THEY TOOK TO THE WOODS
Neuberger, Richard L.
They Took To The Woods By RICHARD L. NEUBERGER Portland, Ore. ONE of our common misconceptions is that it takes a person with Daniel Boone's physique and Kit Carson's psychology to endure in the...
...He wanted the Government to charter trains and take out West each Summer thousands of people—men, women, and children—from the great cities of the Atlantic Coast...
...And under the surveillance of the volunteers, the woods have fared well...
...Nearly all of them said they forgot, for a short time at least, the tensions and hysteria and anxieties of our society...
...Most of the luxurious, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind...
...The country boy is supposed to look with awe at the Brooklyn Bridge, at the Empire State Building...
...It may be a mile down jagged slopes to water at the nearest spring...
...This is the period of the fire season, when the woods are as dry as matchsticks and one spark is a menace...
...Mount Adams, Mount St...
...Experts of the U. S. Forest Service held special "schools" 4 nights a week during the Winter months to train these people for the Summer ahead...
...YET WHEN the war began, the Army and Navy began reaching out for the rangers, guards, wardens, and lookouts who for years have protected the Columbia and Mount Hood areas from fire...
...Our literature fails to vision the feelings of the lad from Manhattan Island watching sunrise break over Rainier's icy summit, the rosy glow tinting the white crags in the dawn...
...Helens, famous glacier peaks...
...These amateurs have packed in their food on pack-boards, often walking 15 and 20 miles with loads up to 75 pounds...
...These people, men and women, volunteered to spend the Summer protecting the Columbia and Mount Hood National Forests...
...These are vast mountain regions...
...The only contact with the outside world is the slender telephone line strung down the mountainside from stunted tree to tree...
...Back of the city of Portland, Ore., stretch the timbered magnificence of the Mount Hood and Columbia National Forests...
...Mail may arrive by ranger on horseback only every 2 weeks...
...The late Robert Marshall of the U. S. Forest Service had an original project in mind...
...Many of the women have run "chow lines" to feed crews fighting brushfires and blazes in the big trees...
...For the past three years the Pacific Northwest in general and the State of Oregon in particular have been witnessing a complete refutation of this theory...
...The mass of men," wrote Thoreau, "lead lives of quiet desperation...
...They would man lonely lookout towers, patrol steep slopes, operate fire-fighting equipment, cook meals for the men on the fire lines...
...Some of the best lookouts have been ministers, clerks, and schoolteachers...
...If we can haul men off to battle in these coaches and Pullmans, why cannot they be used to show the inhabitants of the crowded cities of the East what the American wilderness is really like...
...They contain some of the highest summits in the United States—Mount Hood...
...Only 3 or 4 threw in the towel before their time was up...
...The water supply of Portland and many other communities is collected in lakes sheltered by these mountains and woodlands...
...A few men operated lookout towers alone...
...In these forests stand noble groves of fir, hemlock, and spruce...
...The volunteers divided up into teams, and each team agreed to care for a specific lookout station from June 1 until September 30...
...Fred McNeil of Portland, who had charge of this unique project, observed in his report, "These men and women were the type that can best be described as 'just city folks.' That they performed so satisfactorily at our forest stations, often in situations utterly new to their experience, is another example of our people...
...What about the Easterners who have never seen a high mountain, who have yet to look on a real forest, who have not watched the salmon leaping in the upland dawn, who think that the trees of Central Park are genuine "woods...
...The people from Portland who went into the wilderness to guard the trees from fire found out what Thoreau was driving at...
...In many instances, according to Otto Lindh of the U. S. Forest Service, these volunteers have proved far superior to the professionals who have guarded the woods for many years...
...He wrote an immortal book, Walden, in which he said as much...
...No serious fires have broken loose...
...He wanted boys from the Bronx to see Mount Shasta, families from Chicago to walk through the JoHn Muir redwoods, clerks from Boston to climb Mount Rainier, factory workers from Connecticut to fish on the Columbia River...
...ONE of our common misconceptions is that it takes a person with Daniel Boone's physique and Kit Carson's psychology to endure in the wilderness...
...The women have worked in pairs...
...I should imagine that these feelings would be pretty profound...
...Would the woodlands commence to burn...
...Let fire sweep through the Columbia and the Mount Hood Forests, and Portland would front a charnel house instead of a thrilling vista of green slopes...
...The refutation has also been a convincing demonstration of the capacity for adaptation within the average man and woman...
...What hidden thoughts might be plumbed, what new ideas might be stimulated, only the imagination can predict...
...These volunteers included men and women from nearly every segment of American life—schoolteach...
...THIS HAS been lonely work...
...The Forest Service has paid them $140 a month on the lookout towers and $155 for work along the fire lines...
...ers, ministers, clerks, accountants, lawyers, physicians, bankers, soldiers' wives, laborers, railroad brakemen, journalists...
...What to do...
...Yet these volunteer foresters have stood the test well...
...WHEN the war ends, there will be empty trains again...
...There have been few surrenders to loneliness or hardship...
...What would happen to Portland's water supply, to the scenery behind the city, to the invaluable groves of timber...
...One of the great sorrows, to me at least, of all thia is the fact that the experience of guarding these magnificent expanses of wilderness was confined to residents of the Far West...
...Many lookout towers are on lofty peaks...
...All blazes have been spotted early and brought under control in a short time...
...It has been no sinecure...
...A century ago a young New Englander named Henry David Thoreau walked into the woods and settled on Walden Pond...
...He believed that latent within everyone was the capacity to give up civilization's "blessings" and live a tranquil life...
...Values seemed in their proper perspective," commented a teacher...
...The Columbia and Mount Hood National Forests have been virtually untouched by large fires since the "amateurs" took over...
...Some of the loneliest points in the Northwest thus have been manned ever since the war began—such points as Bear Springs Guard Station, Tilly Jane Guard Station, Wolf Camp Lookout, Lookout Springs Guard Station, Silver Star Lookout, Switchback Lookout, Twin Buttes Lookout, Bald Mountain Lookout...
...Two hundred and eighty Portlanders provided the answer...
...I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground...
...He also thought that such a life would be of immeasurable benefit...
...They total 3,300,000 acres...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 34
