“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!”
The night-wind began to blow soon after
dark; at first only a gentle breathing, but increasing toward midnight
to a rough gale that fell upon my leafy roof in ragged surges like a
cascade, bearing wild sounds from the crags overhead. The waterfall
sang in chorus, filling the old ice-fountain with its solemn roar, and
seeming to increase in power as the night advanced—fit voice for such a
landscape. I had to creep out many times to the fire during the night,
for it was biting cold and I had no blankets. Gladly I welcomed the
morning star.
The dawn in the dry, wavering air of the desert was glorious.
Everything encouraged my undertaking and betokened success. There was
no cloud in the sky, no storm-tone in the wind. Breakfast of bread and
tea was soon made. I fastened a hard, durable crust to my belt by way
of provision, in case I should be compelled to pass a night on the
mountain-top; then, securing the remainder of my little stock against
wolves and wood-rats, I set forth free and hopeful.
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this
alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The
highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the
lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light,
streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen
meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in sight, and I pushed
rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my iron-shod shoes
making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs of
bryanthus, and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this
so-called “land of desolation,” I met cassiope, growing in fringes
among the battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they
were still clinging with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and
still so beautiful as to thrill every fiber of one’s being. Winter and
summer, you may hear her voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple
bells. No evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature’s love
more plainly than cassiope.
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”
The greatest height of the
column of the Great Geyser of Iceland actually measured was 212 feet,
and of the Strokhr 162 feet.
In New Zealand, the Te Pueia at Lake Taupo, the Waikite at Rotorna, and
two others are said to lift their waters occasionally to a height of
100 feet, while the celebrated Te Tarata at Rotomahana sometimes lifts
a boiling column 20 feet in diameter to a height of 60 feet. But all
these are far surpassed by the Excelsior. Few tourists, however, will
see the Excelsior in action, or a thousand other interesting features
of the park that lie beyond the wagon-roads and the hotels. The regular
trips—from three to five days—are too short. Nothing can be done well
at a speed of forty miles a day. The multitude of mixed, novel
impressions rapidly piled on one another make only a dreamy,
bewildering, swirling blur, most of which is unrememberable. Far more
time should be taken. Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the
freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of
glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature’s darlings.
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will
flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their
own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will
drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment
after another is closed, but Nature’s sources never fail. Like a
generous host, she offers here brimming cups in endless variety, served
in a grand hall, the sky its ceiling, the mountains its walls,
decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with bands of music
ever playing. The petty discomforts that beset the awkward guest, the
unskilled camper, are quickly forgotten, while all that is precious
remains. Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness.
Most of the dangers that haunt the unseasoned citizen are imaginary;
the real ones are perhaps too few rather than too many for his good.
The bears that always seem to spring up thick as trees, in fighting,
devouring attitudes before the frightened tourist whenever a camping
trip is proposed, are gentle now, finding they are no longer likely to
be shot; and rattlesnakes, the other big irrational dread of
over-civilized people, are scarce here, for most of the park lies above
the snake-line.
“Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.”
Next
morning we seemed to have risen from the dead. My bedroom was flooded
with sunshine, and from the window I saw the great white Shasta cone
clad in forests and clouds and bearing them loftily in the sky.
Everything seemed full and radiant with the freshness and beauty and
enthusiasm of youth. Sisson’s children came in with flowers and covered
my bed, and the storm on the mountaintop banished like a dream.
V. Shasta Rambles and Modoc Memories
Arctic beauty and desolation, with their blessings and dangers, all may
be found here, to test the endurance and skill of adventurous climbers;
but far better than climbing the mountain is going around its warm,
fertile base, enjoying its bounties like a bee circling around a bank
of flowers. The distance is about a hundred miles, and will take some
of the time we hear so much about—a week or two—but the benefits will
compensate for any number of weeks. Perhaps the profession of doing
good may be full, but every body should be kind at least to himself.
Take a course of good water and air, and in the eternal youth of Nature
you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.
Some have strange, morbid fears as soon as they find themselves with
Nature, even in the kindest and wildest of her solitudes, like very
sick children afraid of their mother—as if God were dead and the devil
were king.
One may make the trip on horseback, or in a carriage, even; for a good
level road may be found all the way round, by Shasta Valley, Sheep
Rock, Elk Flat, Huckleberry Valley, Squaw Valley, following for a
considerable portion of the way the old Emigrant Road, which lies along
the east disk of the mountain, and is deeply worn by the wagons of the
early gold-seekers, many of whom chose this northern route as perhaps
being safer and easier, the pass here being only about six thousand
feet above sea level. But it is far better to go afoot. Then you are
free to make wide waverings and zigzags away from the roads to visit
the great fountain streams of the rivers, the glaciers also, and the
wildest retreats in the primeval forests, where the best plants and
animals dwell, and where many a flower-bell will ring against your
knees, and friendly trees will reach out their fronded branches and
touch you as you pass.
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”
Sopris, Colo.
