YOUR FOREST LAND 11 



nature from the edge of deserts to loftiest summits of wind-swept rock or 

 snow. There are the hot, dry woodlands of pifion and juniper which grow 

 in sun-baked soil and the cool, moist, alpine forests and meadows which 

 during most of the year are saturated with the snow and rain and mist of 

 mountaintops. There are the abused cut-over lands purchased by the 

 Government for the sake of restoring them to productivity, and virgin 

 forests as untouched by commercial use as before the days of Columbus. 

 In the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Black Hills, are forests so devoid 

 of water bodies as to require artificial lakes and reservoirs, and in northern 

 Minnesota and Wisconsin are forests with so many thousands of lakes that 

 no one has ever counted them all. 



Our forests include waterfalls, dry mesas, and turbulent rivers. They 

 include timberland, range land, rock land, and desert land, all mixed 

 together and overlapping in a pattern of endless change. Our national 

 forests include within their boundaries almost three-quarters of the timber- 

 land in public ownership. They contain from tens of thousands to millions 

 of acres of practically every important forest type, including the redwood. 



Let us look at a few of them in early summer; for when school lets out, 

 from then until Labor Day, that is when our forests receive the most visitors. 

 The "peak load," foresters call it, or the "heaviest use" by pent-up citizens 

 seeking natural recreation, comes the country over when youngsters are 

 out of school. 



On the upper slopes of the White Mountains in New Hampshire the 

 red spruce and balsam grow in dense stands and keep the ground cool and 

 shady even in the hottest weather. The alpine asters and goldenrods, the 

 Indian pokeweed, the goldthread, and the sphagnum moss are fresh and 

 untrampled. Through the forests young streams splash wildly over granite 

 boulders as they tumble on the first leap of their journey to the sea. 



In Pennsylvania the foliage of the hemlock-hardwood stands is a mixture 

 of dark-green needles and bright-green leaves. The larger trees display a 

 pleasing variety of patterns. The hemlocks are brown, with shallow grooves 

 in their fibrous bark; the maples deeply grooved and tan; the black cherry 

 trees, red-brown and lustrous, with their horizontal bark scars; the beeches 

 a smooth, hard grey, spotted with the black conks and healed-over branch 



