THE SPIRIT OF THE FOREST

The supreme forest of the world is in the Sequoia National Park. The

Big Trees have attained here their greatest size and their grandest

development. Here is the forest's most impressive assemblage. In these

groves at the southern end of the splendid Sierra is all the eloquence

of wooded wilds--the silence of centuries and the eternal spirit of

the forest. This forest is to be guarded and saved forever.

[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO SHERMAN TREE

GIANT FOREST, SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK]

How happily trees have mingled with our lives! Ever since our lowly

ancestors crawled from gloomy caves, stood erect in the sunlight,

wondered at this calm, mysterious world, and at last made homes

beneath the hemlock and the pine--ever since then, down through the

ages, through the dim, sad centuries, all the way from cave to

cottage, the forest has been a mother to our good race. How

different our history had this wooded and beautiful world been

treeless and lonely! Groves stand peaceful and prominent on every

hill, in every dale of history that encourages or inspires. 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.

The trees have wandered over the earth and prepared it for our race.

Their low green ranks encircle the cold white realm of Farthest North;

they grow in luxuriance 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; and in volcanoes'

throats they have given beauty for ashes. Their banners wave under

every sun and sky. Wherever our race has gone to live, the trees have

given welcome and shelter.

The picturesque woodsman with his axe has helped to build nations and

to improve and sustain them after they were built. He will play his

part in the future. An axeman at work in the woods makes even a more

stirring and romantic picture than does the reaper in his harvest

home on autumn's golden fields. It is good to hear the sounds of the

axe as they echo and reëcho among wooded wilds and then fade away, a

melody amid the forested hills. The echoes of the axe suggest the old,

old story--tell of a love-touched dream come true, of another home to

be. When under the axe an old tree falls, it is the end of a life well

lived, the end of a work well done. But this tree may rise, helped and

shaped by happy hands, and become the most sacred place in all this

world of ours--a home where lovers live--a cottage with hollyhocks and

roses by the door.

But we are leaving the low-vaulted past. These trees are not to fall.

They are to stand. In parks, we have provided for trees a refuge with

ourselves. They are to live on, and with them we shall build more

stately mansions for the soul.

Trees have trials. They know what it is to struggle and grow strong.

With hardship they build history, adventure, pathos, and poetry.

Every tree has a life full of incident. Aged trees are stored with the

lore of generations, carry the character of centuries, have

biographies, stirring life-stories. A sequoia is an impressive wonder.

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. Here from season unto season a

thousand forms of life feed and frolic, live and love, fight and die.

Here Nature's stirring drama is playing on and always on. Here are

trials and triumphs, activity and repose, and all the woodland scenes

upon the wild world's stage amid the splendors and the shadows of the

pines. At this place Nature smiles and sings, and here, at times, the

lonely echo seems to search and seek in vain.

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!

Confidently and in perfect faith, it awaits the supreme day of spring,

when, amid the buzzing of bees, the songs of mating birds, and the

unfolding of green and crumpled leaves, comes the glory-burst of

bloom. In leaf-filled summer the woodlands are a realm of rich

content. But in reflective autumn, when the plaintive note of the

bluebird has Southland in its tones, when the hills are golden, then

the work of the leaves is done and they come out in garments of glory

to die--to die like the sunset of a splendid day. Color is triumphant

when autumn, the artist, touches the trees, for then the entire

temperate zone encircling this rounded world is a wreath of glory.

This wreath fades or falls away; and the little golden leaf that casts

its lot upon the breeze and floats off in the midst of mysteries is

upon a journey just as dear as when, amid the mists of sun and spring,

it did appear.

