Enos A. Mills

“ The seasons for visiting National Parks are spring, summer, autumn, and winter! Morning, noon, the sunset hour, under the stars and with the moon—all times, each in its way, are good for rambling in these places of instruction and delight. I have climbed numerous peaks by moonlight and starlight, and have stood on the summit of the Continental Divide with the winter moon. Nature is good at all times. Rainy days, gray days, windy days, all have something for you not ordinarily offered. So, too, have the sunny winter days when upon the dazzling snow fall the deep-blue shadows of the pines. ”

“ TRAIL NEAR TIMBER-LINE, INDIAN HENRY'S PARK, MOUNT RAINIER
At the primitive beaver house it takes a look as it crosses the expanded brook upon the beaver dam. A fallen tree gives it a way across the river. In a gorge it hears the ouzel from the rocks pour forth his melody—joyous notes of happy, liquid song.
It crosses a moraine to examine the useful débris that the Ice King formed while he was sculpturing the mountains and giving lines to the landscape. Clouds bound for definite ports in the trailless sky adorn its realm with floating shadows. ”

“ An automobile road extends to the very edge of the glaciers; trails lead through the fragrant woods and wild-flower meadows; rocky outliers of the great mountain afford endless opportunities for climbing; and the great snow-covered peak flings his defiance to those that are strong of wind and limb. As the glaciers are only four hours' ride by automobile from Tacoma a glimpse of these rivers of ice may be obtained in a two-day trip, but many days might well be spent in seeing the beauties of nature that are grouped in an area that is relatively small. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the oldest settler upon the earth—the pioneer of pioneers—it knows the stories of centuries. At the dead lips of the Sphinx you listen in vain, but beneath a Big Tree the ages speak and the centuries shift their scenes. The Big Trees carry within their untranslated scrolls that which may enrich the literature of the world. Within a Big Tree's brave breast are more materials of fact and fancy than in the ocean's coral cove, or in the murmuring sea-shell on the shore.
In the forest, around the foot of a tree, rages an endless and ever-changing struggle for existence. ”

“ I have had the good fortune to see geysers by sunlight, by moonlight, during gray stormy days, and also while the earth around them was covered with snow.
By moonlight the mountainous National Parks are enchanted lands. There [Pg 327] is a gentleness, a serenity, and a softness that is never known in daylight. Many a time I have explored all night long. The trail is strangely romantic when across it fall the moon-toned etchings of the pines. The waterfalls, crags, mountain-tops, forest glades, and alpine lakes have marvelous combinations of light and shade, and they stir the senses like music. ”

“ The great peaks with age-old ice and snow, the mountain-high waterfalls that rush and roar, the waveless lakes that show the cloud and the blue, the waves of wind that shake the steadfast trees, the songs of birds that ring through the wilderness, the many-colored flowers and glorious sunsets—these waken and inspire us. We are glad to be living, and life's duties are done with happiest hands. ”

“ When in the forest one sits within the camp-fire's magic tent of light, amid the silent, sculptured trees, thrilling through one's blood go all the trials and triumphs of our race. A camp-fire in the forest marks the most enchanting place on life's highway wherein to have a lodging for the night.
Weird and strange are the feelings that flow as winds sweep and sound through the trees. Now the Storm King puts a bugle to his lips, and a deep, elemental hymn is sung while the blast surges wild through the pines. ”

“ I never see a little tree bursting from the earth, peeping confidingly up among the withered leaves, without wondering how long it will live, what trials or triumphs it will have. I always hope that it will be a home for the birds. I always hope that it will find life worth living, and that it will live long to better and to beautify the earth.
In spring, summer, autumn, and winter, the broadleaf forest is a picture gallery, a fine-arts hall. In winter, abloom with snow flowers or in penciled tracery against the sky, how trustfully it sleeps! ”

“ That is the kind of a woman with whom to start a world. We still need park places full of hope and beauty, with birds, flowers, and trees, that with their help we may live long and happily and harmoniously upon a beautiful world.
Scenic parts of this poetic and primeval world—parts rich in loveliness and grandeur—are saved for us in our National Parks. The National Parks and Monuments are filled with Nature's masterpieces, and contain splendid scenic and scientific features not elsewhere to be seen. The traveler might spend a lifetime in them without exhausting even their best attractions. ”

“ He often saw victor and victim and the endless drama of the wilderness.
The trail is followed by wild life, and along it the wild flowers fill the wild gardens. It has the spirit of the primal outdoors. It extends away ever to the golden age. Many a night this way across the earth is as thick with fireflies as the great Milky Way across the sky with stars. The moon, the white aspens, and the dark spruces pile it with romantic shades, and on a sunny day it is often touched by the fleeting shadow of an eagle in the sky. ”

“ Altitude is ever refreshing. The dust-filled, noise-crowded air is far below. From these scenic mountain heights one commands a new world of mountainous cloud-scenery in the sky. Grand, deep, blue gorges lie open in the cloud plateaus and mountains. To the enraptured eye the shifting clouds sometimes become continents and islands, real lands where people live, landscapes upon whose sunny hills and forested mountains shadows of other clouds fall, and across whose expanding plains many winding rivers run. ”

“ If you are dulled and dazed with the fever and the fret, or weary and worn,—tottering under burdens too heavy to bear,—go back to the old outdoor home. Here Nature will care for you as a mother for a child. In the mellow-lighted forest aisles, beneath the beautiful airy arches of limbs and leaves, with the lichen-tinted columns of gray and brown, with the tongueless eloquence of the bearded, veteran trees, amid the silence of centuries, you will come into your own. ”

