The Untamed Classroom, How Wilderness Shaped American Youth

“ What boy would want a finer opportunity to indulge all the wild propensities that lurk in the untamed heart of every healthy youngster? To roam in the untracked forest, to sail the lake, to hunt, to fish, to dream of the great unknown world lying just beyond the sun-tipped trees,—what can the schools give in exchange for this? ”

“ The man should have youth and strength who seeks adventure in the wide, waste spaces of the earth, in the marshes, and among the vast mountain masses, in the northern forests, amid the steaming jungles of the tropics, or on the deserts of sand or of snow. He must long greatly for the lonely winds that blow across the wilderness, and for sunrise and sunset over the rim of the empty world. His heart must thrill for the saddle and not for the hearthstone. ”

“ However, the young men had been well selected. They were the type of youths who said, “We can, We will!” They were told plainly and bluntly that no weakling could live in the forest solitude, and that it was their duty to be prepared for emergencies of all kinds. As [27] the voyage progressed they were given further instruction in woodcraft and trapping of animals, and how to meet and dispose of the larger animals, such as the grizzly, the silver tip, the mountain lion, the wolf, and others which they would meet in the wilderness. ”

“ Wherefore have we come hither to set up our own tombstones in a wilderness? A howling wilderness it is. The wolf and the bear meet us within halloo of our dwellings. The savage lieth in wait for us in the dismal shadow of the woods. The stubborn roots of the trees break our ploughshares when we would till the earth. Our children cry for bread, and we must dig in the sands of the seashore to satisfy them. Wherefore, I say again, have we sought this country of a rugged soil and wintry sky? Was it not for the enjoyment of our civil rights? ”

“ We were ten days upon this forest journey, from the time of our crossing the Maumee; and they were hard days, even to those of us long habituated to the hardships of border travel. Indeed, I know few forms of exertion that so thoroughly test the mettle of men as journeying across the wilderness. There are no artificial surroundings, either to inspire or restrain; and insensibly humanity returns to natural conditions, permitting the underlying savage to gain ascendency. ”

“ There are men who, on finding themselves alone in a pathless forest, become appalled, almost panic stricken. The vastness of an unbroken wilderness subdues them and they quail before the relentless, untamed forces of nature. These are the men who grow enthusiastic—at home— about sylvan life, outdoor sports, but always strike camp and come home rather sooner than they intended. And there be some who plunge into an unbroken forest with a feeling of fresh, free, invigorating delight, as they might dash into a crisp ocean surf on a hot day. ”

“ The adventurous boy who, even in times of peace, was scornful of formal education and ran away to enlist in the navy or otherwise sought to widen the cramped horizons of home—and every town has this boy—still reappears at intervals to report to his parents and submit to the admiration and envy of his old schoolmates in the Main Street bazaars. This type endures and will, very likely, persist while there are seas to cross and battles to be won. ”

“ Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. ”

“ The stimulation with which a healthy organism responds to rigorous conditions expresses itself in an increased efficiency that is usually invincible. Thus it is that from the physically unfruitful desert all really great ideas have sprung. The wilderness has ever been the rich storehouse of spiritual things. Man gains corporeal, moral and intellectual power in the arid waste, and loses them in the land of corn and wine. Dearth is the parent and the tutor of thought, the desert is the harvest-field of wisdom. Solitude is the fruitful mother of noble resolve,—the kind nurse of the spirit. ”

“ Because of its size the wilderness also has a physical ambiency about it which most forms of beauty lack. One looks from outside at works of art and architecture, listens from outside to music or poetry. But when one looks at and listens to the wilderness he is encompassed by his experience of beauty, lives in the midst of his esthetic universe. ”

“ This power in the beauties of the natural world to excite and gratify the imagination, is emphatically the poetry of nature, sending out its appeal from every object which greets the eye. There is poetry in the pathless wood, when the summer breeze sweeps over the waves of its dark green foliage—in the bold scenery of the mountain’s height, inspiring the soul with feelings of grandeur and sublimity—in the green valley throwing a charm of hallowed tranquility around the spirit. ”

“ I open 247eye and ear, and through these openings pleasures flow into my soul from a thousand sides: flowers painted by the hand of Nature, the rich music of the forest, the bright daylight which pours life and light all round me.... How indifferent, tasteless, and dead is all the fantastic glamour of artificial splendour and luxuriance in comparison with the living radiance of the real beautiful world of Nature, with the joyousness, repose, and admiration I feel before a meadow in blossom, a rustling stream, the pleasant awesomeness of night, or of the majesty of innumerable worlds. ”

“ We must believe that after having read "Spring," "Summer," "Autumn," and "Winter," upon his infrequent excursions beyond the environs of the great metropolis he saw new beauties in the hitherto common-place landscapes, responded to the color in the fields and hedgerows, became interested in fantastic cloud effects, heard music in the streams, the waterfalls and in the songs of birds. For how many of us have arisen new sources of joy in Nature's beauteous wonderland at the instigation of poets, essayists and novelists who have seen and read with loving eyes ”

“ Penetrating everywhere and saturating the atmosphere with its sweetness, may be heard the music of some rippling stream winding its happy way down the mountain side and playing, as it were, an accompaniment to the duets of soul mated song birds unable to restrain their songs of joy. If this is a wilderness then a wilderness is a paradise on earth. ”

“ The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams. ”

“ But wheresoever we may venture to go in all this good world, nature is ever found richer and more beautiful than she seems, and nowhere may you meet with more varied and delightful surprises than in the byways and recesses of this sublime wilderness—lovely asters and abronias on the dusty plains, rose-gardens around the mountain wells, and resiny woods, where all seemed so desolate, adorning the hot foothills as well as the cool summits, fed by cordial and benevolent storms of rain and hail and snow ”

