"In snowless places the brooks had decorated their ways with beautiful ice structures--arches and arcades, spires and frozen splashes, and endless stretches and forms of silver streamside platings and boulder drapings; ice, crystal clear, frosted and opaque.  Many rocks were overspread with ice sheets and icy drapery, and cliffs were decked with fretwork and stupendous icicles.  Smaller streams froze to the bottom, overflowed and outbuilt.  in places wide areas were covered to enormous depths.  Looking upon these one might almost fancy the Ice Age returning.  But three months later the ice was gone to the far-off sea, and the flowers that slept beneath were massing their brilliant blossoms in the sun."

"With flying snow, in perfect autumn days and during mist-filled nights, I have slept and communed with my camp-fire at timberline.  Timberline gives one the feeling of being on the edge of things.  Envelop it in unevenly moving mist and everything seems a mystery.  The strangely shaped trees and the weird forms of tree clumps half revealed are a part of the indefinite, the uncomprehended.  Add to this vague realm the magic of a camp-fire, and one loses the experience of ages and again is a primitive, crouching fire worshipper in a new and unexplored world.  A camp-fire ever recalls the ages long past, and paints primeval scenes.  Through all the centuries the camp-fire has been a place of safety and comfort, of hope and cheer."

"Sometimes while watching my changing camp-fire blaze I have half believed that the blazing tree was picturing with fire the story of its life--the larger experiences of the years; the triumphs of the good seasons and the failures of the bad; the battles with wind and frost, with fire and insect foes.  Surely no picture ever painted is more suggestive than the camp-fire.  With it the imagination brings the dead past back to life, and its people in fitting scenes act again the parts they once played."

"To stand above the dwarfed and battered front ranks of the intrepid timberline forests, where the Storm King reigns and the eagle soars, is to live with fired imagination through all the long years of battle, and to feel the triumphs of the unconquerable.  Timberline touches the heart with a sense of universal kinship."

"Irresistible is nature's call to play.  This call comes in a thousand alluring forms.  It comes at unexpected times and sends us to unheard-of places.  We simply cannot tell what nature will have of us, or where next.  But from near and far, ever calls her eloquent voice.  In work and in dreams she shows a thousand ways, suggests the presence of wonderlands yet unseen.  She pictures alluring scenes in which to rest and play; in mysterious ways she sends us eagerly forth for unscaled heights and fairylands.  Of these she whispers, or of them she sounds her bugle song.  She fascinatingly commands and charms us to other scenes.  We rush to respond and fix our eyes on a happy horizon, toward which we hurry; but ere we reach it she calls elsewhere, and elsewhere, with highest hopes of a boy at play, we hasten.  There is no greater joy than wrestling naked handed with the elements."

"The camera adds purpose and interest to an outing.  It is educational and develops the artistic and the habit of seeing the beautiful--of looking for the best.  A cloud-piercing peak, wild mountain sheep, beaver colonies, a waterfall touched with light and shadow, and many other pictures are ever in waiting.  These will preserve with startling, delightful fidelity the interesting experiences of the trip."

"With the increased numbers of wild-life reservations and national parks in which animals are never shot at, the boys and girls of the country will have an opportunity to become better acquainted with all the wild animals, large and small; to watch easily bears and beavers, birds and butterflies.  These national parks are also wild flower reservations.  In them the geological wonders, the forests, the wild bloom, the folk in fur and feathers are protected for their higher values, for uses in education, for enjoyment, for giving relaxation and universal sympathy, for inspiring vision, and for enriching the imagination.  These wilderness places are Happy Hunting Grounds for all and in them the nature guide has supreme opportunities for useful and ennobling service."

"The academic mind--and in many respects the old puritanical mind--holds that things pleasurable and interesting are to be shunned; that they are akin to vice; that it is virtuous to do the disagreeable things, and all-important to force yourself to do what you do not like.  But in human psychology it is ever important to get results while working under morale, using all the power that interest adds.  Thus finally you accomplish the most difficult and greatest results through the supreme, sustained efforts that desire and interest make possible.  Natural phenomena interest and stimulate the mind in a thousand ways."

"A tree seed touched with imagination becomes a forest full of wilderness life in a natural manner, without enchantment or magic.  A prospector dreams of gold and glory.  He seeks it with a pick; never does he look for it at the foot of the rainbow, or expect it as a reward from a king, or wait for a fairy to bring it.  Most legends and fairy stories mislead the mind and betray the imagination.  Such magic ever dreams of castles in Spain.  Mental mirages waste many a life.  The normal imagination hitches its wagon to a star or a mule, and the team travels merrily, whether it arrives or not.  This imagination is based on realities; it is one that sees the logical and natural results or developments in advance and pictures glorious changes through natural growth or evolution, and never by magic or enchantment. This normal imagination is a combination of information and inspiration; it is creative, rouses effort, and gets results."

"The essence of nature guiding is to travel gracefully rather than to arrive."

"Nature guiding is not like sight-seeing or the scenery habit.  The guide sometimes takes his party to a commanding viewpoint or a beautiful spot.  But views are incidental.  The aim is to illuminate and reveal the alluring world outdoors by introducing determining influences and the respondent tendencies.  A nature guide is an interpreter of geology, botany, zoology, and natural history."

