Your National Parks Part 22

A fragrant beehive or a plump, healthy hornet's nest in good running order often become object lessons of some importance. The inhabitants 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 n.o.bly 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 of the 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 loveliness To please your idle hours?

The life you pluck so gayly Will perish in a day; The form you praise so lightly, Turn swiftly to decay; But leave us on our hillside With wind and bird and bee, Insure us our inheritance Of 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 Canon, 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 canon 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 be especially 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 mimicked in the viewless air; they puzzled over the strange, invisible wind that shook the excited trees and whispered in the rustling gra.s.s. 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 pa.s.sing 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.

XXII

WHY WE NEED NATIONAL PARKS

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 peris.h.i.+ng, 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 have us 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 n.o.ble cry of compa.s.sion:--

"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 you From 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, n.o.ble purpose, to life. They are the "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 amus.e.m.e.nts"; 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 ent.i.tled to rank with education, with art, with friends.h.i.+p. It is one of the means ordained for the promotion of health and cheerfulness and morality. Vice must be fought by welfare, not restraint; and society is not safe until to-day's pleasures are stronger than its temptations. Amus.e.m.e.nt is stronger than vice and can strangle the l.u.s.t 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 wars.h.i.+ps, on prisons and hospitals, instead of giving people 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 hara.s.sing, 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 inspired by 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 a.s.set, 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. They are 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 circ.u.mstances. Greatly it would help the general welfare of the nation if the citizens of the United States were better acquainted with their own 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 friends.h.i.+p, sympathy, and cooperation. To bring the capitalist and the laborer--all cla.s.ses--together in the Park's august scenes, is bound to encourage acquaintance and to prevent misunderstandings. All this means unity, friends.h.i.+p, 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 sh.o.r.e, is in tune with the universe. And he will know what human brotherhood means; will understand the heart of the democratic poet who declares, "A man's a man for a' that."

In Nature's enn.o.bling 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."

XXIII

THE TRAIL

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 s.h.i.+ft 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 sh.o.r.e, spending hours in the forest primeval, leisurely crossing the gra.s.sy, sun-filled glades, skirting the time-stained crags and vanis.h.i.+ng into the heights, looking down into the valley, and tarrying where artists would linger. Somewhere it leads to a lake.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAIL NEAR TIMBER-LINE, INDIAN HENRY'S PARK, MOUNT RAINIER]

At the primitive beaver house it takes a look as it crosses the expanded brook upon the beaver dam. A fallen tree gives it a way across the river. In a gorge it hears the ouzel from the rocks pour forth his melody--joyous notes of happy, liquid song.

It crosses a moraine to examine the useful debris that the Ice King formed while he was sculpturing the mountains and giving lines to the landscape. Clouds bound for definite ports in the trailless sky adorn its realm with floating shadows. It pa.s.ses a picturesque old landmark, a pine of a thousand years. In this one spot the ancient pine has stood, an observing spectator, while the seasons and the centuries flowed along. His autobiography is rich in weather lore, full of adventures, and filled with thrilling escapes from fires, lightning, and landslides. During his thousand years, strange travelers and processions have pa.s.sed along. He often saw victor and victim and the endless drama of the wilderness.

The trail is followed by wild life, and along it the wild flowers fill the wild gardens. It has the spirit of the primal outdoors. It extends away ever to the golden age. Many a night this way across the earth is as thick with fireflies as the great Milky Way across the sky with stars. The moon, the white aspens, and the dark spruces pile it with romantic shades, and on a sunny day it is often touched by the fleeting shadow of an eagle in the sky.

This old acquaintance would have you carry your own pack, and, like your best friend, expects your best on every occasion. The trail compels you to know yourself and to be yourself, and puts you in harmony with the universe. It makes you glad to be living. It gives health, hope, and courage, and it extends that touch of nature which tends to make you kind. This heroic way conducted our ancestors across the ages. It should be preserved. It has for us the inspiration of the ages.

A dim trail led our wandering primeval ancestors out from the twilight. It was a trail ever winding, shadowy, and broken, but ever under the open sky and ever from "yesterday's seven thousand years."