XXII Why We Need National Parks
The Piute Indians have a legend which says that just at the close of creation the woman was consulted. She at once called into existence the birds, the flowers, and the trees. 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.
A National Park is an island of safety in this riotous world. Splendid forests, the waterfalls that leap in glory, the wild flowers that charm and illuminate the earth, the wild sheep of the sky-line crags, and the beauty of the birds, all have places of refuge which parks provide.
A National Park is a fountain of life. It is a matchless potential factor for good in national life. It holds within its magic realm benefits that are health-giving, educational, economic; that further efficiency and ethical relations, and are inspirational. Every one needs to play, and to play out of doors. Without parks and outdoor life all that is best in civilization will be smothered. To save ourselves, to prevent our perishing, to enable us to live at our best and happiest, parks are necessary. Within National Parks is room—glorious room—room in which to find ourselves, in which to think and hope, to dream and plan, to rest and resolve.
Nature, like our best friends, will have us do our best. King Lear led the typical purposeless indoor life. He was surrounded with pomp and senseless ceremony. He was in the midst of enemies of sincerity and individuality. He decayed. He was turned outdoors. Across the stormy moor he wandered, followed by his faithful Fool. At the door of the hovel he hesitated. Urged by the Fool, he agreed to take shelter inside. In a brief time with Nature on the moor he had become acquainted with himself and had developed universal sympathy. Standing in the storm at the entrance to the hovel, he uttered this noble cry of compassion:—
“Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?”
National Parks provide climate for everybody and scenery for all. If we play in the scenes where fairies live, for us all will be right with the world. Parks give purpose, noble purpose, to life. They are the “Never-Never-Land” in which we shall ever be growing, but never grow up.
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. We need these enchanted places. I am thankful to the pioneers who saw the wilderness scenes and were thoughtful enough to save the National Parks for us.
Robert Louis Stevenson says, “A man’s most serious business is his amusements”; and some one else has said:—
We need more plain pleasures, for recreation rightly used is a resource for the common purposes of daily life that is entitled to rank with education, with art, with friendship. It is one of the means ordained for the promotion of health and cheerfulness and morality. Vice must be fought by welfare, not restraint; and society is not safe until to-day’s pleasures are stronger than its temptations. Amusement is stronger than vice and can strangle the lust of it. Not only does morality thus rest back on recreation, but so does efficiency. One half of efficiency and happiness depends upon vitality, and vitality depends largely upon recreation, especially the simple recreation of the open air.
How and where people play determines the character of individuals and the destiny of their country. Success in life-work depends upon play and relaxation. Blue Monday did not originate outdoors. It is doubtful if any other influence produces so many good habits as a park. Parks keep a nation hopeful and young.
The better and stronger nation of the future will be a park-using nation. Many wrecked nations have tried to get along without outdoor parks and recreation-places. It is but little less than folly to spend millions on forts and warships, on prisons and hospitals, instead of giving people the opportunity to develop and rest in the sane outdoors.
The population of the United States now numbers a hundred millions and is growing with amazing rapidity. The harassing, exacting life of to-day makes outdoor life more important than ever before. Even in the country, more play places are needed. Most of the parklike places in the country have fallen into private hands to the exclusion of the public, but in every State in the Union a number of scenic places are available. These might well be secured by the public and made into city and county, state and national parks.
The intensity of love for native land depends chiefly upon the loveliness of its landscapes—upon its scenery. The great scenic places of a land should be owned by the public and often seen by the public. We cannot love an ugly country. Beauty satisfies the world’s great longing. Hatred and prejudice may be taught, but the love of land must be inspired—and inspired by the scenic loveliness of that land. “The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” Some time a Secretary of Parks and Recreation may be the most honored member of the President’s Cabinet.
Develop National Parks, and there is no danger that the people will fail to use them. They will help us to build a vast travel industry. In each of the years immediately preceding the European war, more than half a million Americans went to Europe. Each individual spent not less than a thousand dollars, a total of five hundred million dollars—this exclusive of large sums spent for works of art, jewelry, and clothing. Why should not such vast expenditures be made in our own country instead of in foreign lands? Scenery is an asset, and parks, multiplied and properly managed, would greatly help to keep our money at home as well as to educate and refine our people.
The existing National Parks—and there will be others—are a vast undeveloped resource of enormous potential value. They are a golden field that will grow the more with reaping! The Parks have the power to change and better the habits of a nation. They may arouse in us the desire to spend most of our spare time, and lead to the fashion of holding most of our social gatherings, outdoors.
Lack of national unity is perilous. A nation divided against itself is not strong. Internal strife sometimes is worse than foreign war. The people of the United States are united in name, but are they doing good team-work? The mingling of people from all quarters in their own great National Parks means friendly union. The Westerner ought to know the Easterner; the Easterner should be acquainted with the Westerner, and he ought also to see the magnificent distances in the West. Travel to National Parks will promote such acquaintance in the happiest circumstances. Greatly it would help the general welfare of the nation if the citizens of the United States were better acquainted with their own country, its resources, its people, and its problems. The debates on various public measures in Congress show a lack of national unity that arises from a lack of national information. A people united is a nation well prepared.
I sometimes think that getting really acquainted with some person, or with some fact, is a great event. There is nothing like acquaintance for promoting friendship, sympathy, and coöperation. To bring the capitalist and the laborer—all classes—together in the Park’s august scenes, is bound to encourage acquaintance and to prevent misunderstandings. All this means unity, friendship, and will keep war drums in the background.
He who feels the spell of the wild, the rhythmic melody of falling water, the echoes among the crags, the bird-songs, the wind in the pines, and the endless beat of wave upon the shore, is in tune with the universe. And he will know what human brotherhood means; will understand the heart of the democratic poet who declares, “A man’s a man for a’ that.”
In Nature’s ennobling and boundless scenes, the hateful boundary-lines and the forts and flags and prejudices of nations are forgotten. Nature is universal. She hoists no flags of hatred. Wood-notes wild contain no barbaric strains of war. 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.”