74 FOREST OUTINGS 



venturers were miraculously lucky to escape with their lives. They sal- 

 vaged some provisions from the wreckage, made packs, and walked in a 

 hundred miles or so, over the roughest sort of country, in 3 days. On their 

 29-day outing they encountered 27 days of rain. Yet all of them swore 

 they would not have traded those 29 days for a year of humdrum life back 

 home. Besought by more sheltered spirits to explain the charm of it all, 

 Marshall issued a personal memorandum, in part as follows: 



"Of course, all this is completely useless. No human being except myself 

 and my partners will be happier nor will the world be a bit better off because 

 of our exploration and mountaineering. There seems, however, no reason 

 why we should not be as much entitled to the fun of this exploration as 

 anyone else. And it is relatively inexpensive. The entire expedition cost less 

 than the cheapest new car, than a vacation trip to Europe. Consequently, if 

 the adventure was useless, it was also relatively harmless; but from an emo- 

 tional standpoint it was the top of the universe!" 



The wilderness is vanishing but it has as yet to vanish completely from 

 the face of this continent, and there is an increasing insistence that the 

 remaining wilderness be not blindly entered and subjugated to the pur- 

 suits of civilization, but kept as it is. 



When it comes to determining the precise degree in which such areas 

 should be held inviolate, sentiment varies. In a region where the pioneer 

 urge to open up new country still burns high, one recent correspondent 

 argued for a "gradual and measured introduction of roads and resort 

 facilities" into a number of wilderness areas there. And to this a responding 

 wilderness enthusiast replied at once in a ringing letter beginning: "There 

 can be no such thing as a gradual and measured ravishment !" 



The extent to which emotions essentially patriotic and in a sense reli- 

 gious must enter into decision of wilderness use or disuse may be gaged in 

 some part by reading the "platform" of The Wilderness Society, organized 

 at Washington, D. C., early in 1935. 



"PRIMITIVE AMERICA is vanishing with appalling rapidity. Scarcely a month 

 passes in which some highway does not invade an area which since the 

 beginning of time had known only natural modes of travel; or some last 



