90 FOREST OUTINGS 



like the beach, that a grass, 1 native to the Manchurian Desert, was planted 

 to provide a binding cover there. The loose-sand roads of the forest are not 

 certainly passable for cars and for fire-fighting equipment unless clay is 

 hauled in and mixed with the sand as a binder. At most of the fire towers 

 and at the present ranger station, there are native-ornamental plantings, and 

 some of the forest guards have subsistence gardens, to the end that they may 

 eat. But the gardens and plantings are literally "made," on soil or muck 

 hauled in by the truckload with CCC labor, and mixed as topsoil with the 

 sand. A recent survey on the Choctawhatchee Forest shows that the white 

 man who makes $550 a year there, or the black man who makes $425, makes 

 more than the average. 



All this has a bearing on the recreational facilities we shall find in that 

 apparently useless clearing on the creekbank when, in a moment, we 

 return to it. Campgrounds of the Forest Service may seem at first glance 

 somewhat standardized the country over, but there are endless differences 

 between them. No two of them are alike, any more than two trees are 

 alike; for like the trees, national-forest campgrounds are the growth of a 

 given soil, shaped by the immediate native background, and often modi- 

 fied in their form and structure by immediate need. 



Here on the western Florida Gulf Coast what have the forest dwellers 

 left by which to live? Timber, yes, and better timber is coming back 

 under selective management. This takes time, and never again, in all 

 likelihood, will this stretch of country support so many people as during 

 the great timber-cutting era here. Naval stores, yes, but except on the 

 national forest that is a diminished resource, decidedly; and under the 

 generally prevailing methods of overbleeding the pines, many of the native 

 turpentine operators are killing off what is left. 



Fishing, possibly; the Gulf and bayous are said to be teeming with 

 fish, but the relatively few residents who follow the water seem to be 

 getting about all of the small living there is in salt-water fishing for this 

 forest population now. Sport fishing may be improved, however; lakes 

 have been stocked. Later, there may be call for guides to take sportsmen 



1 Manila grass, ^oysia matrella. 



