The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Doing Justice To the Seashore After my tour of eight or ten national parks, I happened to be invited down to one of the most populous and popular of our New...
...Its countless beaches are the sandbox of the nation...
...But they have an adequate set of books about the sea, including, for example, the popular works by Rachel Carson and William Beebe...
...As a source of recreation and entertainment our eastern sea is vastly superior, for example, to its opposite number, the Pacific...
...Its depths we are just beginning to measure and its mysteries we are only starting to explore...
...They were conscious of the beauty and the information which they were absorbing...
...But when I asked the visitors to the boardwalks and the beaches what they were getting from their experience, they seemed astonished...
...Each of these recreation centers is equipped with a staff of scientists suited to the task of luring the public into a deeper knowledge of the particular attraction over which they serve as guardians...
...For the rest, the great crowd gazes out over the lovely sea in a dumb and thoughtless daze...
...Someone should do something about it...
...But when I went on to ask about the ocean itself, the folks I had stopped were obviously nonplussed...
...For recreation and entertainment, the Atlantic ocean is still tops...
...We cannot expect the National Park Service to establish a string of national parks up and down the two ocean coasts...
...There may still be great surprises in store for us below those surfaces which we traverse with so little excitement or curiosity...
...And then we give them the books...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Doing Justice To the Seashore After my tour of eight or ten national parks, I happened to be invited down to one of the most populous and popular of our New Jersey shore resorts...
...they would say...
...Have you any notion what sort of fish or plants there are down toward the bottom of it...
...I asked several persons: "Have you any idea how deep the water is a mile or two out from shore...
...But that is the beginning and the end of the attempt to encourage intelligence at the water's edge...
...Now the Atlantic ocean is at least as important and exciting as the Grand Canyon or the geysers of the Yellowstone...
...Each of the parks has at the heart of it a national treasure...
...find funny shells on the beach and bring them in to us and inquire how such things can come to be made...
...Some unique beauty has been turned over to its administrators for preservation, development and use...
...The ocean...
...When I asked whether there is any call for these books, I was told: "Yes, the children—God bless them...
...But the United States Government, which is doing a good deal to excite the interest of its citizens in geology, anthropology, botany and forestry, has never, apparently, had the idea of doing something for the popular interest in oceanography...
...Most of them, of course, are light fiction...
...There is a special sort of abandon about folks vacationing by the sea that adds to their attractiveness...
...A rough calculation which I made in consultation with a public-relations man at the Jersey shore resort where I made these observations led me to think that this one vacation spot—by no means one of the large ones—accommodates nearly two million guests each season...
...It would be impossible for any statistician to make a near-estimate of the millions of persons who enjoy life by the Atlantic waters every summer...
...We who live near the Atlantic are fortunate to a degree which few of us appreciate...
...They would gasp and stammer: "Does anyone know what there is way down there...
...I had, of course, a wonderful time...
...More than one answered: "This salt water wakes me up...
...The area is treated in such a way as to increase the popular interest by spreading knowledge...
...Or: "This air is entirely different from what I have to breathe in Philadelphia...
...These multitudes of people must get something good or they would not return year after year...
...As the traveler journeys from park to park, he develops a high ideal of the United States...
...Its intricate array of bays and inlets, its endless succession of inland waterways furnish boundless opportunities for boating of every sort...
...The state of New Jersey, the government of which has a reputation for intelligence and energy, might start the ball rolling by setting up a state park at Atlantic City, Ocean City or Asbury Park...
...When I recalled the entertaining talks which I had heard about geology at Grand Canyon and about sociology at Mesa Verde, I began to imagine what thrilling explanations the right sort of expert might have given on the rim of the Atlantic...
...Various ones among them would say: "Why, I am getting away from home...
...But there was something about this ocean resort that was so different from what I had experienced in the national parks that I caught myself halting every now and then and asking myself whether, after all, we were doing justice to the ocean...
...What about the ocean...
...When I asked visitors to the national parks what they were taking in and taking away, they almost always had definite answers...
...The only answers to my questions came from the town librarians, who send out about a thousand volumes a week during the summer season...
...This was all right...
...It's just a lot of water...
...The sea remains the greatest unconquered and relatively unexplored wilderness of the world...
Vol. 40 • September 1957 • No. 39
