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CHAPTER IV, Part 1 To the High Mountains
July 8. Now away we go toward the top. most mountains. Many still, small
voices, as well as the noon thunder, are calling, "Come higher." Farewell,
blessed dell, woods, gardens, streams, birds, squirrels, lizards, and a thousand
others. Farewell. Farewell.
Up through the woods the hoofed locusts streamed beneath a cloud of brown dust.
Scarcely were they driven a hundred yards from the old corral ere they seemed to
know that at last they were going to new pastures, and rushed wildly ahead,
crowding through gaps in the brush, jumping, tumbling like exulting hurrahing
flood-waters escaping through a broken dam. A man on each flank kept shouting
advice to the leaders, who in their famishing condition were behaving like
Gadarene swine; two other drivers were busy with stragglers, helping them out of
brush tangles; the Indian, calm, alert, silently watched for wanderers likely to
be overlooked; the two dogs ran here and there, at a loss to know what was best
to be done, while the Don, soon far in the rear, was trying to keep in sight of
his troublesome wealth.
As soon as the boundary of the old eaten-out range was passed the hungry horde
suddenly became calm, like a mountain stream in a meadow. Thenceforward they
were allowed to eat their way as slowly as they wished, care being taken only to
keep them headed toward the summit of the Merced and Tuolumne divide. Soon the
two thousand flattened paunches were bulged out with sweetpea vines and grass,
and the gaunt, desperate creatures, more like wolves than sheep, became bland
and governable, while the howling drivers changed to gentle shepherds, and
sauntered in peace.
Toward sundown we reached Hazel Green, a charming spot on the summit of the
dividing ridge between the basins of the Merced and Tuolumne, where there is a
small brook flowing through hazel and dogwood thickets beneath magnificent
silver firs and pines. Here, we are camped for the night, our big fire, heaped
high with rosiny logs and branches, is blazing like a sunrise, gladly giving
back the light slowly sifted from the sunbeams of centuries of summers; and in
the glow of that old sunlight how impressively surrounding objects are brought
forward in relief against the outer darkness! Grasses, larkspurs, columbines,
lilies, hazel bushes, and the great trees form a circle around the fire like
thoughtful spectators, gazing and listening with human-like enthusiasm. The
night breeze is cool, for all day we have been climbing into the upper sky, the
home of the cloud mountains we so long have admired. How sweet and keen the
air! Every breath a blessing. Here the sugar pine reaches its fullest
development in size and beauty and number of individuals, filling every swell
and hollow and down-plunging ravine almost to the exclusion of other species. A
few yellow pines are still to be found as companions, and in the coolest places
silver firs; but noble as these are, the sugar pine is king, and spreads long
protecting arms above them while they rock and wave in sign of recognition.
We have now reached a height of six thousand feet. In the forenoon we passed
along a flat part of the dividing ridge that is planted with manzanita
(Arctostaphylos), some specimens the largest I have seen. I measured
one, the bole of which is four feet in diameter and only eighteen inches high
from the ground, where it dissolves into many wide-spreading branches forming a
broad round head about ten or twelve feet high, covered with clusters of small
narrow-throated pink bells. The leaves are pale green, glandular, and set on
edge by a twist of the petiole. The branches seem naked; for the
chocolate-colored bark is very smooth and thin, and is shed off in flakes that
curl when dry. The wood is red, close-grairned, hard, and heavy. I wonder how
old these curious tree-bushes are, probably as old as the great pines. Indians
and bears and birds and fat grubs feast on the berries, which look like small
apples, often rosy on one side, green on the other. The Indians are said to
make a kind of beer or cider out of them. There are many species. This one,
Arctostaphylos pungens, is common hereabouts. No need have they to fear
the wind, so low they are and steadfastly rooted. Even the fires that sweep the
woods seldom destroy them utterly, for they rise again from the root, and some
of the dry ridges they grow on are seldom touched by fire. I must try to know
them better.
I miss my river songs to-night. Here Hazel Creek at its topmost springs has a
voice like a bird. The wind-tones in the great trees overhead are strangely
impressive, all the more because not a leaf stirs below them. But it grows
late, and I must to bed. The camp is silent; everybody asleep. It seems
extravagant to spend hours so precious in sleep. "He giveth his beloved sleep."
Pity the poor beloved needs it, weak, weary, forspent; oh, the pity of it, to
sleep in the midst of eternal, beautiful motion instead of gazing forever, like
the stars.
July 9. Exhilarated with the mountain air, I feel like shouting this
morning with excess of wild animal joy. The Indian lay down away from the fire
last night, without blankets, having nothing on, by way of clothing, but a pair
of blue overalls and a calico shirt wet with sweat. The night air is chilly at
this elevation, and we gave him some horse-blankets, but he didn't seem to care
for them. A fine thing to be independent of clothing where it is so hard to
carry. When food is scarce, he can live on whatever comes in his way -- a few
berries, roots, bird eggs, grasshoppers, black ants, fat wasp or bumblebee
larvae, without feeling that he is doing anything worth mention, so I have been
told.
Our course to-day was along the broad top of the main ridge to a hollow beyond
Crane Flat. It is scarce at all rocky, and is covered with the noblest pines
and spruces I have yet seen. Sugar pines from six to eight feet in diameter are
not uncommon, with a height of two hundred feet or even more. The silver firs
(Abies concolor and A. magnifica) are exceedingly beautiful,
especially the magnifica, which becomes more abundant the higher we go.