“ If we should lose the hospitality of the trees and the friendship of the forest, our race too would be lost, and the desert's pale, sad sky would come to hover above a rounded, lifeless world. The trees are friends of mankind.
The forest that you see on the heights across the valley, that stands so steadfast upon the billowed and broken slopes, that drapes the dales and distances with peaceful, purple folds, and makes complete with grace and grandeur a hanging garden of the hills—this is the forest that sheltered our ancestors through the past's slow-changing years. ”

“ Here young and eager streams leap in white cascades between crowding crags and pines. In these pictured scenes the birds sing, the useful beaver builds his picturesque home; here the cheerful chipmunk frolics and never grows up; and here the world stays young. Forests give poetry to the prose of life and enable us to have and to hold high ideals.
In almost every forest is the quaking aspen, the most widely distributed tree in the world. In autumn its golden banners encircle the globe and adorn nearly one half the earth. ”

“ Among the trees on the rim and on Wizard Island are noble fir, alpine fir, mountain white pine, Douglas spruce, alpine hemlock, and lodge-pole pine. Sheep-pasturing in former years wrought havoc with the wild flowers, of which there are numerous varieties. There are many kinds of wild birds and wild life. While there are other scenic attractions, the supreme one must ever be the lake of marvelous blue and its rugged, fire-tinted walls. ”

“ The maple has its own excuse for being. The elms arch the woodland world with cathedral art. Beautiful is the lone silver spruce lingering among the grand golden lichened crags. The sturdy pines stand in ever green contentment. The straight spruces and stately firs point ever upward and never cease to [Pg 291] call "Excelsior!" nor to climb toward their ideal. The oak, full of character, welcomes all seasons and all weathers. Within the forest, up toward the heights, stands a tree that wins and holds the heart like a hollyhock. This tree, the hemlock, is a poem all alone. ”

“ The supreme triumph of parks is humanity. And as I have said elsewhere, some time it may be that an immortal pine will be the flag of a united and peaceful world.
John Muir felt that National Parks were the glory of the country and should make this country the glory of the earth. I feel certain that if Nature were to speak she would say, "Make National and State Parks of your best wild gardens, and with these I will develop greater men and women." ”

“ As well tell the number of forts that might have been built with the marbles and the energy that were put into statuary and the inspiring arts, as to consider or measure Big Trees in lumber terms.
The sequoia is one of the monumental wonders of this round world. It is the oldest settler—the pioneer of pioneers. Each venerable giant numbers his years by centuries. Each was already old when nations of the present were born. Gone and forgotten are the nations that were—gone the flags that waved in the wind when these trees began to cast their shadows. ”

“ Their low green ranks encircle the cold white realm of Farthest North; they grow in luxuriance [Pg 284] beneath the equatorial sun; they have climbed and held the heights though beaten and crushed with storm and snow; they have dared the desert's hot and deadly sand; they stand ankle-deep in bayous wrapped in tangled vines; they have breasted the surf and pushed out into the surges of the ocean; they have conquered and reclaimed the rocks on continents and islands; they have plumed with palms the white reefs of the blue and billowed sea; their triumphant masses stand where the Ice King rules ”

“ Among a wilderness of rugged mountains and lakes of the Glacier National Park are scores of peaks well worthy of the climber. To me Going-to-the-Sun Mountain and Mount Cleveland are two of the better ones.
Exercising in the heights quickly disinfects and reënergizes the system. A mental uplift, a broadening of the view, and a general lasting exhilaration come from the effort of mountain-climbing, together with the intimate human association and the soul-stirring scenes which it brings. Climbing a worthy peak ought to be listed among the proudest of our yearly accomplishments. ”

“ The forester must cut trees before they are over-ripe or his crop will waste, while the park man wants the groves to become aged and picturesque. The forester pastures cattle in his meadows, while the park man has only people and romping children among his wild flowers. The park needs the charm of primeval nature, and should be free from ugliness, artificiality, and commercialism. For the perpetuation of scenery, a landscape artist is absolutely necessary. It would be folly to put a park man in charge of a forest reserve, a lumbering proposition. ”

“ Volcanic outpourings have ended the life of many extensive Yellowstone forests. In Amethyst Mountain are twelve forests, one above the other, buried at different periods by volcanic eruptions. On top of this mountain the pines and spruces are merrily growing, unmindful of the buried past—of the tragic tree history beneath. Nature forgets. Ages ago, the lowest of these entombed forests grew on the mountain plateau in the sunlight. But a flow of volcanic mud and heavy showers of ashes overwhelmed and buried it, with the trees standing erect. ”

“ At most timber-lines the high winds blow chiefly from one direction. Many of the trees possess a long, vertical fringe of limbs to leeward, being limbless and barkless to stormward. Each might serve as an impressive symbolic statue of a wind-storm. Permanently, their limbs stream to leeward together, with fixed bends and distortions, as if cast in metal at the height of a storm. Many present an unconquerable and conscious appearance, like tattered pennants or torn, triumphant battle-flags of the victorious forest! ”

“ It has the aroma of the wilderness. It always leads to a definite place over a crooked and alluring way. With eager haste it may go straight to some poetic point, but usually it winds with many a delightful delay. I think of it as watching the white cascades, listening to the echoes, delaying by the lonely shore, spending hours in the forest primeval, leisurely crossing the grassy, sun-filled glades, skirting [Pg 389] the time-stained crags and vanishing into the heights, looking down into the valley, and tarrying where artists would linger. ”

“ The tree growth and the forest arrangement in the Yosemite National Park are among the grandest of such features on the globe, and they form one of the chief attractions of this heroic realm. The trees grow to enormous size and are distributed and grouped with crags, meadows, terraces, cañons—all in unmatched wild, artistic charm and sublimity. ”