“ The third emblem of life is the wilderness—that place to which wise men and poets and [Pg 94] saints are driven in the last resort. “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,” wrote Byron. “There is society where none intrudes.” The wilderness tells you more, when you are attune to it. That is seldom the experience of the tramp on his first long divagation from the beaten track. The wilderness tires him, the forests blind him, the mountains wear him down, the endless plain rises under him and he smites his feet. ”

“ It is imagination that "bodies forth the forms of things unknown," and makes all objects interesting. It lights the path of education and throws changing color and romance over every act and scene in life. It gives a magic spell to existence. This matchless torch may be set blazing by a visit to the wonderland of a National Park where wilderness is king—where the fairies live.
Often, the chief incentive that starts a child toward the acquiring of an education is interest in this fairyland of Nature. Interest is the highroad to education. Interest the mind and it will grow like a garden. ”

“ No other school is likely so to inspire children, so to give them vision and fire their imagination. Surely the children ought to have this extraordinary opportunity.
The percentage of children aroused and started to greatness by schools of prison-like policy is small indeed. The proper place for at least a part of every child's schooling is the great outdoors. In our great National Parks we have an unrivaled outdoor school that is always open; in it is a library, a museum, a zoölogical garden, and a type of the wilderness frontier. ”

“ The wild gardens of Nature are the best kindergartens. The child who breathes the pure air among the pines, and plays among the birds and flowers, has the greatest of advantages. The child stirred with ideal hopes to-day will create nobly to-morrow. Children from Nature's Book and School stand highest in the examinations of life and carry life's richest treasures: health, individuality, sincerity, wholesome self-reliance, and efficiency. Touched with nature, they are natural and, like Tiny Tim, they love everybody. Nature wins the heart of childhood. ”

“ These nature stories, without any spirit of preaching or moralizing, show children how to enjoy nature, whether it be in the country or the city. They teach the child to form habits of observation that encourage healthful recreation. A boy who has understood the spirit of Roberts, Seton, and Sharp is not likely to find the village poolroom attractive. Nature literature, however, need not be taught merely for moral and practical purposes, for it has come to be literature of artistic worth, and as such it has earned a place among other kinds of literature for children. ”

“ But we must not, in so doing, wean still more from, but perpetually incite to visit, field, forest, hill, shore, the water, flowers, animals, the true homes of childhood in this wild, undomesticated stage from which modern conditions have kidnapped and transported him. Books and reading are distasteful, for the very soul and body cry out for a more active, objective life, and to know nature and man at first hand. These two staples, stories and nature, by these informal methods of the home and the environment, constitute fundamental education. ”

“ Its place in the grades. Nature literature seems to have a place of increasing importance in schools, especially in grades above the third. Many excellent books of what we have called the fiction type and the realistic type have a charming spirit of outdoor life and adventure that makes them pleasing substitutes for the objectionable dime novel. One should not assume that these nature stories would be of less interest and value to the country child than to the city child. Too often country children have not been taught to think of animals as "little brothers of the field and the air." ”

“ Nowhere should the acquiring of mere information be the end of an educational process, and least of all in nature-study, for the very essence of nature-study is spirit, sympathy, enthusiasm, attitude toward life. These results the youth gains naturally when he associates in a perfectly free and natural way with objects in the wild. Science-teaching has fallen short of its goal in the elementary schools—and even in the colleges and universities—by insisting so much on the subject-matter that the pupil is overlooked. ”

“ I believe that a child’s interest in outdoor life is a kind of hunger, as natural as his interest in bread and butter. He cannot live on bread and butter alone, but he ought not to try to live without them. He cannot be educated on nature-study alone, but he ought not to be educated without it. To learn to obey and reason and feel—these are the triple ends of education, and the greatest of these is to learn to feel. The teacher’s word for obedience ”

“ The nature-study movement is the outgrowth of an effort to put the child into contact and sympathy with its own life.
It is strange that such a movement is necessary. It would seem to be natural and almost inevitable that the education of the child should place it in intimate relation with the objects and events with which it lives. It is a fact, however, that our teaching has been largely exotic to the child; that it has begun by taking the child away from its natural environment; that it has concerned itself with the subject-matter rather than with the child. ”

“ The day of the object lesson is past, and to young children the nature lesson must become nature work.
It is in the term "nature lesson" that the root of the mischief lies: nature is not a lesson to the young child, it is an interest from which he seeks to gain more pleasure, by means of his own activity: plants encourage him to garden, animals stir his desire to watch, feed and protect; water, earth and fire arouse his craving to investigate and experiment: there is no motive for passive study at this juncture, and without a motive or purpose all study leads to nothing. ”

“ The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. ”

“ But once yet again let the soul take a deep breath, and cry, “I am a man, not a scholar. I dare to be a man, not a knower, the masters of the school smother and deaden me with their science of the sublime and free world of the deep and the divine and the eternal,”—let the soul that “thought” has kept from seeing and hearing and feeling, so cry, and how childish, how ridiculously petty, how weak and pathological, will all schoolmasterism come to seem!
Nature is also Art, genuine, true art. It is an inner nature, a soul-nature, a soul-life. ”

“ We believe this contributes much to the upbuilding of a boy's character and enables him to get out of life much enjoyment that would not otherwise be possible."
"A place where older boys, boys of the restless age, may live a happy, carefree, outdoor life, free from the artificialities and pernicious influences of the larger cities"; a place where "all the cravings of a real boy are satisfied"; a place "where constant association with agreeable companions and the influence of well-bred college men in a clean and healthy moral atmosphere make for noble manhood ”