146 Our Need of Breathing Space 



soil. Coming from pioneer and immigrant stock, many of us from 

 farms and small towns, we have deep within us the feel of the frontier 

 and the so-called "good old days," the feel of living and, if possible, 

 working away from congestion and city sights and sounds and smells. 

 While few urban dwellers would want to exchange their way of liv- 

 ing for the past, there is a definite nostalgia, not only evidenced by 

 the urban growth into the open country, but by the tremendous in- 

 crease in recreational travel, the fifty-odd million going into our 

 national parks annually, the demand for camping, hunting, and fish- 

 ing opportunities. 



Ask the average city dweller what he thinks is the ideal life, and 

 what might contribute to his greater happiness, and he will no doubt 

 think of possibly another car, a bigger TV screen, a longer vacation, 

 and less traffic to contend with. Ask him if the American dream 

 means the disappearance of little towns with shady streets, open 

 countrysides, to be replaced by greater and greater industrialization 

 with smoke stacks instead of trees, polluted air instead of the smells 

 of fields and woods, gadgets and labor-saving devices replacing sim- 

 plicity, with the feeling of the out-of-doors in his daily life becoming 

 more and more a memory, and he will shrug his shoulders and won- 

 der if you are slightly insane. Instead of the old music his forebears 

 listened to, and the rhythms of nature and seasons which regulated 

 their lives, he has listened so long to the drums of the Chambers of 

 Commerce that the American dream has become synonymous with 

 the goal of unlimited exploitation and economic growth. 



While we have made great progress in developing knowledge of 

 conservation during the past fifty years, we still are a long way from 

 understanding and accepting Aldo Leopold's classic concept of an 

 "ecological conscience," or as Dr. Gulick says, "an awareness on the 

 part of urban man of his relationship to the world of nature." 



I am not as sanguine as he as to what we can do about this. While 

 it might be true, as Dr. Gulick suggests, that with our highly devel- 

 oped techniques of education and communication, "it should be pos- 

 sible to build a valid new idea into our fundamental culture within 

 a generation or two," we all know that any educational program as 

 broad and basic in its concepts as this, affecting as it ultimately must 

 the entire basis of social planning as well as our mores, will take the 



