Guests of the Forests 



. . . There is nothing so much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland; and a pair of people, 



swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison. 



I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the most civil society. 



Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage 



EACH YEAR THEY COME, more and more of them, seeking the lost far 

 places where time is stilled and care forgotten in the long stillness. In our 

 West you will most often find them and most widely scattered; for the 

 West is closer, both in point of time and miles, to its natural outdoor sources 

 than is most of the East. 



Outdoor recreation — ''going up the mountain" — is a recognized 

 natural part of the general life out there. From the country of the 

 Rockies to the Pacific Ocean there is scarcely a town that does not lie 

 within rather easy driving distance of a national park or forest. Families 

 can pack the youngsters into a car and drive out to the nearest camp- 

 ground for a picnic supper. The men fish or play or loaf and the children 

 swim or romp while the shadows grow long. Then when night falls and 

 the stars come out, they gather around the campfire and sing or play games 

 or talk until it is time to go home. 



In the West they know better than easterners know, as a rule, how to 

 take care of themselves in the open. They are closer to the time when 

 they had to, on their own. But East or West, wherever you find them, they 

 are pretty much the same people that you meet next door, across the 

 street, or anywhere in this country that you travel. 



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