Harold W. Fairbanks What does he plant who plants a tree? He plants the friend of sun and sky; He plants the flag of breezes free; The shaft of beauty, towering high; He plants a home to heaven anigh For song and mother-croon of bird In hushed and happy twilight heard— The treble of heaven's harmony— These things he plants who plants a tree. What does he plant who plants a tree? He plants cool shade and tender rain, And seed and bud of days to be, And years that fade and flush again; He plants the glory of the plain; He plants the forest's heritage; The harvest of a coming age; The joy that unborn eyes shall see— These things he plants who plants a tree. What does he plant who plants a tree? He plants, in sap and leaf and wood, In love of home and loyalty And far-cast thought of civic good— His blessing on the neighborhood Who in the hollow of His hand Holds all the growth of all our land— A nation's growth from sea to sea Stirs in his heart who plants a tree.

H. C. Bunner,
The Heart of the Tree; in Century Magazine, April, 1893

Our National Parks and Forests form the grandest summer playgrounds that any people have ever had. The National Forests, we have learned, were set aside for the direct purpose of preserving the timber supply and regulating the flow of the mountain streams. The National Parks were created for the purpose of preserving for all time the most beautiful and attractive scenic features of our country. Among the most important of these are the Yellowstone, Grand CaÑon, Yosemite, Rainier, and Crater Lake parks. They include many thousands of square miles of forested mountains, cliffs, lakes, waterfalls, and rivers, which are open to all of us with no restrictions except that we do not injure them.

How delightful it is to have these wild and picturesque parts of our country left unspoiled and just as Nature made them, and to be able to wander through them at will! In the parks we can become acquainted with the flowers, trees, birds, and animals as they were before the country was discovered and settled by white men. Here the wild creatures are protected from the hunters. The deer no longer fear the sight of men, and the mother grouse can raise her brood in safety from them.

When summer comes we feel a strange and mysterious longing to get out of doors and live in the forests with the wild creatures. The parks offer just the opportunity to satisfy this longing, for in them we can get away from the worries and perplexities of our everyday life.

We feel the "call of the wild," perhaps, because long ago our savage ancestors dwelt in the forests among the hills. They were a part of Nature and lived much as the animals do in caves in the hillsides, or in homes of the rudest sort made of the bark of trees or the skins of animals.

Our ancestors spent nearly all of their time out of doors in the pure, fresh air. Their eyes and ears were trained to every sign of the forest, for upon the sharpness of their senses their very lives depended.

We have lived in houses so long, where the air is often close and impure and where we have no need of sharp senses for protection, that we have lost some of the strength and sturdy self-reliance of our wild ancestors.

We have become partly dulled to the beauty out of doors, because we have been so constantly employed by the business of making a living. But the forest playgrounds are calling us to return for a little time each year to the wilds that were once our home, and to renew our acquaintance with the trees, the streams and the rocks, and with the wild creatures that live among them. To be able to make our beds on the leaves under the trees, and to build a fire of sticks and cook our own food, seems quite natural and like old and familiar times.

The stories and legends that have come down to us about the forests and the imaginary people who lived in them were believed to be true by the people of long ago. The deep, dark woods once covered nearly all Europe where our ancestors lived. To be lost in the woods was to be in danger of meeting the strange and mysterious people who were thought to live in their depths. Among these beings, some of whom were good and others bad, were fairies, nymphs, gnomes, and ogres. When people ceased to believe so much in these stories, they began to lose their fear of the woods. Among some of these people there grew up a love and fascination for the trees which they believed were the dwelling places of spirits or divinities.

If in our great forest playgrounds we can lead this out-of-door life for a few weeks each year, it will make us healthier, stronger, and happier. We no longer fear any mysterious creatures in the woods or the forces of Nature as shown in the lightning, the winds, and the waterfalls; but year by year we are finding more to love and admire in the wild scenery of the woods and mountains and in their animal and plant inhabitants.

The wild woods call many of us on jaunts and picnics when, if it were not for them, we should stay at home shut up in stuffy rooms. In time may not the love of the forest wilds come back to us all? May not the time come when each one of us shall be able to look at a beautiful tree and not think only of how much lumber it would make? May not the time come when we may hear the grouse drumming its call and not feel the desire to kill and eat it?

If the time does come in which we think as much of our beautiful mountains as the people of Europe do of the Alps, we shall then guard them with far more jealous care than we do today. In spite of the fact that the Alps are wet and cold and that no one thinks of sleeping out of doors there, yet the people of Europe love their mountains almost passionately.

Our mountains are much more attractive summer playgrounds than the Alps. We can wander at will over a far greater number of untrodden ways than Europeans can in the Alps. We can make our beds under the trees with rarely a thought of the weather. The air is always balmy and the skies are almost always blue.