possibilities. Having the administrative charge of these National Parks, he at once set to work upon the extremely difficult task of bringing them out of chaos into order. In the short time that he has had charge of them, he has made a remarkable advance in securing for them a working plan of development, and a simplified and businesslike management.

In 1915 Superintendent Daniels was superseded by Robert B. Marshall, former Chief Geographer of the United States Geological Survey. Mr.

Marshall worked enthusiastically but resigned in December, 1916. Mr.

Mather became Director of the National Park Service in March, 1917.

Automobiles were first admitted to all National Parks in 1915, and that year, too, a number of educative publications concerning them were issued.

In September, 1911, what may be called the first National Park Conference was held in the Yellowstone Park. This was called by Secretary of the Interior Walter L. Fisher. In his opening remarks at this conference Mr. Fisher said that the purpose of the conference was to "discuss the matter of the present condition of the National Parks and what can best be done to promote the welfare of the Parks and make them better for the purpose for which they were created."

This brought together a large gathering of men of affairs and distinctly furthered the creation of the National Park Service.

The National Park Service is one of the subdivisions of the Department of the Interior. The Service was created by an act of Congress in 1916, after a campaign that lasted for seven years. At its head is a Director. It gives the Parks an official standing and the care and development and administration needed.

All National Parks and twenty-one of the National Monuments are in charge of the National Park Service. As Monuments are scenic and educational reservations, it is plain that all these Monuments might well be in charge of the National Park Service. Then, too, the name "Monument" might well be changed to "Park."

Considering the far-reaching influence of the Parks on the general welfare, in a few years they might be placed under a cabinet officer who could appropriately be called the Secretary of National Parks.

XVI

THE SPIRIT OF THE FOREST

The supreme forest of the world is in the Sequoia National Park. The Big Trees have attained here their greatest size and their grandest development. Here is the forest's most impressive a.s.semblage. In these groves at the southern end of the splendid Sierra is all the eloquence of wooded wilds--the silence of centuries and the eternal spirit of the forest. This forest is to be guarded and saved forever.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE ROAD TO SHERMAN TREE GIANT FOREST, SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK]

How happily trees have mingled with our lives! Ever since our lowly ancestors crawled from gloomy caves, stood erect in the sunlight, wondered at this calm, mysterious world, and at last made homes beneath the hemlock and the pine--ever since then, down through the ages, through the dim, sad centuries, all the way from cave to cottage, the forest has been a mother to our good race. How different our history had this wooded and beautiful world been treeless and lonely! Groves stand peaceful and prominent on every hill, in every dale of history that encourages or inspires. If we should lose the hospitality of the trees and the friends.h.i.+p of the forest, our race too would be lost, and the desert's pale, sad sky would come to hover above a rounded, lifeless world. The trees are friends of mankind.

The forest that you see on the heights across the valley, that stands so steadfast upon the billowed and broken slopes, that drapes the dales and distances with peaceful, purple folds, and makes complete with grace and grandeur a hanging garden of the hills--this is the forest that sheltered our ancestors through the past's slow-changing years.

The trees have wandered over the earth and prepared it for our race.

Their low green ranks encircle the cold white realm of Farthest North; they grow in luxuriance beneath the equatorial sun; they have climbed and held the heights though beaten and crushed with storm and snow; they have dared the desert's hot and deadly sand; they stand ankle-deep in bayous wrapped in tangled vines; they have breasted the surf and pushed out into the surges of the ocean; they have conquered and reclaimed the rocks on continents and islands; they have plumed with palms the white reefs of the blue and billowed sea; their triumphant ma.s.ses stand where the Ice King rules; and in volcanoes'

throats they have given beauty for ashes. Their banners wave under every sun and sky. Wherever our race has gone to live, the trees have given welcome and shelter.

The picturesque woodsman with his axe has helped to build nations and to improve and sustain them after they were built. He will play his part in the future. An axeman at work in the woods makes even a more stirring and romantic picture than does the reaper in his harvest home on autumn's golden fields. It is good to hear the sounds of the axe as they echo and reecho among wooded wilds and then fade away, a melody amid the forested hills. The echoes of the axe suggest the old, old story--tell of a love-touched dream come true, of another home to be. When under the axe an old tree falls, it is the end of a life well lived, the end of a work well done. But this tree may rise, helped and shaped by happy hands, and become the most sacred place in all this world of ours--a home where lovers live--a cottage with hollyhocks and roses by the door.

But we are leaving the low-vaulted past. These trees are not to fall.

They are to stand. In parks, we have provided for trees a refuge with ourselves. They are to live on, and with them we shall build more stately mansions for the soul.

Trees have trials. They know what it is to struggle and grow strong.

With hards.h.i.+p they build history, adventure, pathos, and poetry.

