"Yosemite, Sept.--: Come at once--the year wanes; would you see the
wondrous transformation, the embalming of the dead Summer in windings of
purple and gold and bronze--come quickly, before the white pall covers
it--delay no longer. The waters are low and fordable, the snows
threaten, but the hours are yet propitious; and such a welcome waits you
as Solomon in all his glory could not have lavished on Sheba's
approaching queen. * * *"
There was much more of the same sort of high-toned epistolary rhetoric,
written and sent by a dear hand, whose fanciful pen seemed touched by
the ambrosial tints of Autumn. So the year was going out in a gorgeous
carnival, before the Lent-like solemnity of Winter was assumed.
I had only two things to consider now: First, was it already too late to
hasten thither, and enjoy the splendid spectacle so freely offered and
so alluring; secondly, could I, if yet in time, venture so boldly upon
the edge of Winter, and risk the possibility--nay, probability--of being
snow-bound for four or six months, 30 miles from any human habitation?
I did not long consider. I felt every moment that the soul of Summer was
passing. I scented the ascending incense of smoking and crackling
boughs. What a requiem was being chanted by all the tremulous and broken
voices of Nature! Would I, could I, longer forbear to join the
passionate and tumultuous _miserere_? It seemed that I could not, for
gathering about me the voluminous furs of Siberia, I bade adieu to
friends, not without some forebodings awakened by the admonitions of my
elders, then, dropping all the folly of the world, like a monk I went
silently and alone into the monastery of a Sierran solitude, resigned,
trusting, prayerful.
What an entering it was! With slow, devotional steps I approached the
valley. There was a thin veil of snow over the upper trail. It was
smooth and unbroken as I came upon it, following the blazed trees in my
way. Footprints of bear and fox, squirrel and coyote, were traceable.
The owl hooted at me, and the jay shot past me like a blue flash of
light, uttering her prolonged, shrill cry. As for the owl, I could not
see him, but I heard him at startling intervals give the challenge, "Who
are you?" so I advanced and gave the countersign. I don't believe it was
for his grave face alone that the owl was chosen symbol of Wisdom.
Not too soon came the steep and perilous descent into the abysmal depths
of the mountain fastness. It is a shame that pilgrims who come up
thither do not time their steps so as to reach this _Ultima Thule_ of
old times and ways at sunset. Then the magnificence of the spectacle
culminates. That new world below there is illuminated with the soft
tints of Eden. What unutterable fullness of beauty pervades all. The
forests--those moss-like fields are forests, and mighty ones, too--are
all aflame with the burnished gold of sunset, brightening the gold of
autumn; for gold twice refined, as it were, gilds the splendid
landscape. Only think of that picture, shining through the mellow haze
of Indian Summer, and flashing with the lambent glimmer of a myriad
glassy leaves. You can not see them moving, yet they twinkle
incessantly, and the warm air trembles about them while you hang
bewildered from a toppling parapet, four thousand feet above them; birds
swing under you in mid-air, streams leap from the sharp cliff, and reel
in that sickening way through the air that your brain whirls after them.
One is tired, anyhow, by the time he has reached this far, and a night
camp in the cool rim of this world-to-come is just the panacea for any
sort of weariness.
Take my advice: Sleep on it, and drop down on the wings of the morning,
while the sun is filling up this marvelous ravine with such lights and
shadows as are felt, yet scarcely understood. Refreshed, amazed,
bewildered, go down into that solemn place, and see if you are not more
saint-like than you dared to think yourself. When the times are out of
joint, as they frequently are, come up here, forget men and things;
don't imagine we are as bad as we seem, for it is quite certain we might
be a great deal worse if we tried. While you bemoan our earthliness, you
may not be the one saint among us. Coming down with the evening, I was
scarcely at the gates of the inner valley when night was on me. Of this
gate, it is formed of a ponderous monument on the right, called
Cathedral Rock, and on the left is the one bald spot in the Sierras, the
great El Capitan. The arch over this primeval threshold is the astral
dome of heaven, and the gates stand ever open. There is no toll taken in
any mansion of my Father's House, and this is one of them. Passing to
the door of my host, I lifted the latch noiselessly. Before me dawned
fresh experiences. At my back Night gathered deeper than ever, and all
around I seemed to read the rubric of Life's new lesson.
We are a comfort to ourselves--six of us, all told. Summer invites our
little company into a breezy hotel, over in the shadow across the
valley. Winter suggests a log cabin, an expansive fireplace, plenty of
hickory, and as much sunshine as finds its way into our secluded
hermitage. So we are done up compactly, in between thick walls, our hard
finish being in the shape of mud cakes in the chinks of the logs, and a
very hard finish it is; but we take wondrous comfort withal.
