But the mere enjoyment of the landscape is not enough. We should 

 come to terms of intimacy with the wild, shy things and know them in their 

 home. To name the birds without a gun, to call the flowers that smile 

 up into your face, to salute each butterfly that flutters near, to hail the shells 

 and the strange creatures of the deep cast on the beach by the storm — 

 this is to live a hundredfold the wild, free life of the open. When every rock 

 can speak its history and every blade that grows gives some hint of its 

 meaning in the world, there is no danger that life will ever grow dull and 

 stale and unprofitable. 



Our schools have but half-awakened to their opportunity and their 

 responsibility in this direction. Beneath all the chaff of pedantry lies the 

 sweet kernel of life. To know it, to love it, to idealize it — this is the end 

 of education and the essence of knowledge. When our children are taught 

 to watch the procession of the seasons, to follow the flight of bird and 

 insect, to look ipull in the face of opening spring flowers and pass by without 

 plucking them, they will gain a new viewpoint not only of nature but of the 

 world at large. They will grow in understanding of human nature, which 

 includes and embosoms all lesser types. The child who learns to be con- 

 siderate of the wild flowers will not be rude to his fellows. For the essence 

 of gentleness and chivalry is compressed in this love of nature. 



I would have nature study in California include garden craft and wood 

 craft. It is good for children as well as for their elders to sow seed and tend 

 it while It germinates and grows to plant and flower. It is good for them 

 to shake off the grime of the city and breathe deep the balsam of the pines. 

 The desert, with all its waste of sun, its arid peaks and waterless plains, is a 

 school of passing worth. In such a school was tutored Elijah of old, and me- 

 thinks that in California to-day, if our men of wisdom went more to lie 

 down and sleep under the juniper tree, the angel might come to whisper in 

 their ears the word of God. 



If, then, we are to value nature study as a means to the ends of wis- 

 dom and culture and a larger insight into life, we must cherish the nature 

 which is our school. Forest parks and reservations, game preserves — in 

 fact, all natural areas guaranteed in their native integrity to our progeni- 

 tors — are a priceless inheritance for us to bequeath. The nearer such areas 

 stand to large centers of population, the greater their availability and use. 

 The present generation could not do any one act for the future of California 

 that would more surely make for human betterment than to set apart, se- 

 cure beyond the peradventure of change, a great natural park embracing 

 that monumental guardian of San Francisco Bay, Mount Tamalpais. And 

 the bold outer coast of San Francisco should be redeemed from the un- 

 sympathetic deformation of human hands — left to the winds and waves, 

 a challenge to the men of the city to hold their heads above all shock of 

 storm, all buffetings of the waves of adversity. Here might the children of 

 the West learn from that mighty primal sibyl, the Pacific, what no books 

 may teach, what no man may articulate. 



Mountaineering in the Summer 



V acatio n 



M. W. ROLPB 



LONG ago, "in my salad days, when I was green in judgment," and still 

 believed that all America lay on the Atlantic slope, I used to go camp- 

 ing summers, and used to take with me always a tent, in which, one 

 day out of every three or four, I would have to sit disconsolate, moist 

 and miserable in the midst of a rain-soaked landscape. The joys of 

 that outdoor life I remember; I remember too those weeping skies, 

 and the way in which the rain would beat through the canvas walls at 

 night and drive all the wretched sleepers into a wet huddle of blankets in 

 in the middle of the treacherous "shelter." Then there was a second serious 



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