Forest Outings By Thirty Foresters

EYE TO THE SKY, FOOT TO EARTH

WHETHER it is a garden, a farm, or a forest, any piece of land yielding crops may also yield repose and joy. So it is with the millions of acres of our national forests. The pleasures these forests may give the people is the theme of this book.

For the first white settlers of America the woods lay just beyond the fields or out the door. So it was with woods and other natural wild country all the way to the Pacific. Solitude in a land of marvelous beauty, with clean and shining rivers and an abundance of wildlife, was our natural pioneer heritage as we moved west.

Wherever modern men go civilization follows and crowds them. Often men are driven into unnatural pursuits and actions not good for the land. This account that 30 foresters have written takes you all over our country and shows you the natural wealth and beauty which still is ours. But it also shows many places where men in ignorance, haste, and covetousness have wronged and hurt their country. We see now that there is a new conquest to be undertaken, a new kind of pioneering to be done, a healing reconstruction from the ground up. It would be no true Forest Service publication if it did not sound this call. The men of this Service have been preaching and practicing conservation for more than a third of a century.

I sometimes think we need more than ever, now, to refresh our spirits and renew our aims in the solitude of beautiful natural places. There is a natural completeness about outdoor occupations which we who have been forced indoors and penned in cities lack and miss. A man in a desk chair with his feet on a rug and his eye on a wall or ceiling all day long is a man in some part cut off from real life and the eternal sources of renewal. There is something strangely restoring about work or play that is done with an eye to the sky and with foot to earth.

We are many of us cut off now in our present way of life from a direct and continuous association with the soil and weather of a given country locality, but I think we are probably forming a stronger feeling for our country as a whole. We can travel now, fast and far, and we do travel. Overseas wars will probably impel us to travel in, and to discover, our own country even more. Millions of us already are finding simple refreshment on these great Federal properties, the national forests. I hope that millions of other forest guests will come. They may be sure of their welcome.

HENRY A. WALLACE, Secretary of Agriculture.

"The national forests are the people's soil, and the crops are theirs." ST. JOE NATIONAL FOREST, IDAHO. 365165