How do I pass the hours? Leaving my friends, I wander forth, after
breakfast, in any direction that pleases me. Take today this sheep path;
it leads me to a pebbly beach at a swift turn of the Merced. That clump
of trees produces the best harvest of frost-pointed leaves; there are
new varieties offered every day at an alarming sacrifice, and I invest
largely in these fragile wares. Tomorrow, I shall go yonder across three
tumultuous streams, upon three convenient logs, broad and mossy. Some
book or other goes with me, and is opened now and then. Such books as
Plant Life, The Sexuality of Nature, Studies in Animal Life, suggest
themselves. Open these anywhere, and each is annotated and illustrated
by the scene before me. Every page is a running text to the hour I
glorify.
Perhaps a leaf falls into my lap as I sit over the brook, on a log--a
single leaf, gilded about its border, in the centre a crimson flush,
fast swallowing up the original greenness; the whole will presently be
bronzed and sombre. O, Leaf! how art thou mummified! We do not think of
these little things of Nature. Look at this leaf. What is its record?
How many generations, think you, are numbered in its ancestry? A
perpetual intermarriage has not weakened its fibres. The anatomy of this
leaf is perfect, and the sap of this oak flows from oak to acorn, from
acorn to oak, in an interminable and uninterrupted succession since the
first day. What are your titles and estates beside this representative?
What is your heraldry, with its two centuries of mold; your absurd and
confused genealogies, your escutcheons, blotted no doubt with crimes and
errors, when this scion, which I am permitted to entertain for a moment,
comes of a race whose record is spotless and without stain through ten
thousand eventful years. Why, Eve would recognize the original of this
stock from the mere family resemblance.
Do you think these days tiresome? It is embarrassing for some people to
be left alone with themselves. They can no longer play a part, for there
are none like themselves to play to. The sun and stars know you well
enough--most likely, better than you yourselves do. I like this. I would
out and say to myself: "Here is a confidant. Day hides nothing from me,
or you; it expresses all, exposes all--even that which we might not ask
to see. It is best that we should see it; there are no errors in
Nature."
Walking, the squirrel nods to me. I nod back; and why shouldn't I?
Nature has familiarly introduced us. Squirrel munches under his tail
canopy till I am out of sight, jabbering all the while. What sage little
fellows go on four feet! I believe an animal has all the instincts of
Adam. He should never be tamed, however, lest he lose his identity.
Civilization rubs down the points in our character. As the surf rounds
the pebble, the masses round us. We are polished and insufferably
proper, but have no angles left! It is the angles that give the diamond
its lustre.
Are you hungry? When the index of shadow points out from the base of old
Sentinel Rock and touches that column of descending spray they call
Yosemite, I go to dinner. "The Fall of the Yosemite"--what a dream it
is. A dream of the lotus-eaters, and an aspiration of the Ideal in
Nature. You can not realize it; and yet, you will never forget it. Don't
take it too early in the Spring, when it is less ethereal--nay, somewhat
heavy; rather see it in summer after the rains, or in autumn, better
than all, when it is like a tissue of diamond dust shaken upon the air.
It really seems a labor for it to reach its foaming basin, it is so
filmy, spiritual, delicate. The very air wooes it from its perpetual
leap; sudden currents of wind catch it up and whirl it away in their
arms, a trembling captive, or dash it against the solemn and sad-looking
rock, where it clings for a moment, then trickles down the scarred and
rugged face of it, fading in its descent; sometimes it is waved back by
the elements, and almost seems to return into its cloudy nest up yonder
close under the sky. It only comes to us at last by impulses, and all
along its shining and vapory path rockets of spray shoot out like
pendants, dissolving singly and alone.
But "to return to our muttons." My dial says 12 M. There is no winding
up and down of weights here; 12 M. it undoubtedly is, and mutton waits.
These muttons were begotten here of muttons begotten here to the third
or fourth generation. Their wool is clipped, larded, and spun here by
one who lives here and loves this valley. These mittens, that keep the
frost from my fingers, are among the comforting results of this domestic
economy. In the cabin, by the fireplace, stands the old-fashioned
spinning wheel; and the old-fashioned body who manipulates the wool so
skillfully is the light of our little household. The shadow has struck
twelve from old Sentinel; and I take the sun once a day, and no oftener.
A cool, bracing air, a sharp run over the meadows, for I see the hostess
waving a signal at me for my tardiness, and I am hungry on my own
account--such cliffs and vistas as one sees here make one hollow with
looking at them, and are calculated to keep a supply of appetite on
hand. Do you like good long strips of baked squash? How do you fancy
bowls of warm milk--milk that declares a creamy dividend before morning?
Here is a fine fowl of our own raising--one that has seen Yosemite in
its glory and in its gloom; it ought to be good eating, and I can affirm
that it is. That's a dinner for you, and one where you can begin on pie
the first thing, if your soul craves it, which it frequently does.
A storm brewing, and rain in the lower valley. Never mind, there is no
hurry here; one blushes to be caught worrying in the august presence of
these mountains.
