However useful may be the National Parks and Forests of the West for those affording the Pullman fare to reach them, what is needed by the bulk of the American population is something nearer home.

For we need this thing wilderness far more than it needs us. Civilizations (like glaciers) come and go, but the mountain and its forest continue the course of creation's destiny. And in this we mere humans can take part-by fitting our civilization to the mountain.

There are three things: to walk, to see, and to see what you see.

The problem of living is at bottom an economic one. And this alone is bad enough, even in a period of so-called normalcy. But living has been considerably complicated of late in various ways - by war, by questions of personal liberty, and by menaces of one kind or another.