153. Stanislaus, Cal.
154. Sundance, Wyo.
155. Superior, Minn.
156. Tahoe, Cal. and Nev.
157. Targhee, Ida. and Wyo.
158. Teton, Wyo.
159. Toiyabe, Neb.
160. Tonto, Ariz.
161. Trinity, Cal.
162. Uinta, Utah
163. Umatilla, Ore.
164. Umpqua, Ore.
165. Uncompahgre, Colo.
166. Wallowa, Ore.
167. Wasatch, Utah
168. Washington, Wash.
169. Wenaha, Ore. and Wash.
170. Wenatchee, Wash.
171. Weiser, Ida.
172. White River, Colo.
173. Whitman, Ore.
174. Wichita, Okla.
175. Wyoming, Wyo.
176. Zuñi, Ariz. and N. M.
CHAPTER I
The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West
“Keep not standing fix’d and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam;
Head and hand, where’er thou foot it,
And stout heart are still at home.
In each land the sun does visit
We are gay, whate’er betide:
To give room for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide.”
The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see.
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning
to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is
a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not
only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of
life. Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of
over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best
they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of
Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease. Briskly venturing and
roaming, some are washing off sins and cobweb cares of the devil’s
spinning in all-day storms on mountains; sauntering in rosiny pinewoods
or in gentian meadows, brushing through chaparral, bending down and
parting sweet, flowery sprays; tracing rivers to their sources, getting
in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth; jumping from rock to rock,
feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in
whole-souled exercise, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of
pure wildness. This is fine and natural and full of promise. So also is
the growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild
places in general, and in the half wild parks and gardens of towns.
Even the scenery habit in its most artificial forms, mixed with
spectacles, silliness, and kodaks; its devotees arrayed more gorgeously
than scarlet tanagers, frightening the wild game with red
umbrellas,—even this is encouraging, and may well be regarded as a
hopeful sign of the times.
“Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries.”
Pine-trees marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long, hopeful files,
taking the ground and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready
for them; brown-spiked sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes;
young rivers roared in the abandoned channels of the glaciers; flowers
bloomed around the feet of the great burnished domes,—while with quick
fertility mellow beds of soil, settling and warming, offered food to
multitudes of Nature’s waiting children, great and small, animals as
well as plants; mice, squirrels, marmots, deer, bears, elephants, etc.
The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity, and the young
forests into bird-song: life in every form warming and sweetening and
growing richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra so
lately suggestive of death and consummate desolation only.
It is hard without long and loving study to realize the magnitude of
the work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by
glaciers, which are only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals.
Careful study of the phenomena presented goes to show that the
pre-glacial condition of the range was comparatively simple: one vast
wave of stone in which a thousand mountains, domes, cañons, ridges,
etc., lay concealed. And in the development of these Nature chose for a
tool not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the
stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly
falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea.
Laboring harmoniously in united strength they crushed and ground and
wore away the rocks in their march, making vast beds of soil, and at
the same time developed and fashioned the landscapes into the
delightful variety of hill and dale and lordly mountain that mortals
call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile in average depth has the range
been thus degraded during the last glacial period,—a quantity of
mechanical work almost inconceivably great. And our admiration must be
excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that this vast
job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its influences, was done by agents
so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds.
Strong only by force of numbers, they carried away entire mountains,
particle by particle, block by block, and cast them into the sea;
sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the range, and developed its
predestined beauty. All these new Sierra landscapes were evidently
predestined, for the physical structure of the rocks on which the
features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay at least a
mile deep below the pre-glacial surface.
On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. ... Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights.
The rippling of living waters, the
song of birds, the joyous confidence of flowers, the calm,
undisturbable grandeur of the oaks, mark this place of graves as one of
the Lord’s most favored abodes of life and light.
On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death.
Instead of the sympathy, the friendly union, of life and death so
apparent in Nature, we are taught that death is an accident, a
deplorable punishment for the oldest sin, the arch-enemy of life, etc.
Town children, especially, are steeped in this death orthodoxy, for the
natural beauties of death are seldom seen or taught in towns.
Of death among our own species, to say nothing of the thousand styles
and modes of murder, our best memories, even among happy deaths, yield
groans and tears, mingled with morbid exultation; burial companies,
black in cloth and countenance; and, last of all, a black box burial in
an ill-omened place, haunted by imaginary glooms and ghosts of every
degree. Thus death becomes fearful, and the most notable and incredible
thing heard around a death-bed is, “I fear not to die.”
But let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings
and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as
taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our
blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and
as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never
fights. All is divine harmony.
Most of the few graves of Bonaventure are planted with flowers. There
is generally a magnolia at the head, near the strictly erect marble, a
rose-bush or two at the foot, and some violets and showy exotics along
the sides or on the tops. All is enclosed by a black iron railing,
composed of rigid bars that might have been spears or bludgeons from a
battlefield in Pandemonium.
It is interesting to observe how assiduously Nature seeks to remedy
these labored art blunders. She corrodes the iron and marble, and
gradually levels the hill which is always heaped up, as if a
sufficiently heavy quantity of clods could not be laid on the dead.
Arching grasses come one by one; seeds come flying on downy wings,
silent as fate, to give life’s dearest beauty for the ashes of art; and
strong evergreen arms laden with ferns and tillandsia drapery are
spread over all—Life at work everywhere, obliterating all memory of the
confusion of man.
In Georgia many graves are covered with a common shingle roof,
supported on four posts as the corner of a well, as if rain and
sunshine were not regarded as blessings.
“Keep close to Natures heart...and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”
“Tug on anything at all and youll find it connected to everything else in the universe.”
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”
“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
“The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.”
“Most people are on the world, not in it - having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them - undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate”
“There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present.”
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!
Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
