Yet the Dreamer again has won! Up, and follow his path to the sun!

NE morning six variously attired people, four gentlemen and two ladies, started from a hotel in the Rocky Mountain National Park with a Nature Guide. An automobile whirled them to the end of the road far up the mountain-side, where they continued afoot. They were bound for one of the eternal snowdrifts on the Continental Divide.

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The essence of Nature Guiding is to travel gracefully rather than to arrive. This Guide tactfully put two or three at ease by convincing them that in the United States the belief in ferocious animals is a

superstition. And no one," he continued, "in this locality has ever been attacked by a wild animal." The day was perfect, but so interestingly did the Guide describe experiences in storms that every one hoped to be Rain-in-the Face before evening.

The Guide was jollied for being silent. The party asked for rubber-neck specialties and demanded where their megaphone artist was. They were climbing in a V-shaped canyon, traveling west. Presently the Guide pointed out that the right, or north wall, rises steeply in the sun and is covered with a scattered growth of stocky, longarmed pines. The left, or south wall, which faces north, has a crowded growth of short-armed, tall spruces. In the bottom of the canyon between these closely approaching, unlike forests is a lively stream with a few accompanying firs, willows, and flowers.

Each member of the party remembered something of plant distribution, and each contributed something to the discussion concerning plant zones, slope exposures, temperature, and moisture-the determinism of ecological influences. When the scraps of information ceased, the Guide added that each canyon wall also had its special kinds of insect and mammal life.

The Nature Guide is at his best when he discusses facts so that they appeal to

BY ENOSA. MILLS

the imagination and to the reason, gives flesh and blood to cold facts, makes life stories of inanimate objects. He deals with principles rather than isolated information, gives biographies rather than classifications. People are out for recreation and need restful, intellectual visions, and not dull, dry facts, rules, and manuals.

MISS ESTHER A. BURNELL, THE FIRST NATURE GUIDE LICENSED BY THE GOVERNMENT

Many nature guides are women

What the Guide said was essentially Nature literature rather than encyclopædia natural history.

This party being interested in the distribution of life and in erosion, the Guide made these the features of the day's excursion. In a mountain region life zones are seen side by side; the wear and tear on the earth's surface by many forces stands out unmistakably, and two or three types of erosion may, in places, be seen from one view-point.

All that the Guide said concerning

erosion could be set down under the heading "The Biography of a Canyon." In this the various forces of erosion-running water, frost, ice, and acid-each at work in its respective place with distinctive tools, were prying, wedging, cutting the canyon wider and deeper. Roots wedged the rocks and dissolved them with acids. But at the same time they helped also to resist these tireless forces, placing a binding, holding network of fibers. Gravity handled the transportation of dislodged material.

Each species of plant and animal is of orderly distribution, is found in places that furnish the needed temperature and moisture condition. The Guide's discussion of each living species was its autobiography: "The Story of My Life; or, How I Came to be Where I Am and What I Am." In this he gave the adventure, the customs of plant or animal, the home territory wherein it lived, its climatic zone, and all the endless and insistent play of the radical and romantic forces of evolution, environment, and ecology.

A few popular and scientific names of species were learned, but the Guide was reticent about telling plant names. His chief aim was to arouse a permanent interest in nature's ways, and this by illuminating big principles.

Climbing out of the canyon up a moderate slope just under timber-line, this party halted among the trees and remained silent for a few minutes on the edge of a small grassy opening. A deer and her two spotted fawns walked out into this, then went across into the woods.

All followed a porcupine that was lumbering across the opening, ignoring their presence. The Guide remarked that there may have been a time when the porcupine threw his quills, standing up and hurling them, he imagined, as a primitive man hurled a spear, but that