FORESTS 

 WAT E RS 

 SOILS AND 

 MINERALS 





Vol. XV 



APRIL, 1909 



No. 4 



WORK ON A NATIONAL FOREST 



No, 10, Dealing with Frontier Communities 



By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, Supervisor, Sierra National Forest 



IT HAS been many months since I 

 could find time for another of 

 these glimpses of our problems up 

 here among the rocks of Sierra. New 

 and interesting phases of life present 

 themselves almost every day, and of 

 course, the larger policy questions are 

 always with us. 



When I look back along the busy 

 months since the first article of this 

 series appeared in print, I begin to un- 

 derstand with more definiteness how 

 intimately all that I have written from 

 this forest is related to actual events 

 here, to our secret undercurrents, to the 

 changing airs of our spiritual atmos- 

 phere, and indeed, to the very warp 

 and woof of our perpetually fascinat- 

 ing struggle with the demons of doubt 

 and chaos as we carry forward the 

 bronze tree symbol of the Service. 



The intelligent filing clerks, glanc- 

 ing, no matter how swiftly, over cor- 

 respondence from any forest, must in- 

 evitably seize an impression as of the 

 ebb and flow of tides, good or 

 bad, sometimes in grazing matters, 



sometimes in timber, very often in re- 

 gard to lands or special uses. Of 

 course, the chiefs of divisions in their 

 weekly conferences discuss, among all 

 the routines, these occasional neap- 

 tides of tumult, which whirl and glis- 

 ten like very maelstroms, funneling 

 wild seas clear down to the primeval 

 rocks of human nature ; these young 

 and fire-hearted chiefs can perhaps 

 trace back all such tumults to the 

 smallest of beginnings in local igno- 

 rance and misunderstandings. 



At other times, how smooth and fair 

 the placid waters of life move on in 

 their appointed channels; the filing 

 clerks have merely routine work, dull, 

 safe, and pre-eminently proper, com- 

 ing to their methodical hands from that 

 serene forest. Then, of a surety, one 

 may sit down and write little stories as 

 of Robin Hood camp-fires, and indulge 

 in a chapter of "New Worlds for Old" 

 at lunch-time. 



"Blessed is that nation," wrote a 

 philosopher once, "that has no his- 

 tory;" and, as I remember, time was 



187 



