Outdoor recreation

“ Today, the splendor of the great outdoors continues to inspire our citizens, and a love of outdoor recreation remains a fundamental part of the American character. By observing Great Outdoors Month, we celebrate our commitment to appreciating and protecting our natural wealth. ”

“ All forms of outdoor recreation which are calculated to produce the best physical condition—dumb-bells, Indian-clubs, exercises of various kinds, frequent bathing, followed by vigorous rubbing of the external surface of the body—are matters of great importance in this connection. ”

“ Manifestly, if outdoor recreations are important to the individual and to the nation, and if there is danger of their neglect, every instrumentality should be heartily encouraged which aims to create and stimulate their indulgence in every form. ”

“ Here and there important parts of the public lands in the National or State forests, for instance, are cut off from easy use by private inholdings. But the main amenity that is usually hard to reach is water, which happens also to be the major magnet for outdoor recreation of many kinds. ”

“ The author is aware of the fact that the general reader may be more interested in scout camping, summer camping, and recreation camps than in real wilderness work, but he has tried to impress upon the boys and girls, too, for that matter, the fact that the knowledge of real wilderness work will make even the near-at-home camping easier for them, and very much more interesting; it will also cause them to enjoy the council fire better and have a greater appreciation for everything pertaining to outdoor life. ”

“ While it is most agreeable thus to consider hunting and fishing as constituting, for those especially endowed for their enjoyment, the most tempting of outdoor sports, it is easily apparent that there is a practical value to these sports as well as all other outdoor recreations, which rests upon a broader foundation. ”

“ Here’s a thing to go fishing after that there’s real recreation in, full-size man’s recreation, and not the Persian-palace recreation of an Adirondack camp, with ice and servants and electric push-buttons. ”

“ Each Park is thus a wild-life paradise where the animals are safe, free from the fear of being killed by man. These Parks are ideal places in which to enjoy the animals and to study their character; and they are a happy hunting-ground for the hunter who carries the camera. Recreation in these wonderlands is thus absolutely separated from the butchering business. ”

“ During Great Outdoors Month and throughout the year, I encourage Americans to go camping, fishing, hunting, hiking, bird watching, boating, or to participate in other outdoor activities that are part of a healthy lifestyle. ”

“ During Great Outdoors Week, our Nation celebrates the beauty and majesty of the great outdoors. This occasion allows Americans to reflect on the role our parks, forests, wildlife refuges, recreation areas, and other public lands and waters play in our lives. ”

“ High above the clouds on Beartooth Plateau.
RECREATIONAL USE AND VALUES
No single activity of the forest has grown so rapidly in recent years as recreation. The forest is ideally adapted to recreational use because of the rough, majestic, and undeveloped character of its wilderness where most travel must be done with a horse and pack outfit. It is truly a forest with a “back country.” ”

“ During the month of June, I encourage Americans to pay tribute to and preserve the great outdoors. Americans of all ages can find calm and enjoyment in our Nation's vast outdoors. Those desiring quiet or solitude can explore one of our many National Parks, which offer tranquil and pristine surroundings. Those seeking recreation can also explore public lands, or they can simply run, bicycle, or fish in areas close to their homes. Whether near or far, the outdoors offers unique experiences. Exploring the great outdoors can also help improve one's health. ”

“ Magnificent canyons, splendid forests, the homes of great Americans-these are among the places preserved in Federal, State and local park systems. Recreation areas make everything from scuba diving to spelunking to plain old picnicking available to millions. ”

“ We should not overlook the value of the forest reservations as great national parks for recreation and sport, where those so inclined can go and get in touch with nature at her best; where the streams abound in trout, and wild animals are not confined behind iron bars; where there are no signs, 'Keep off the grass,' and, best of all, where one can build himself anew from wholesome mountain air and water, vigorous exercise and plain food. ”

“ The variety of pleasuring is similarly very large. One can ride horseback round the mountain in a leisurely week, or spend a month or more exploring the greater wilderness of the park. One can tramp the trails on long trips, camping by the way, or vary a vacation with numerous short tramps. ”

“ We hear a good deal in these days about the need of recreation, and not a word more than is true, but let us remember that the best recreation may consist in a simple change of work. Behold the arduous toil of the city lawyer, or banker, as on a holiday tour he climbs a peak of the Alps or the Adirondacks, or wades the chilly streams of Scotland or Canada a salmon rod in his hands. ”

“ There were croquet and tennis grounds, swings in the shade of the trees in the grove; inviting-looking seats there, and in other suitable places; there were shaded walks and winding paths through the woods; indeed, every sort of arrangement for recreation and pleasure that could be thought of and prepared for in the allotted space. ”

“ Every one of these parks, great and small, is a garden filled knee-deep with fresh, lovely flowers of every hue, the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings. ”

“ Americans can go fishing in Eleven Mile State Park in Colorado, camp on the bluffs of Perrot State Park in Wisconsin, and bike along the Sable River in Ludington State Park in Michigan. These lands and waters are also home to cultural and historic sites that inspire our love of country and serve as important touchstones for who we are as Americans.
Whether your great outdoors means a community park, a state reservoir, a national forest, or a backyard campout, we must cherish our outdoor spaces and work to preserve them for generations. ”

“ Those who feel the vim of outdoor life, those interested in any phase of Nature study, those wanting to get away from the city’s humdrum existence, in short, all who want to recreate can plan no more repaying or zestful days than those spent with a back pack outfit touring the unknown wilderness near home. ”

