Our Forest Playgrounds 143 



in the lightning, the winds, and the waterfalls ; but year 

 by year we are finding more to love and admire in the wild 

 scenery of the woods and mountains and in their animal 

 and plant inhabitants. 



The wild woods call many of us on jaunts and picnics 

 when, if it were not for them, we should stay at home shut 

 up in stuffy rooms. In time may not the love of the forest 

 wilds come back to us all ? May liot the time come when 

 each one of us shall be able to look at a beautiful tree and 

 not think only of how much lumber it would make ? May 

 not the time come when we may hear the grouse drumming 

 its call and not feel the desire to kill and eat it ? 



If the time does coine in which we think as much of our 

 beautiful mountains as the people of Europe do of the Alps, 

 we shall then guard them with far more jealous care than 

 we do today. In spite of the fact that the Alps are wet and 

 cold and that no one thinks of sleeping out of doors there, 

 yet the people of Europe love their mountains almost pas- 

 sionately. 



Our mountains are much more attractive summer play- 

 grounds than the Alps. We can wander at will over a far 

 greater number of untrodden ways than Europeans can in 

 the Alps. We can make our beds under the trees with rarely 

 a thought of the weather. The air is always balmy and the 

 skies are ahnost always blue. 



