32 



Sierra Club Bulletin 



can convey the slightest impression of what life among its great 

 peaks meant to us, I shall ask no more. The spell of those 

 twenty days has been cast over each one of us, not for a month, 

 nor for a summer, but as a spice to our whole short span of 

 years. We entered upon it eagerly, expectantly, sniffing the air 

 of adventure that always draws men's souls. We left it sadly, 

 but mellowed, inspired, contented, with the calm, sure peace 

 that the Sierra bestows upon those who will receive it. 



Yet there are those who say that we Americans have no need 

 of such a playground — there are square miles enough of na- 

 tional parks. They will quote you statistics to show how many 

 cattle can be grazed upon that high pastureland, how many 

 sheep can be fattened among the rocks of its precipitous slopes. 

 They will talk of timber wealth and mining, of highways, and 

 of the profits the Government might reap from its vast acres. 



The area that it is proposed to take over from the national 

 forest for a national park is not a cattle country; its sparse 

 pasture will hardly repay even the sheepman's seeking; its 

 trees, with the exception of the Sequoias in the lower warm 

 corner, which the nation will not have destroyed, are not worth 

 the lumberman's expense of cutting and taking out. This west- 

 ern flank of the Sierra is not commercially exploitable. 



Assuming for the moment that it were or might be made val- 

 uable in dollars and cents, are we as a nation in need of the 

 paltry return that might be squeezed out of it? Because Ni- 

 agara has uncounted horsepower in its bosom, do we give it 

 over to the engineers ? Because our dooryard gardens could be 

 made to produce food — and are so utiHzed in time of real need 

 : — shall we burn our perennials and shrubs, our flowering bulbs 

 and trees ? 



Thank Heaven we have in this great land of ours some of 

 Nature's manifestations that are worth going to see, worth 

 preserving for all time, worth cherishing for the good of men's 

 souls ! The time is coming when it will be harder than it is now 

 to set these great things of the earth aside for the good of a:ll 

 the people. Every day that fact is brought home to us in our 

 efforts to restore the beauties of our cities and towns that have 

 been defaced and almost destroyed in our unthinking march 

 toward material things. 



