. Sierra Club bulletin . nd how fine and reassuring the company they keep—their brows in the sky, their feet set in groves and gayemerald meadows, a thousand flowers leaning confidinglyagainst their adamantine bosses, while birds, bees, andbutterflies help the river and waterfalls to stir all the airinto music—things frail and fleeting and types of perma-nence meeting here and blending, as if into this gloriousmountain temple Nature had gathered her choicesttreasures, whether great or small, to draw her loversinto close confiding communion with her. Strange to say, this is the mountain temple
. Sierra Club bulletin . nd how fine and reassuring the company they keep—their brows in the sky, their feet set in groves and gayemerald meadows, a thousand flowers leaning confidinglyagainst their adamantine bosses, while birds, bees, andbutterflies help the river and waterfalls to stir all the airinto music—things frail and fleeting and types of perma-nence meeting here and blending, as if into this gloriousmountain temple Nature had gathered her choicesttreasures, whether great or small, to draw her loversinto close confiding communion with her. Strange to say, this is the mountain temple thatis now in danger of being dammed and made into areservoir to help supply San Francisco with water andlight. This use of the valley, so destructive and foreignto its proper park use, has long been planned and prayedfor, and is still being prayed for by the San Franciscoboard of supervisors, not because water as pure andabundant cannot be got from adjacent sources outside SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, VOL. VI. PLATE GIANT OAKS IN THE FERN GARDENS OF photograph by F. M. Fultz, 1907. The Hetch-Hetchy Valley. 217 the park,—for it can,—but seemingly only because ofthe comparative cheapness of the dam required. Garden- and park-making goes on everywhere withcivilization, for everybody needs beauty as well as bread,places to play in and pray in, where Nature may healand cheer and give strength to body and soul. Thisnatural beauty-hunger is displayed in poor folks window-gardens made up of a few geranium slips in broken cups,as well as in the costly lily gardens of the rich, thethousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens,and in our magnificent National Parks,—the Yellow-stone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc.,—Natures own wonder-lands, the admiration and joy of the world. Never-theless, like everything else worth while, howeversacred and precious and well-guarded, they have al-ways been subject to attack, mostly by despoiling gain-seekers,—mischief-
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