National Park Gardens 
By Mary Roberts Rinehart 
Every garden is an achievement. Some are the result of loving 
labor, and some of lavish expenditure, and again there are others 
which only become ours when we have bought them with miles of 
travel along the trail; when, rising higher and higher with each 
panting breath, we pay a gasping entrance fee at the rim of some 
mountain meadow filled with flowers. Always the mountains have 
these hidden gardens, high up upon their crests, where true forget-me- 
nots bloom out of the snow, and lupins and larkspur, liHes and wild 
roses, and the huge waving heads of the bear-grass live their fecund 
unmolested lives. But only here and there are these gardens attain- 
able. Only here and there does the trail cease its prosaic business of 
leading the wayfarer from place to place, and become a pathway to a 
garden. 
One of the great surprises of the visitor to our National Parks is 
always this matter of their natural gardens. Wherever there is 
shelter, and sometimes where there is none, appear in masses those 
very flowers which require such careful cultivation in our lowlands. 
Nothing at first so hurts the novice, as to see a thousand brilHant 
flower heads crushed beneath the horse's feet. And yet, so many 
are they, that no path of destruction follows behind the interloper; 
so strong are they apparently, that they only bend to the attack 
and rise again. So a National Park is chffs and dizzy peaks, water- 
falls and lakes. It has wild animals and tourists, trails ascending in 
terrifying switchbacks, and hotels at night with orchestras. But 
always it has its hardly-achieved gardens, softening its majesty with 
frail beauty, smiling over the edges of cHffs, or despoiled to wilt in 
the hot hands of some enthusiastic visitor. The mountain has 
labored and brought forth a garden. For fifty years our Parks have 
been ours. For fifty years the trails have been slowly extended, so 
that now we may reach their remotest lakes, their highest peaks and 
waterfalls. For fifty years we have trod Ughtly over their flowery 
carpets and, sitting quiet, have seen their wild-life creep to our feet. 
We have in that time seen the slow death of our wilderness outside 
the Parks — the passing of our remote West. 
And always we have said, "At least our Parks will remain to us; 
there, until the end of time, shall be sanctuary for our animals, and 
history and romance for our people. We have lost much, through 
carelessness and greed, but we cannot lose our Parks. " But today 
the Parks are more than threatened. Congress has aheady laid 
them open to commercial exploitation, and by the building of 
great dams, soon, unless the Act is repealed, a thousand mountain 
gardens will be desolate and submerged. The heavy foot of greed 
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