The woodland world of the mountains in National Parks is a grand

commingling of groves and grass-plots, crags and cañons, and rounded

lakes with forest frames and shadow-matted shores that rest in peace

within the purple forest. Here, in Nature's mirrors, pond-lilies, all

green and gold, rise and fall on gentle swells, or repose with

reflected clouds and stars. Here, too, are drifts of fringed gentians,

blue flakes from summer's bluest sky. 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. Though this tree has a

constitution so tender that it is easily killed by fire or injury, it

is one of the greatest pioneer trees in the forest world. Through the

ages the restless aspen leaves appear to have attracted the attention

of mankind. Unfortunately the old myths and legends concerning this

merry, childlike tree told of fear or sorrow, but now every one

catches the hopeful spirit of the aspen. Aspens are youth, eternal

youth. Endlessly their dancing leaves proclaim youth. They are romping

children. Their bare legs, their mud- and water-wading habits, their

dancing out of one thing into another, are charmingly, faithfully

childlike.

Every tree has the ways of its race. The willow in its appointed place

is ever leaning over watching the endless procession of waters. Does

it wonder whence and whither? The birches are maidens, slender, white,

and fair. 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 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. It is the heroine, the mother spirit of

the woodland world, handsome, richly robed, symmetrical, graceful,

sensitive, and steadfast. She, more than any other tree, appeals to

the eye and the heart. In her upcurving arms and entire expression

there is a yearning. When the world was young she may have been the

first tree to shelter our homeless, wandering race. To-day, when the

wild folk of the outdoors are most beset with cold or storm, they go

trustingly and confidingly to nestle in the hemlock's arms. And

rightly the sequoia is the nobleman of all the forest world.

That sweet singer, the solitaire, is the chorister of the forest. He

puts the woods in song. Hear his woodnotes wild and the Spirit of the

Forest will thrill you! Meditations and memories will throng you. His

matchless melody carries echoes of Orpheus and good tidings from

distant lands where dreams come true. Far away, soft and low, the wood

itself seems to be singing a hopeful song, a rhythm of ages, that you

have heard before. Pictured fairyland unfolds as you listen. In it is

the peace, the poetry, the majesty, and the mystery of the forest.

Go to the trees and get their good tidings. Have an autumn day in the

woods, and beneath the airy arches of limbs and leaves linger in paths

of peace. Speak to the jostling little trees that are so pretty and so

eager. Stand beneath the monarchs, rugged and rich in character. Lie

down upon the brown leaves, and look far away through the slowly

vanishing vistas full of forest, of columns that are filled with

kindest light. Leaves of red, bronze, and gold will rest in the

sunlight, or be falling back to earth without a fear.

The brook will murmur on; around, the falling nuts may patter upon the

fallen leaves; the woodpecker may be tip-tapping; the birds will be

passing for the Southland; the squirrels will be planting for the

ages. Though there are stirring activities and endless fancies, your

repose will be complete. Here where the lichen-tinted columns of gray

and brown are rich and beautiful in the mellow light, you will be at

your best--your own will come to you--with the Infinite you will be in

tune. Stay till night, and from the edge of the woods see the sun go

down in triumph. While all is hushed, watch the castled crag and the

gnarled pine on the hilltop blacken against the golden afterglow. In

the reflective twilight hour you may catch the murmur and the music of

the wind-touched trees.

I wish that every one might have a night by a camp-fire at Mother

Nature's hearth-stone. Culture began by a camp-fire in the forest.

Ages and ages ago, lightning one rainy evening set fire to a dead tree

near the entrance to a cave. The flames lured some of our frightened

ancestors from their cheerless lair, and as they stared at the burning

wood, they pushed back their long tangled hair, the better to watch

the movements of the mysterious flames. Around this fire these

primitive people gathered for the first social evening on the earth.

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. Soon Mother Nature is quietly singing, singing soft and low,

while the breezes pause and play in the pines. From the past one has

been ever coming, with the future is destined ever to go, when with

centuries of worshipful silence one waits for a wind in the pines.

Ever the good old world grows better, both with songs and with

silence, in the pines.

One touch of forest nature makes the whole world kin. A tree is the

flag of Nature, and forests give a universal feeling of good will. In

the boundless forest the boundary-lines of nations are forgotten. Some

time an immortal pine may be the flag of a united and peaceful world.

In the forests' fairyland are still heard "the horns of Elfland

faintly blowing." There--

"Echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever."

Kinship is the spirit of the forest.