Every tree has a life full of incident. Aged trees are stored with the lore of generations, carry the character of centuries, have biographies, stirring life-stories. A sequoia is an impressive wonder.

As the oldest settler upon the earth--the pioneer of pioneers--it knows the stories of centuries. At the dead lips of the Sphinx you listen in vain, but beneath a Big Tree the ages speak and the centuries s.h.i.+ft their scenes. The Big Trees carry within their untranslated scrolls that which may enrich the literature of the world. Within a Big Tree's brave breast are more materials of fact and fancy than in the ocean's coral cove, or in the murmuring sea-sh.e.l.l on the sh.o.r.e.

In the forest, around the foot of a tree, rages an endless and ever-changing struggle for existence. Here from season unto season a thousand forms of life feed and frolic, live and love, fight and die.

Here Nature's stirring drama is playing on and always on. Here are trials and triumphs, activity and repose, and all the woodland scenes upon the wild world's stage amid the splendors and the shadows of the pines. At this place Nature smiles and sings, and here, at times, the lonely echo seems to search and seek in vain.

I never see a little tree bursting from the earth, peeping confidingly up among the withered leaves, without wondering how long it will live, what trials or triumphs it will have. I always hope that it will be a home for the birds. I always hope that it will find life worth living, and that it will live long to better and to beautify the earth.

In spring, summer, autumn, and winter, the broadleaf forest is a picture gallery, a fine-arts hall. In winter, abloom with snow flowers or in penciled tracery against the sky, how trustfully it sleeps!

Confidently and in perfect faith, it awaits the supreme day of spring, when, amid the buzzing of bees, the songs of mating birds, and the unfolding of green and crumpled leaves, comes the glory-burst of bloom. In leaf-filled summer the woodlands are a realm of rich content. But in reflective autumn, when the plaintive note of the bluebird has Southland in its tones, when the hills are golden, then the work of the leaves is done and they come out in garments of glory to die--to die like the sunset of a splendid day. Color is triumphant when autumn, the artist, touches the trees, for then the entire temperate zone encircling this rounded world is a wreath of glory.

This wreath fades or falls away; and the little golden leaf that casts its lot upon the breeze and floats off in the midst of mysteries is upon a journey just as dear as when, amid the mists of sun and spring, it did appear.

The woodland world of the mountains in National Parks is a grand commingling of groves and gra.s.s-plots, crags and canons, and rounded lakes with forest frames and shadow-matted sh.o.r.es that rest in peace within the purple forest. Here, in Nature's mirrors, pond-lilies, all green and gold, rise and fall on gentle swells, or repose with reflected clouds and stars. Here, too, are drifts of fringed gentians, blue flakes from summer's bluest sky. Here young and eager streams leap in white cascades between crowding crags and pines. In these pictured scenes the birds sing, the useful beaver builds his picturesque home; here the cheerful chipmunk frolics and never grows up; and here the world stays young. Forests give poetry to the prose of life and enable us to have and to hold high ideals.

In almost every forest is the quaking aspen, the most widely distributed tree in the world. In autumn its golden banners encircle the globe and adorn nearly one half the earth. Though this tree has a const.i.tution so tender that it is easily killed by fire or injury, it is one of the greatest pioneer trees in the forest world. Through the ages the restless aspen leaves appear to have attracted the attention of mankind. Unfortunately the old myths and legends concerning this merry, childlike tree told of fear or sorrow, but now every one catches the hopeful spirit of the aspen. Aspens are youth, eternal youth. Endlessly their dancing leaves proclaim youth. They are romping children. Their bare legs, their mud- and water-wading habits, their dancing out of one thing into another, are charmingly, faithfully childlike.

Every tree has the ways of its race. The willow in its appointed place is ever leaning over watching the endless procession of waters. Does it wonder whence and whither? The birches are maidens, slender, white, and fair. The maple has its own excuse for being. The elms arch the woodland world with cathedral art. Beautiful is the lone silver spruce lingering among the grand golden lichened crags. The st.u.r.dy pines stand in ever green contentment. The straight spruces and stately firs point ever upward and never cease to call "Excelsior!" nor to climb toward their ideal. The oak, full of character, welcomes all seasons and all weathers. Within the forest, up toward the heights, stands a tree that wins and holds the heart like a hollyhock. This tree, the hemlock, is a poem all alone. It is the heroine, the mother spirit of the woodland world, handsome, richly robed, symmetrical, graceful, sensitive, and steadfast. She, more than any other tree, appeals to the eye and the heart. In her upcurving arms and entire expression there is a yearning. When the world was young she may have been the first tree to shelter our homeless, wandering race. To-day, when the wild folk of the outdoors are most beset with cold or storm, they go trustingly and confidingly to nestle in the hemlock's arms. And rightly the sequoia is the n.o.bleman of all the forest world.

