AMERICANS NEED OUTINGS 23 



totters out on a golf course. To Americans the forests mean adventure. 

 In many places, the forests still are primitive enough to provide adventure, 

 and this adds to the charm. 



In a personal letter, Rex King, of the Forest Service, at work in the 

 Southwest, lately sought to express in words the compulsion which led 

 him years ago to leave New York, his native city, and take work in a 

 natural wilderness. "As a boy," he recalls, "there was a sort of legend, a 

 promised land, that we used to hear of, we fellows who lived in New York. 

 It was 'The North Woods.' I don't remember that anyone ever stopped 

 to wonder just where the North Woods was located, but it was somewhere 

 a long way off. It was a place where there were lots of trees and rivers and 

 lakes, where one could live a long time without seeing people, and there 

 were many birds and animals. We were old enough to know that there 

 were no longer any Indians abroad — that there were no dangerous animals, 

 but there was still the expectancy of adventure. Even today that term 

 'North Woods' brings to my mind something which I have never found in 

 reality, although I have looked for it pretty well over the United States. 



"It seems to have meant something of a remnant of those things which 

 our ancestors had experienced — breadth, freedom, great spaces, fragrant 

 air, clear water, and perhaps just lonesomeness." 



"I Want Out" is a Pennsylvania-German expression that is also heard 

 occasionally in parts of Ohio, Indiana, and other States settled by pioneers 

 who came in from Pennsylvania over the Cumberland Gap. They use it as 

 a definite literal statement of purpose, to bus conductors, for instance. 

 Also, upon occasion, they say, "I want up," "I want down," and "I want 

 in." But: "I want out," is the sentence which rings now with its stark direct- 

 ness and urgency in the mind of anyone considering the growing pains of 

 demand upon forest recreational resources in the United States. 



There are times when we all want out, and times when the fret and 

 strain of modern life are such that this want becomes no mere whim, but 

 a dominating necessity. We all rebel at times against the regimentation 

 that commerce and fashion and custom, far more than our Government, 

 impose. And if our inherited sense of personal rebellion can be diverted and 



