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 the heart 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."
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 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, skirting the 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.
