94 FOREST OUTINGS 



depths of the Florida forests than a secondary use for them developed, as 

 picnic spots. Floridians are great picnickers. In recognition of this urge the 

 Service has prepared beautiful and rather modern forest picnic grounds on 

 all four Florida forests. The one at Little Bayou, near Fort Walton on the 

 Choctawhatchee, is a natural jewel of a picnic spot, accessible by paved 

 road, yet removed from traffic, with a multitude of individual sites so scat- 

 tered as to allow individual or group seclusion. It is rather heavily used in 

 the hot season. In the summer the hunting camps are not in use, and the 

 picnic parties make their resolute ways there, plowing surging cars through 

 the deep sand. 



So now at many of these small camps the foresters are also rearing sizable 

 but inconspicuous rustic shelters, stoutly roofed, but open all around. These 

 structures, too, are built from the native materials of the forest and designed 

 in accord with the immediate forest background and need. They serve as 

 crowd umbrellas. The picnickers take shelter under them during the abrupt 

 torrential rains. Even a small roof gives women, especially, a measure of 

 comfort when the sky opens and rivers fall from the heavens with thunder 

 and lightning whipping and crackling around. 



All this is intended seriously to suggest that while equipment and method 

 must accord with a definite policy of forest recreational management, indi- 

 vidual adaptations within the limits of policy are permitted and even encour- 

 aged, region by region, forest by forest, and by camp — afield. 2 This is both 

 necessary and desirable. Every ranger district is different. The ranger there 

 is expected to know policy, and he is credited also, as he gains experience in 

 the Service, with a close working knowledge of that soil, its cover, its weather, 

 and its people. If he proves to lack in any important particular, another 

 ranger takes his post. And so it is right up through the decentralized admin- 

 istrative structure of the Forest Service, in respect to recreation manage- 

 ment, timber management, range management, water management, fire con- 

 trol, and everything else. The man on the ground is put there to administer 

 policy, but is given his head as to the details of management, in the main. 



In the planning and administration of forest camp sites, the need of a 



considerable individual leeway enters constantly. The reasons have already 



2 The latest and more concise statement of this policy is appended on page 287, Appendix. 



