Your National Parks Part 21

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 ascent and 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 reenergizes 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 a.s.sociation 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 dwellers eastward 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, crus.h.i.+ng--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 n.o.blest friends, our most exalting and inspiring comrades, our grandest emblems of divine power and divine peace.

XX

JOHN MUIR

John Muir arrived in San Francis...o...b.. boat from Panama in 1868. He was thirty years old. This was in the days of adventure. San Francis...o...b..y was alive with strange s.h.i.+ps 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN 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 far into 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, Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 a.s.sociated with Nature in the Yosemite National Park.

He married in 1879, and for ten years devoted a part of his time to business, ama.s.sing 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 thras.h.i.+ng 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 amus.e.m.e.nts." John Muir's amus.e.m.e.nts occupied the major part of his life, and the result is an inspiring and enn.o.bling 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, the storm, and all the fields of life. He has set Pan's melody to words. He sings of sun-tipped peaks and gloomy canons, flowery fields and wooded wilds. He has immortalized the Big Trees. His memory is destined to be ever a.s.sociated 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.

XXI

NATIONAL PARKS THE SCHOOL OF NATURE

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 zoological garden, and a type of the wilderness frontier. In this school-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 have something 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 ent.i.tles 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 zoological 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 a.s.sociation 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, gives physical 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 a.s.sociated 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 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 n.o.blest 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 schools than 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, gra.s.shoppers, waterbugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, b.u.t.terflies, 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.