YOSEMITE NATURE GUIDES 



By C. M. Goethe, President California Nature Study League 



IT is a far cry from the spreading ancient beeches of Denmark's 

 Royal Deer Forest to the towering yellow pines of the Yosemite 

 Valley floor. Studies, however, made under those beeches of directed 

 recreation of blind children, of their delighted enjoyment of the one 

 bit of nature-study possible to them, the music of wild birds, grew 

 into similar enjoyment last summer among the pines of the Sierras, 

 almost antipodal to Denmark, by numbers exceeding one-sixth of 

 the total attendance at the World Series at Cleveland. 



The world survey, of which the above Danish incident was a part, 

 began at a California orphanage. This had been wisely located, not 

 amidst the city's din, but on a peaceful farm. Here attempts were 

 made to develop character among the motherless through play. 

 Efforts were made to prepare them for life's battle by using the ways 

 of the gentle Froebel, instead of the usual withering, institutionaliz- 

 ing methods. Out of this orphanage laboratory came the concept 

 that America had developed in her recreational culture some things 

 unique, things worth offering abroad. One was the playground un- 

 der direction as seen in the high-type American city. Another was 

 the use of the American public-school plant as a day-and-night 

 community center for grown-ups as well as for children. Europe, 

 the world, were searched in vain to find any similar evolution. Jour- 

 neys were taken by rattling stoeljahrre along Norwegian fiords, 

 by sand-crunching camel across Saharan sands, by dugout canoe 

 through rattan-festooned Javan jungles, by squeaking wheelbarrow 

 along mucky Chinese byways, by patient elephant to where the 

 Grand Moguls had built, planning like Titans and finishing like 

 jewelers. These journeys opened world vistas, not only of the possi- 

 bilities of such education through play, but also of internationaliz- 

 ing recreation, of making available for all mankind the good evolved 

 in the recreational culture of each nation. 



Out of these world-wide labors came thus one vivid concept : that 

 America could profitably import, as well as export, crystallized rec- 

 reational experience. One chapter only of the resulting history can 



