Forest Outings By Thirty Foresters

THIS was planned as a book of 32 parts, with each separate part or chapter signed by its author or authors. The arrangement was found unsuitable. The problems of using the national forests as places of rest and of human renewal, and at the same time administering a long-span program of ground line conservation, are essentially coordinate. All the special fields of interest overlap and interlink.

It was determined, then, to call in an editor from outside the Forest Service, to have him travel and live for a while on the national forests, and then reorganize the manuscript writing, here and there, his own sequences of narrative and interpretation from an outside point of view. This has been my principal occupation for the past year.

Even were this note of acknowledgment to be extended chapter-length, it still would fail to give adequate credit, by name, to the many professional foresters, afield and in Washington, who have written and then have helped to edit this book. The very men who wrote most of the initial draft, and who thus would have received the most credit in chapter bylines, were the first to urge that the chapters be merged, and that the chapter bylines be killed. Nowhere, I think, except in what we now have in this country of a college-trained Civil Service, will you find so many skilled and articulate people willing, even eager, to forego personal credit, to sink their personal identities in a common effort.

The names of the 30 authors are listed alphabetically. All save 2 are staff men of the United States Forest Service. Althea Dobbins is a free-lance writer. The late Robert Marshall, when chief of Recreation and Lands for the Forest Service, sent her forth to observe forest visitors and report. She wrote Guests of the Forests, chapter 3. Marshall's personal contributions to the manuscript include the sweeping inventory of the forests as pleasure grounds in the first chapter, practically all of the wilderness chapter (5), and most of the discussion of forest recreation for low-income groups which now is threaded through the closing chapters.

Bevier Show wrote the concluding sections of chapter 2, Americans Need Outings, and contributed largely to the ensuing account of a boom in recreation out from town. Robert Monahan, I. T. Yarnall, and Floyd Horton drafted the winter sports chapter (7). Elers Koch made the chief contribution to the chapters considering conflicts between timber management and public pleasure. The chapter on miners (12) is John Spencer's. Lyle Watts, H. L. Shantz, and John Hatton made the leading contributions as to game. All illustrations were selected from the official Forest Service photograph collection developed from contributions by forester-photographers throughout the Service.

For editorial aid and guidance I owe grateful acknowledgment to 10 or more of the authors; but to C. M. Granger, R. F. Hammatt, and A. K. Thurmond, especially.

R. L.

Thorn Meadow, Harford County, Md.
January 1, 1940.