Your National Parks, with Detailed Information for Tourists

by Enos A. Mills; Laurence Frederick Schmeckebier

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 grass-plots, crags and cañons, and rounded lakes with forest frames and shadow-matted shores 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 constitution 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 sturdy 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 nobleman 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 vanishing 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 woodpecker may be tip-tapping; the birds will be passing 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.