That sweet singer, the solitaire, is the chorister of the forest. He puts the woods in song. Hear his woodnotes wild and the Spirit of the Forest will thrill you! Meditations and memories will throng you. His matchless melody carries echoes of Orpheus and good tidings from distant lands where dreams come true. Far away, soft and low, the wood itself seems to be singing a hopeful song, a rhythm of ages, that you have heard before. Pictured fairyland unfolds as you listen. In it is the peace, the poetry, the majesty, and the mystery of the forest.

Go to the trees and get their good tidings. Have an autumn day in the woods, and beneath the airy arches of limbs and leaves linger in paths of peace. Speak to the jostling little trees that are so pretty and so eager. Stand beneath the monarchs, rugged and rich in character. Lie down upon the brown leaves, and look far away through the slowly vanis.h.i.+ng vistas full of forest, of columns that are filled with kindest light. Leaves of red, bronze, and gold will rest in the sunlight, or be falling back to earth without a fear.

The brook will murmur on; around, the falling nuts may patter upon the fallen leaves; the woodp.e.c.k.e.r may be tip-tapping; the birds will be pa.s.sing for the Southland; the squirrels will be planting for the ages. Though there are stirring activities and endless fancies, your repose will be complete. Here where the lichen-tinted columns of gray and brown are rich and beautiful in the mellow light, you will be at your best--your own will come to you--with the Infinite you will be in tune. Stay till night, and from the edge of the woods see the sun go down in triumph. While all is hushed, watch the castled crag and the gnarled pine on the hilltop blacken against the golden afterglow. In the reflective twilight hour you may catch the murmur and the music of the wind-touched trees.

I wish that every one might have a night by a camp-fire at Mother Nature's hearth-stone. Culture began by a camp-fire in the forest.

Ages and ages ago, lightning one rainy evening set fire to a dead tree near the entrance to a cave. The flames lured some of our frightened ancestors from their cheerless lair, and as they stared at the burning wood, they pushed back their long tangled hair, the better to watch the movements of the mysterious flames. Around this fire these primitive people gathered for the first social evening on the earth.

When in the forest one sits within the camp-fire's magic tent of light, amid the silent, sculptured trees, thrilling through one's blood go all the trials and triumphs of our race. A camp-fire in the forest marks the most enchanting place on life's highway wherein to have a lodging for the night.

Weird and strange are the feelings that flow as winds sweep and sound through the trees. Now the Storm King puts a bugle to his lips, and a deep, elemental hymn is sung while the blast surges wild through the pines. Soon Mother Nature is quietly singing, singing soft and low, while the breezes pause and play in the pines. From the past one has been ever coming, with the future is destined ever to go, when with centuries of wors.h.i.+pful silence one waits for a wind in the pines.

Ever the good old world grows better, both with songs and with silence, in the pines.

One touch of forest nature makes the whole world kin. A tree is the flag of Nature, and forests give a universal feeling of good will. In the boundless forest the boundary-lines of nations are forgotten. Some time an immortal pine may be the flag of a united and peaceful world.

In the forests' fairyland are still heard "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing." There--

"Echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever."

Kins.h.i.+p is the spirit of the forest.

XVII

WILD LIFE IN NATIONAL PARKS

Hunters are excluded from National Parks, and within these wonderlands all shooting is prohibited. All National Parks are wild-life sanctuaries, places of refuge for birds and animals. There the wild folk are not pursued, trapped, or shot. Nearly all the princ.i.p.al birds and beasts of North America are to be found in these Parks. Here may be seen the lively, merry play-pranks of young bears, young birds, and young beavers. Each Park is thus a wild-life paradise where the animals are safe, free from the fear of being killed by man. These Parks are ideal places in which to enjoy the animals and to study their character; and they are a happy hunting-ground for the hunter who carries the camera. Recreation in these wonderlands is thus absolutely separated from the butchering business. What a glorious exchange! All this should help the good old world to grow better.

Making a wild-animal place of refuge is equivalent to making a park-place of refuge for ourselves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELK IN JACKSON HOLE]

One day, in what is now the Rocky Mountain National Park, I came upon a luxuriously equipped camping-party, in which were at least a score of people. They had a splendid outfit and bore evidence of culture and refinement. I came upon their camp just at the close of a day that they had devoted to a hunting-contest. I do not recall the prize that the winning side secured, but all members of the party, young and old, men and women, had engaged in the contest. They had taken sides, and each side had endeavored during the day to kill more animals than the other. Every living thing was allowable. Piled up against a log near the camp were two heaps of dead wild folk--squirrels and chipmunks, grouse and hummingbirds, water-ouzels, ptarmigans, bluebirds, a robin, a wren, a snow-shoe rabbit, and I know not how many others.