CAMPS 111 



supervise camp sites more closely (with fixed forest guards, whenever that 

 is possible), and to encourage the use of portable stoves that burn kerosene 

 for camp cooking. 



Difficulties of making sanitation keep pace with increasing use, on peak- 

 load holidays especially, have been suggested. The problem is actual, and 

 not to be dismissed with a snicker. On the heaviest used camps of New 

 England, chemical toilets are generally preferred, not because they are any 

 better than flush toilets, but because flush toilets so often literally get jammed 

 up and overflow during the holiday overload. And at the close of such a 

 day or days on the most heavily used sites, as has also been indicated, the 

 job of cleaning up and incinerating the scattered garbage on many a camp 

 or picnic set is rather like cleaning up a little slum. 



Finally, there is the pure-water problem, and the question of opening 

 more new swimming places. Should this be done? Chlorinated reservoirs are 

 not as yet necessary at most forest camps, bacterial tests show, but there is a 

 real prospect that at certain places both drinking and bathing water may 

 soon have to be chlorinated in order to be safe. 



This looks to the future. What of swimming places now? There are 

 some 70,000 miles of fishing streams on the national forests, with countless 

 swimming holes. There are countless lakes, bayous, and a considerable 

 stretch of gulf or ocean shore. Consider the problem of bathing in inland 

 waters only, for the moment; and consider particularly, the urge of the 

 people to visit and plunge, in some number, into most of the new ponds, 

 lakes, and reservoirs being created on the national forests and off of them, 

 all as a part of a sweeping soil-, water-, and game-conservation program, the 

 country over. 



In dry-land country, where the reservoirs are not as a rule replenished 

 with running water all year round, this urge to bathe and swim in clear, 

 deep water seems instinctive, almost frantic; you cannot keep them out of 

 it. And some of the new lakes and reservoirs into which they plunge so gladly, 

 in desert New Mexico and Arizona for instance, have a foul, fungous smell 

 to their stagnant waters in the dry season. 



It is natural that eastern, humid forests should welcome swimmers, in 

 general, and seek to provide dressing quarters and at least a part-time life- 



