ling us to return for a little time each year
to the wilds that were once our home, and to renew our acquaintance with
the trees, the streams and the rocks, and with the wild creatures that
live among them. To be able to make our beds on the leaves under the
trees, and to build a fire of sticks and cook our own food, seems quite
natural and like old and familiar times.

The stories and legends that have come down to us about the forests and
the imaginary people who lived in them were believed to be true by the
people of long ago. The deep, dark woods once covered nearly all Europe
where our ancestors lived. To be lost in the woods was to be in danger
of meeting the strange and mysterious people who were thought to live in
their depths. Among these beings, some of whom were good and others bad,
were fairies, nymphs, gnomes, and ogres. When people ceased to believe
so much in these stories, they began to lose their fear of the woods.
Among some of these people there grew up a love and fascination for the
trees which they believed were the dwelling places of spirits or
divinities.

If in our great forest playgrounds we can lead this out-of-door life for
a few weeks each year, it will make us healthier, stronger, and happier.
We no longer fear any mysterious creatures in the woods or the forces of
Nature as shown in the lightning, the winds, and the waterfalls; but
year by year we are finding more to love and admire in the wild scenery
of the woods and mountains and in their animal and plant inhabitants.

The wild woods call many of us on jaunts and picnics when, if it were
not for them, we should stay at home shut up in stuffy rooms. In time
may not the love of the forest wilds come back to us all? May not the
time come when each one of us shall be able to look at a beautiful tree
and not think only of how much lumber it would make? May not the time
come when we may hear the grouse drumming its call and not feel the
desire to kill and eat it?

If the time does come in which we think as much of our beautiful
mountains as the people of Europe do of the Alps, we shall then guard
them with far more jealous care than we do today. In spite of the fact
that the Alps are wet and cold and that no one thinks of sleeping out of
doors there, yet the people of Europe love their mountains almost
passionately.

Our mountains are much more attractive summer playgrounds than the Alps.
We can wander at will over a far greater number of