Average people's direct use of the natural world is most often of the kind summed up as "outdoor recreation," an umbrella phrase under which are lumped a diversity of satisfactions found by widely differing persons in many types of more or less natural places. Muscular hunters and elderly birdwatchers, water-skiers and bank-fishermen, Sunday drivers on crowded highways and lean backpackers on dim trails in the South Branch highlands, baseball players and people who take naps on the grass beside the C. & O. Canal, amateur archaeologists and stock-car racing fans--all these and many other kinds of folk depend somehow on the Potomac outdoors for their pleasure. They use it. How much they use it and how much pleasure they get out of it are governed by the time on their hands, the availability of their chosen recreation, and whether it is good of its kind. A would-be hunter who cannot escape from the District of Columbia is out of luck unless his mobility improves. An Alexandria water-skier can divert himself on the metropolitan estuary during the summer months, but under ordinary conditions at present it is something less than what is known as a "quality experience," as is fishing there or any other water sport. A West Virginian has to have some time to spare if he wants to enjoy beaches and ocean breezes; so do Tidewater residents with a penchant for mountain trout fishing. Nevertheless the Basin holds a great deal for almost all tastes, and most of what it holds is of excellent quality. The main recreational needs are fairly clear: to protect and restore the Potomac outdoors from the deterioration noted in this and earlier chapters, to spread the chance at different kinds of pleasure around as much as possible, to guard against clashes between different kinds of use and against the destruction of the quality of quiet and natural places that occurs when too many people are jammed together in them, to make the Basin's pleasant corners and shores and byways easier to get at, and--not least important--to encourage uses that contribute to appreciation and preservation, helping to make sure that in the long run outdoor recreation in this region will be possible.