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. Its scenes shift and its vistas change. 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 the
time-stained crags and vanishing into the heights, looking down into
the valley, and tarrying where artists would linger. Somewhere it
leads to a lake.
[Illustration: 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. It passes a picturesque old landmark,
a pine of a thousand years. In this one spot the ancient pine has
stood, an observing spectator, while the seasons and the centuries
flowed along. His autobiography is rich in weather lore, full of
adventures, and filled with thrilling escapes from fires, lightning,
and landslides. During his thousand years, strange travelers and
processions have passed along. 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.
This old acquaintance would have you carry your own pack, and, like
your best friend, expects your best on every occasion. The trail
compels you to know yourself and to be yourself, and puts you in
harmony with the universe. It makes you glad to be living. It gives
health, hope, and courage, and it extends that touch of nature which
tends to make you kind. This heroic way conducted our ancestors
across the ages. It should be preserved. It has for us the inspiration
of the ages.
A dim trail led our wandering primeval ancestors out from the
twilight. It was a trail ever winding, shadowy, and broken, but ever
under the open sky and ever from "yesterday's seven thousand years."
It had its beginning in the walks of beasts that prowled the solemn
primeval forests. Over it our half-lost ancestors painfully advanced.
A fallen tree was their first bridge and a floating log their first
boat. They wondered at the strange alternating day and night at which
we still wonder. With joy they watched the shining dawn, and with fear
and dread they saw the dusk of dying day. They learned the endless
procession of seasons. The mysterious movements of wind and water
aroused their curiosity, and with childlike interest they followed the
soft and silent movements of the clouds. The wide and starry sky
appealed strangely, strongly, to their imagination, and in this
luminous field of space their fancy found a local habitation and a
name for the thousand earthly fears and factors of their lives. They
dared the prairie, climbed the hills, but long kept close to the
forest.
After hard and fearful ages--after "a million years and a day"--the
camp-fire came at last. This fragment of the Immortal Sun conquered
the cold and the night, and misery and dread gave way to comfort and
hope. No more the aspen trembled. It became a dancing youth, while the
strange, invisible echo was a merry hiding child. The fireflies
changed to fairies, and Pan commenced to pipe the elemental melody of
the wild.
Nature ever showed her pictures and interested her children in
fairylands. Winter, cold and leafless; spring, full of song and
promise; the generous wealth of summer; and autumn with its harvest
and color, came and disappeared, and came again through all the
mysterious years. Lightning, the echo, with roar and whisper of the
viewless air, the white and lonely moon, the strange eclipse, the
brilliant and fleeting rainbow,--Nature's irised silken banner,--the
mystery of death, these seeds of thought bloomed into the fanciful,
beautiful myths and legends that we know.
Once, like a web of joy, trails overspread all the wild gardens of the
earth. The long trail is gone, and most others are cut to pieces and
ruined. The few broken remnants are but little used.
The traveler who forgets or loses the trail will lose his way, or miss
the best of life. The trail is the directest approach to the fountain
of life, and this immortal way delays age and commands youth to
linger. While you delay along the trail, Father Time pauses to lean
upon his scythe. The trail wanders away from the fever and the fret,
and leads to where the Red Gods call. This wonderful way must not be
buried and forgotten.