It is of great size, one of the most notable in every way of the giant conifers
of the Sierra. I saw specimens that measured seven feet in diameter and over
two hundred feet in height, while the average size for what might be called
full-grown mature trees can hardly be less than one hundred and eighty or two
hundred feet high and five or six feet in diameter; and with these noble
dimensions there is a symmetry and perfection of finish not to be seen in any
other tree, hereabout at least. The branches are whorled in fives mostly, and
stand out from the tall, straight, exquisitely tapered bole in level collars,
each branch regularly pinnated like the fronds of ferns, and densely clad with
leaves all around the branchlets, thus giving them a singularly rich and
sumptuous appearance. The extreme top of the tree is a thick blunt shoot
pointing straight to the zenith like an admonishing finger. The cones stand
erect like casks on the upper branches. They are about six inches long, three
in diameter, blunt, velvety, and cylindrical in form, and very rich and precious
looking. The seeds are about three quarters of an inch long, dark reddish brown
with brilliant iridescent purple wings, and when ripe, the cone falls to pieces,
and the seeds thus set free at a height of one hundred and fifty or two hundred
feet have a good send off and may fly considerable distances in a good breeze;
and it is when a good breeze is blowing that most of them are shaken free to
fly.
The other species, Abies concolor, attains nearly as great a height and
thickness as the magnifica, but the branches do not form such regular
whorls, nor are they so exactly pinnated or richly leaf-clad. Instead of
growing all around the branchlets, the leaves are mostly arranged in two flat
horizontal rows. The cones and seeds are like those of the magnifica in
form but less than half as large. The bark of the magnifica is reddish
purple and closely furrowed, that of the concolor gray and widely
furrowed. A noble pair.
At Crane Flat we climbed a thousand feet or more in a distance of about two
miles, the forest growing more dense and the silvery magnifica fir
forming a still greater portion of the whole. Crane Flat is a meadow with a
wide sandy border lying on the top of the divide. It is often visited by blue
cranes to rest and feed on their long journeys, hence the name. It is about
half a mile long, draining into the Merced, sedgy in the middle, with a margin
bright with lilies, columbines, larkspurs, lupines, castilleia, then an outer
zone of dry, gently sloping ground starred with a multitude of small flowers --
eunanus, mimulus, gilia, with rosettes of spraguea, and tufts of several species
of eriogonum and the brilliant zauschneria. The noble forest wall about it is
made up of the two silver firs and the yellow and sugar pines, which here seem
to reach their highest pitch of beauty and grandeur; for the elevation, six
thousand feet or a little more, is not too great for the sugar and yellow pines
or too low for the magnifica fir, while the concolor seems to find
this elevation the best possible. About a mile from the north end of the flat
there is a grove of Sequoia gigantea, the king of all the conifers.
Furthermore, the Douglas spruce (Pseudotsuga Douglasii) and Libocedrus
decurrens, and a few two-leaved pines, occur here and there, forming a small
part of the forest. Three pines, two silver firs, one Douglas spruce, one
sequoia, -- all of them, except the two-leaved pine, colossal trees, -- are
found here together, an assemblage of conifers unrivaled on the globe.
We passed a number of charming garden-like meadows lying on top of the divide or
hanging like ribbons down its sides, imbedded in the glorious forest. Some are
taken up chiefly with the tall white-flowered Veratrum Californicum, with
boat-shaped leaves about a foot long, eight or ten inches wide, and veined like
those of cypripedium, -- a robust, hearty, liliaceous plant, fond of water and
determined to be seen. Columbine and larkspur grow on the dryer edges of the
meadows, with a tall handsome lupine standing waist-deep in long grasses and
sedges. Castilleias, too, of several species make a bright show with beds of
violets at their feet. But the glory of these forest meadows is a lily (L.
parvum). The tallest are from seven to eight feet high with magnificent
racemes of ten to twenty or more small orange-colored flowers; they stand out
free in open ground, with just enough grass and other companion plants about
them to fringe their feet, and show them off to best advantage. This is a grand
addition to my lily acquaintances, -- a true mountaineer, reaching prime vigor
and beauty at a height of seven thousand feet or thereabouts. It varies, I
find, very much in size even in the same meadow, not only with the soil, but
with age. I saw a specimen that had only one flower, and another within a
stone's throw had twenty-five. And to think that the sheep should be allowed in
these lily meadows! after how many centuries of Nature's care planting and
watering them, tucking the bulbs in snugly below winter frost, shading the
tender shoots with clouds drawn above them like curtains, pouring refreshing
rain, making them perfect in beauty, and keeping them safe by a thousand
miracles; yet, strange to say, allowing the trampling of devastating sheep. One
might reasonably look for a wall of fire to fence such gardens. So extravagant
is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends
sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the
beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep,
birds and bees, but as far as I have seen, man alone, and the animals he tames,
destroy these gardens. Awkward, lumbering bears, the Don tells me, love to
wallow in them in hot weather, and deer with their sharp feet cross them again
and again, sauntering and feeding, yet never a lily have I seen spoiled by them.
Rather, like gardeners, they seem to cultivate them, pressing and dibbling as
required. Anyhow not a leaf or petal seems misplaced.
The trees round about them seem as perfect in beauty and form as the lilies,
their boughs whorled like lily leaves in exact order. This evening, as usual,
the glow of our campfire is working enchantment on everything within reach of
its rays. Lying beneath the firs, it is glorious to see them dipping their
spires in the starry sky, the sky like one vast lily meadow in bloom! How can I
close my eyes on so precious a night?
Next Part: July 10-11th
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