CHILDREN OF MY TRAIL SCHOOL 159 



source of wonder and delight. How utterly happy 

 it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly 

 teaching her wonderful, glowing lessons so unlike 

 the dismal, grim ashes and cinders so long thrashed 

 into us. Here, without knowing it, we still were 

 in school; every wild lesson a love lesson, not 

 whipped but charmed into us." 



Interest gives the ability and energy to see ac- 

 curately and the incentive to watch for things that 

 may happen around us; adds purpose to every out- 

 door day. Such happy experiences based on in- 

 terest truly enrich life. Agassiz said that his chief 

 claim to distinction was that he had taught men to 

 observe. Interest is the master teacher. 



The Robinson Crusoe School was the name some- 

 one early applied to us, but later the name Trail 

 School was taken. This school — the great out- 

 doors — is in session whenever children wander 

 over the trail, free from academic chaperonage. 

 The trail supplies materials and equipment, and 

 Mother Nature is an endless mental stimulus. 



We are in a high mountain valley, in one corner 

 of the Rocky Mountain National Park, at an alti- 

 tude of nine thousand feet. The locality is rich in 

 natural history. Within three miles of us there are 

 hundreds of varieties of flowers; dozens of kinds 

 of birds; a number of wild animals, including bea- 

 vers and bears; forests of pine, fir, spruce, and 

 aspen; steep mountains; likely streams, and a num- 

 ber of kinds of rocks. 



