AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 21 



It was rough work, especially hard on the women, who like things 

 convenient, orderly, dainty. But in most males there is a rough streak. 

 They find relief in rough clothes, rough food, rough ways; in telling rude 

 jokes, and letting the whiskers grow; in pigging it, as campers say, with an 

 unabashed and primitive abandon. And such a life seems all the more 

 satisfying to rude males if it is spiced with danger enough to permit a 

 certain amount of strut and heroics. There is evidence that a great many of 

 our American male progenitors and not a few of their women had in their 

 more exalted moments a grand time. The life was hard, but you felt that 

 you were doing something special on your own power; and it kept you 

 out of doors. 



Our frontier forebears had so much of nature all around them, and 

 hammering at them, that they did not go into rhapsodies at sunsets. They 

 made no undying lyrics, as did pale Shelley confined in London recalling 

 the flight of a lark. They did not sentimentalize or often speak of such beauty 

 and wonder, any more than most forest workers and farmers do today. 

 But the woods and unspoiled natural places lay just beyond their fields or 

 over their doorsills, and their work was generally such as took them out- 

 doors alone through all the changing seasons. 



They were there on business, but even if the work and their conscience 

 drove them, the virgin beauty and wonder surrounded them and worked 

 its spell. They were there on their own, as the saying goes, and they could 

 imagine themselves free. The men who conquered the wilderness did not 

 hate it. Outdoor escape was inseparably a part of their pioneering. We 

 who follow come honestly by our love and yearning for outdoor recreation. 

 The wide outdoors is in our blood, and we need the healing shelter of 

 woodland. 



Any open country will do for an outing. But in our forest land there 

 remains something virile, yet mysterious, something that exerts a special 

 pull upon a people still steeped in pioneer traditions. In woodland we still 

 feel a bracing sense of uncertainty, a hint of danger. Actually it does not 

 require a two-gun man or an athlete to sojourn in the forest. Yet a man 

 goes into deep woods with some hesitation as to his ability to cope with what 

 he may find there, whereas even a billionaire centenarian confidently 



