Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States—Little Known and Unappreciated—The Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo,—The Lure of the Painted DesertLaut, Agnes C.
History
Through Our Unknown Southwest: The Wonderland of the United States—Little Known and Unappreciated—The Home of the Cliff Dweller and the Hopi, the Forest Ranger and the Navajo,—The Lure of the Painted Desert
Laut, Agnes C.
Hopi Indians; Navajo Indians; Southwest, New -- Description and travel
You will not find Newport; and you will not find Lenox; and you will not
find Saratoga in the National Forests. Neither will you find a dress
parade except the painter's brush with its vesture of flame in the upper
alpine meadows. And you will not find gaping on-lookers to break down
fences and report your doings, unless it be a Douglas squirrel swearing
at you for coming too near his _cache_ of pine cones at the foot of some
giant conifer. There is small noise of things doing in the National
Forests; but there is a great tinkling of waters; and there are many
voices of rills with a roar of flood torrents at rain time, or thunder
of avalanche when the snows come over a far ridge in spray fine as a
waterfall. In fair weather, you may spare yourself the trouble of a tent
and camp under a stretch of sky hung with stars, resinous of balsams,
spiced with the life of the cinnamon smells and the ozone tang. There
will be lakes of light as well as lakes of water, and an all-day diet of
condensed sunbeams every time you take a breath. Your bed will be
hemlock boughs--be sure to lay the branch-end out and the soft end in or
you'll dream of sleeping transfixed and bayoneted on a nine foot redwood
stump. Sage brush smells and cedar odors, you will have without paying
for a cedar chest. If you want softer bed and mixed perfumes, better
stay in Newport.
The Forestry Department will not resent your coming. Their men will
welcome you and help you to find camping ground.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, before the railroads have wakened up to the possibilities of
the National Forests as a playground, how is the lone American man,
woman, child, or group of all three, to find the way to the National
Forests? What will the outfit cost; and how is the camper to get
established?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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