CAMPING IN COLORADO. 



DR. J. N. HALL. 



I occasionally meet some tired-looking 

 physician who says to me, 



"How can you get away to 2^0 camping 

 in the mountains every year? ' He im- 

 plies that it is simply for fun one leaves 

 the city and hunts and fishes through our 

 great game regions. I might reply that I 

 do not go camping primarily tc have a 

 good time. I go rather for the same rea- 

 son that I insure my house against fire; be- 

 cause it is a good business proposition to 

 do so. More people every year are learn- 

 ing that it pays a business or professional 

 man better to take a vacation in the woods 

 every summer, to have a pleasant time 

 doing it, and to acquire a stock of reserve 

 strength for the next season, than to stick 

 closely to his work, make a little more 

 money for a few years, and finally break 

 down in health. A large proportion of dis- 

 eases attack the victim because his health 

 is below par, often, perhaps, only tempo- 

 rarily; while another man, equally exposed, 

 escapes because he has a better resisting 

 power. The one has patched up the little 

 defects in his bodily mechanism, caused 

 by the year's work, by a timely rest; the 

 other has approached his season of heavy 

 labor without the recreation he so much 

 needs. The first, with a good digestion, 

 and his blood vessels filled with good red 

 blood, is exposed in a storm, and has a 

 trifling hoaresness the next day. The sec- 

 ond, equally exposed, has pleurisy or pneu- 

 monia, and tuberculosis follows. 



I have no doubt that the time consumed 

 in sickness among business men who do 

 not take proper recreation vastly more 

 than equals that taken for vacations by 

 the others. It is extremely easy for me to 

 decide whether I shall have my vacation 

 yearly, and lose a few weeks' business, or 

 work continuously and then spend 6 

 months enjoying an attack of typhoid 

 fever or 6 years attempting to recover 

 from tuberculos's. 



In the past 20 years I have seen scores 

 of men of my own profession who sought 

 Colorado for health, and the almost invari- 

 able tale is that overwork reduced the doc- 

 tor's strength, he took cold and the omni- 

 present germ of tuberculosis did the rest. 

 This is just as true in other lines of work 

 as in my own. 



I take it for granted then, that one 

 should have his vacation, and we shall 

 next take up the question, "Where shall 

 he go?" 



I see many men and women whose idea 

 of a vacation is to go to an expensive hotel, 

 lounge in the smoking room, play pool or 

 cards, attend a hop in the evening, drink 



plenty of strong drink, smoke continuously, 

 and go home at the end of the appointed 

 period. Fortunately they seem to be 

 getting fewer, and those who delight to get 

 close to nature for a few weeks in the 

 summer are correspondingly increasing. 



In the town and city we are subjected, 

 in our civilization, to a thousand little in- 

 fluences which tend to wear out our ner- 

 vous force. Poor ventilation, overheated 

 air from the furnace, lack of oxygen be- 

 cause of its consumption by gas jets, in- 

 halation of smoke and dust, with the ever 

 present germs of disease, the nerve-rending 

 clang of the gong on the passing car, the 

 ring of the telephone bell, and scores of 

 other annoying incidents of our daily life, 

 continuously, nibble away one's vitality. 

 In London, Sir Andrew Clark tells us, 

 these and other deleterious influences so 

 sap the strength of the population that a 

 long search failed to show a single adult 

 whose parents and grand parents had all 

 been London-born. Except for the infu- 

 sion of new blood from the country, the 

 population would be extinct in 3 or 4 gen- 

 erations. These things all tell us plainly 

 that we should go back to nature for our 

 vacations. The more nearly we can ap- 

 proach to the conditions of life of the sav- 

 age without his frequent lack of good food, 

 the better it is for us, and the better for our 

 descendants. 



In describing my ideal vacation for a 

 town-dweller and his family, I shall speak 

 necessarily of Colorado and the neighboring 

 States, since most of my adult life has been 

 spent in them. From Northern "Wyoming 

 to Texas I have camped almost yearly, 

 and I shall assume, in these days of cheap 

 and luxurious railway travel, that my 

 would-be campers are within reach of our 

 mountains. Much of the mountainous 

 part of the Western States is still Govern- 

 ment land. In the valleys and on the 

 plains, all of the good irrigable land is oc- 

 cupied by ranchmen, but it is a mere frac- 

 tion of the total area of the State. An in- 

 finitesimal part is claimed by miners, and 

 along the Union Pacific Railway, the origi- 

 nal land grant is private property; but the 

 immense forest regions are practically free 

 to all comers. The great Forest Reserves 

 are open to campers, and there they are 

 free from annoyances from private owner- 

 ship of land. All this portion of the State 

 lies at an altitude of 5,000 feet or over, 

 most of it above 7,000 feet. This is the 

 ideal elevation for summer recreation. 

 The nights are cool, and the heat of the 

 day is tempered by the altitude, so it is 

 never oppressive. From July till October 



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