WORK ON A NATIONAL FOREST 



No. 11. The Personal Equation 



By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, Supervisor, Sierra National Forest 



IT IS the 1st of May up here in the 

 forest, and all the world is moving 

 on to growth and strength. Every- 

 where new life has risen like a happy 

 flood. Everywhere the rangers arc 

 ready in the same old spirit of unspoiled 

 confidence that they have taught each 

 other, and their supervisor, up here in 

 old Sierra. 



Sometimes it has been said to me that 

 those forest men who really understand 

 the secret fashioning of the one central 

 principle which I have ever striven ti) 

 set forth in these articles do not in the 

 least need the lesson, while on the other 

 hand those who most painfully need it 

 are not conscious of its lack nor capable 

 of its comprehension. 



This must be true in some degree 

 of every fact, large or small ; the friends 

 of the fact, since time began, have ut- 

 tered in efi^ect the same criticism. But 

 if one yielded to it, even in thought, 

 it would be a treason like Arnold's. In 

 all men I have ever known there is 

 hidden, though often too deep and si- 

 lent, enough comprehension to follow 

 the blazed trail, when once they find it. 



It is not given to many of us to 

 blaze a trail so well and so wisely that 

 along that broadened path a railroad 

 shall some day run. Very few men in 

 all the ages that have been can rise to 

 the full certitude of Kipling's Pioneer. 



Do you remember him ? Kipling's 

 name for him is "The Explorer." The 

 poem is in the Five Nations. That, and 

 the "Chant Pagan," redeem a thousand 

 times over all the vulgar, trivial, and 

 ignorant things which Kipling has writ- 

 ten. Read it again, and rejoice with 

 the pioneer of the pioneers who had 

 set his mark on his land forever, and 



who said to those who were to build 

 the sites he had chosen. 



Have I named one single river? Have 1 

 claimed one single acre? 

 Have I kept one single nugget (barring 

 samples)? No; not L 

 Because my price zi'as paid me ten times over 

 by my Maker. 

 But you wouldn't understand it. You go 

 up and occup}'. 



Something of this pioneer feeling 

 comes to one every now and then, al- 

 most blinding him with its intensitv of 

 white fire. It itndoubtedly came with 

 immense force and in an especial way 

 to the man whose wdiole leadership of 

 the new forest movement in America 

 was made possible only because of his 

 "explorer's imagination ;" he heard, 

 and still hears, the call of that which 

 "lies hidden behind the ranges." 



What is it that binds the hearts of 

 men to a great cause such as forestry. 

 and makes it dearer to them with each 

 revolving year ? And what is the one 

 thread that runs through all that I 

 have written or said, these years in 

 the Sierras? It is, I think, the recogni- 

 tion of the infinite preciousness of the 

 "personal equation." I am convinced 

 that we should so deal with all men. 

 and with our fellow-workers, and with 

 those under us and those over us, that 

 the best there is in each one's personal 

 equation (both theirs and ours) shall 

 truly find its fullest development. 



The heart of it all is so to live that 

 we can put ourselves in the other fel- 

 low's place, see with his eyes, pulse 

 with his heart, think with his brain; sor- 

 row with his errors, and rejoice with 

 his successes, deal with him as a friend 

 and a brother, lift him to new levels 



397 