“ It is peculiarly fitted to be a summer playground, both for men and women who prefer to travel on horseback and “rough it” by putting up at a hotel at night, and for the true mountain lovers, who delight to use their own legs in climbing, and to sleep under the stars. This book has been written primarily to show Young America just how interesting, exciting, full of outdoor adventure, and full, too, of real education, life in this National park can be. ”

“ How can boys and girls help keep the grass, the paths, the flower-beds, the trees and the buildings beautiful? Where does the money come from to pay the caretakers of the park?
Some people visit the park only in spring, summer or autumn. We all love the park in those seasons. Many do not know how beautiful the bare trees look in winter with their gray or brown branches. There is no more exquisite sight in the world than to see these trees coated with glistening ice out to the tiniest twig, or to see them ridged with pearly white snow. It is a merry sight to see the jolly coasters and skaters. ”

“ A NEW recreation-ground is wanted for those of our countrymen who, without being travelers by profession, find pleasure and refreshment in rough travel among primitive people, in mountain scenery and glacier air, in that sense of adventure and discovery which is afforded only by unknown countries or virgin heights, and on unmapped snowy chains. ”

“ But the automobilists argue that a wilderness domain precludes the huge majority of recreation-seekers from deriving any amusement whatever from it. This is almost as irrational as contending that because more people enjoy bathing than art exhibits therefore we should change our picture galleries into swimming pools. ”

“ National parks are a testament to the natural wonders of our mountains, valleys, rivers, and streams. They remind us to take a break from the busy pace of modern society to experience the simpler pleasures of life and provide unique opportunities for personal recreation. ”

“ Livelier recreation, during the hours of completest ease, consisted mostly, as the period drew itself out, of those courses, along the lake and along the hills, which offer to student-life in whatever phase, throughout that blest country, the most romantic of all forms of "a little change" ”

“ Recreation may be obtained not only from athletic sports and social entertainments, but from the fields and woods, from books and music and pictures, even from VARIETY IN OUR WORK, if we only knew how to find it. ”

“ Not only do the Parks contain some of the world's sublimest and most beautiful scenes, but [xiii] each Park is a wild-life reservation, a place where guns are forbidden. Thus protected, these wildernesses will remain forever wild, forever mysterious and primeval, holding for the visitor the spell of the outdoors, exciting the spirit of exploration. Within them will survive that poetic million-year-old highway, the trail. Among their pathless scenes wild life will be perpetuated. ”

“ Play grounds are primarily selected and improved for particular forms of recreation and only such beauty and ornamentation is allowable as will not unduly interfere with their usefulness for their intended purpose. ”

“ To such a class, the benefits of a Park, possessing such facilities for recreation and improvement as the Sea-side Park will present, will be incalculable, in fostering the health, promoting the happiness, and elevating the taste of all who can avail themselves of its beneficial influences. ”

“ There is a growing appreciation of the safe and sane outdoors. People are rapidly realizing that vacations in the Parks and wild places are needful first aids to impaired health, and also that outdoor life is absolutely necessary for sustained or increased efficiency. From the wilderness the traveler returns a man, almost a superman. ”

“ The boys love outdoor life, and are greatly interested in hunting, fishing, and picture taking. They have motor cycles, motor boats, canoes, etc., and during their vacations go everywhere and have all sorts of thrilling adventures. The stories give full directions for camping out, how to fish, how to hunt wild animals and prepare the skins for stuffing, how to manage a canoe, how to swim, etc. Full of the very spirit of outdoor life.
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS
Or, The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club.
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON THE LAKE
Or, Lively Adventures on Wildcat Island. ”

“ There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town—say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden. ”

“ Half a day a week, together with the evenings of the long summer days, would suffice where the means of recreation are near at hand. Even the smallest factory villages could afford a little pleasure ground of their own, a public garden with a free gymnasium, a footrace track, ball ground, a tennis-hall or nine-pin-alley, for the winter season, a free bath, and a few zoölogical attractions. ”

“ The late dreary wilderness brightened into a fine open country, with stately groves, and clumps of oaks of a gigantic size, some of which stood singly, as if planted for ornament and shade, in the midst of rich meadows; while our horses, scattered about, and grazing under them, gave to the whole the air of a noble park. It was difficult to realize the fact that we were so far in the wilds beyond the residence of man. ”

“ Old Indian trails follow all the rivers and creeks throughout the park, and though these will be more or less obliterated and blocked with fallen timber, a competent guide can always be relied upon to take you to any corner of the park, and when you have found a good camping ground, with feed for the horses, a sparkling stream at your feet, and a circle of noble peaks smiling down upon you, you will, if you are the right sort, thank your stars that railways and hotels and roads lie far away in another world beyond the mountains. ”

“ The days are made up of picnics on land or water, camping trips into the surrounding wilderness, expeditions into the forest, visits to neighbouring islanders, fishing excursions. The men chop down trees for the immense campfires at night; the girls go out sailing, canoeing, gathering the abundance of wild fruits ”

“ Recreation in parks tends to prevent wasted life by preventing disease and wrong-doing. The conservation of scenery, the use of scenic places for public recreation parks, is conservation in the highest sense, for parks make the best economic use of the territory and they also pay large dividends in humanity. ”

“ From these lovely dens you may make excursions whenever you like into the middle of the park, where the geysers and hot springs are reeking and spouting in their beautiful basins, displaying an exuberance of color and strange motion and energy admirably calculated to surprise and frighten, charm and shake up the least sensitive out of apathy into newness of life. ”

“ National Parks will insure the perpetuation of the primitive and poetic pathway, the Trail.
The trail is as old as the hills. In every wild corner of the world it is the dim romantic highway through "No Man's Land." Ever intimate with the forest and stream, this adventurous and primitive way has an endless variety. ”