summer playgrounds that
any people have ever had. The National Forests, we have learned, were
set aside for the direct purpose of preserving the timber supply and
regulating the flow of the mountain streams. The National Parks were
created for the purpose of preserving for all time the most beautiful
and attractive scenic features of our country. Among the most important
of these are the Yellowstone, Grand Canon, Yosemite, Rainier, and Crater
Lake parks. They include many thousands of square miles of forested
mountains, cliffs, lakes, waterfalls, and rivers, which are open to all
of us with no restrictions except that we do not injure them.

How delightful it is to have these wild and picturesque parts of our
country left unspoiled and just as Nature made them, and to be able to
wander through them at will! In the parks we can become acquainted with
the flowers, trees, birds, and animals as they were before the country
was discovered and settled by white men. Here the wild creatures are
protected from the hunters. The deer no longer fear the sight of men,
and the mother grouse can raise her brood in safety from them.

When summer comes we feel a strange and mysterious longing to get out of
doors and live in the forests with the wild creatures. The parks offer
just the opportunity to satisfy this longing, for in them we can get
away from the worries and perplexities of our everyday life.

We feel the "call of the wild," perhaps, because long ago our savage
ancestors dwelt in the forests among the hills. They were a part of
Nature and lived much as the animals do in caves in the hillsides, or in
homes of the rudest sort made of the bark of trees or the skins of
animals.

Our ancestors spent nearly all of their time out of doors in the pure,
fresh air. Their eyes and ears were trained to every sign of the forest,
for upon the sharpness of their senses their very lives depended.

[Illustration: _George J. Young_
A forest playground on Virginia Creek in the Yosemite country,
California, in one of Uncle Sam's forest reserves.]

We have lived in houses so long, where the air is often close and impure
and where we have no need of sharp senses for protection, that we have
lost some of the strength and sturdy self-reliance of our wild
ancestors.

We have become partly dulled to the beauty out of doors, because we have
been so constantly employed by the business of making a living. But the
forest playgrounds are cal