"In this the Age of Movies it will be a fortunate child who has an interest in the fundamentals; who is rich through knowing the principles of Nature.  an interest in flowers, birds, animals, or geology calls for outdoor excursions, for initiative, gives breadth of view, and is a life-long resource within.  The movies will be improved, but even at their best they can never do for a child what an outdoor interest will enable him to do more beneficially for himself."

"Nature guiding need not be confined to national parks.  There might well be nature guides in every locality in the land.  Fabre has shown monsters and hundreds of little, stirring people cooperating or battling in every growth-filled space.  City parks and the wild places near cities and villages are available to thousands of people and are excellent places for the cultural and inspiring excursions with nature guides.  Ere long nature guiding will be an occupation of honour and distinction.  May the tribe increase!"

"The nature guide finds treasures to right and left for his followers in territory which to most people appears barren."

"Natural history has been incidental to all previous types of guides, while to the nature guide it is the essential feature of every trip.  The hunter's chief aim is to find and kill the bear, while that of the nature guide is to watch the ways of the bear and to enjoy him."

"A nature guide is a naturalist who can guide others to the secrets of nature.  Every plant and animals, every stream and stone, has a number of fascinating facts associated with it and about each there are numberless stories.  Beavers build houses, bears play, birds have a summer and a winter home thousands of miles apart, flowers have colour and perfume--every species of life is fitted for a peculiar life zone.  The why of these things, how all came about, are of interest.  Touched by a nature guide the wilderness of the outdoors becomes a wonderland.  Then, ever after, wherever one goes afield he enjoys the poetry of nature. This wonderland may be enjoyed around the world, forever.  Wild birds sing, wild flowers bloom wherever streams ebb upon the sand or the seasons show their pictures."

"The few high-class nature guides whom I have known had versatility and a background.  They were not only masters of their own localities but had a good knowledge of the whole outdoors.  They had camped and could tell others how to camp; had the resourcefulness to appreciate nature under all conditions--moonlight and starlight, in rain and snow--and could impart that pleasure to others; were masters of woodcraft--knew how to build and to extinguish a camp-fire and how to select a camp site; understood horses and the packing of a horse.  The ways and means of making their parties safe and comfortable, their knowledge of first aid, their vigilance in prevention of accidents, and their mastery of the trail, all became so much a matter of second nature that they were able to give all thought and energy to interesting their people in the natural history features.  They had a quick eye for the interesting, the unusual, and the beatiful; they could use a camera."

"A nature guide is not a guide in the ordinary sense of the word, and is not a teacher.  At all times, however, he has been rightfully associated with information, and some form of education.  But nature guiding, as we see it, is more inspirational than informational."

"To have made friends with one tree is better than to have learned the names of many trees.  To have shared its experiences through the seasons, to have watched the play of sunlight through the branches, the storms bursting over its head, the rain deepening the colour of its bark--this is to feel the universal kinship of nature whether the tree be in a city park, is a lone tree, or one of a noble forest.

"Mother Nature is ever ready to train the growing child.  By using our wonderful national parks or other wild places we may give the boys and girls of to-day even better nature training than the pioneers received from their environment."

"Yes, Mother Nature conducts a delightful outdoor school and it is open every day in the year.  Wherever there is a bit of wildness there are pretty certain to be numerous interesting little wild people.  Of course bird reservations are even better places for this kind of schooling and fun.  But the greatest of all places for these advantages are our national parks. Surely one of the best pastimes for children—for any one—is to wait at a wildlife centre and watch the ways of its residents and its visitors.  To do this is pleasant self-discipline.  It is constructive.  It keeps the eyes open and the senses alert.  It gives material for thought and compels thinking.  It arouses the imagination and wakes up the creative faculties.  The faculty of keen observation, the ability to see accurately, and the incentive to watch for things that may happen around us, add much to every outdoor day.  Such happy experiences as these truly enrich life."

"From the sheltering edge of the woods I watched the high wind stir and sweep the excited snow. The snow-flakes had long since been reduced to powder and dust by colliding with cliffs and by being thrown violently against the earth.  The wind was intermittent.  A wave of snow dust swept along the snow-crusted earth, filling the air; then a few seconds of sunshine played before the next wave followed.  Occasionally everything cleared and stopped for an exhibit of the whirlwind. A towering white column of snow dust would spin across the scene.  This commonly was followed by another and heavier spiral that was more like a confusion of white whirled clouds.  All this time the sun was shining in a blue sky; and all this time, too, a sparkling pennant of diamond snow dust and powder a mile long was fluttering from the tip of a triangular peak."

"Nowhere does this forest frontier—the ever-conten-ding line of battle between woods and weather—appear more stormy or striking than in the high mountains of the West.  For miles this timberline extends away in a front of dwarfed and distorted trees—millions of them—ever fiercely fighting a relentless enemy.  The veterans show the intense severity of the struggle as they stand resolutely in their inhospitable heights."

Copyright 2001 by the Enos Mills Cabin
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