What can I do this stormy afternoon? Stop within doors and sit at the
window; a small grossbeak overhead, and we two looking out upon the rain
and fog. It is a mile nearly to that wall opposite, but look up high as
I can from my window I see no strip of sky. Here is a precipice of
homely, almost hideous-looking rock, and above it a hanging garden;
those pines in that garden are a hundred feet and more in height:
measure the second cliff by their proportions--how far is it, think you,
to the garden above? A thousand feet, perhaps; and three, four--no, six
of these terraces before you touch blue sky. Oh, what a valley! and
where else under heaven are we sunk forty fathoms deep in shadow? But
the sun is up yet, and there floats an eagle in its golden ray. I like
to watch the last beams burn out in that upper gallery among the pines.
There is a moment given us at sunset when we may partly realize the
inexpressible sweetness of the eternal day that is promised us--a dim,
religious light. There is no screen or tint soft enough to render the
effect perfectly. Only these few seconds at sunset seem to hint
something of its surpassing tenderness.
What cloud effects! Look up!--a break in the heavens, and beyond it the
shoulder of a peak weighing some billions of tons, but afloat now, as
soft in outline as the mists that envelop it. What masses of clouds
tumble in upon us! The sky is obscured, night is declared at once, and
the fowls go to roost at three P.M. How is the Fall in this weather? A
silver braid dropped from one cloud to another. Its strands parted and
joined again, lost and found in its own element. Leaping from its dizzy
eyrie in the clouds, itself most cloud-like, it is lost in a whirlwind
of foam. Now it is as a voice heard faintly above the wind, borne hither
and thither. Long, stinging nights, plenty of woolen blankets, and
delicious sleep. Then the evenings, so cosy around the fire. H---- reads
Scott; we listen and comment. Baby is abed long ago--little Baby, four
years old, born here also; knowing nothing of the beautiful world save
what is gathered in this gallery of beauties. Such a queer little child,
left to herself, no doubt thinking she is the only little one in
existence, contented to teeter for hours on a plank by the woodpile,
making long explorations by herself and returning, when we are all well
frightened, with a pocketful of lizards and a wasp in her fingers;
always talking of horned toads and heifers; not afraid of snakes, not
even the rattlers; mocking the birds when she is happy, and growling
bear-fashion to express her disapproval of any thing.
When the snows come, there will be avalanches by day and night, rushing
into all parts of the valley. The Hermit hears a rumbling in the clouds,
as he hoes his potatoes. He looks; a granite pilaster, hewn out by the
hurricanes centuries ago, at last grown weary of clinging to that
precipitous bluff, lets go its hold, and is dashed from crag to crag in
a prolonged and horrible suicide. A pioneer once laid him out a garden,
and marked the plan of his cellar; he was to begin digging the next day:
that night, there leaped a boulder from under the brow of this cliff
right into the heart of the plantation. It dug his cellar for him, but
he never used it. It behooved him and others to get farther out from the
mountain that found this settler too familiar, and sent a random shot as
a sufficient hint to the intruder.
In the trying times when the world was baking, what agony these
mountains must have endured. You see it in their faces, they are so
haggard and old-looking: time is swallowed up in victory, but it was a
desperate duel. There is a dome here that the ambitious foot of man has
never attempted. Tissayac allows no such liberty. Look up at that
rose-colored summit! The sun endows it with glory long after twilight
has shut us in. We are cheated of much daylight here--it comes later and
goes earlier with us; but we get hints of brighter hours, both morning
and evening, from those sparkling minarets now decked with snowy
arabesques. I have seen our canopy, the clouds, so crimsoned at this
hour that the valley seemed a grand oriental pavilion, whose silken roof
was illuminated with a million painted lamps. The golden woods of Autumn
detract nothing from the bizarre effect of the spectacle. To be sure,
these walls are rather sombre for a festival, but the sun does what it
can to enliven them, whilst the flame-colored oaks and blood-spotted
azaleas projecting on all sides from the shelving rocks resemble to a
startling degree galleries of blazing candelabra. Night dispels this
illusion, it is so very deep and mysterious here. The solemn procession
of the stars silently passes over us. I see Taurus pressing forward, and
anon Orion climbs on hand and knee over the mountain in hot pursuit.
Does it tire you to look so long at a gigantic monument? I do not
wonder. The secret of self-esteem seems to lie in regarding our
inferiors; therefor let us talk of this frog. I have heard his chorus a
thousand times in the dark. His is one of the songs of the night. Just
watch him in the meadow pool. See the contentment in his double chin;
he flings out three links of hind leg and carries his elbows akimbo; his
attitudes are unconstrained; he is entirely without affectation; life
never bores him; he keeps his professional engagements to the letter,
and sings nightly through the season, whether hoarse or not.
It is a good plan to portion off the glorious vistas of Yosemite,
allotting so many surprises to each day. Take, for instance, the ten
miles of valley, and passing slowly through the heart of it, allow a
tableau for every three hundred yards. You are sure of this variety, for
the trail winds among a galaxy of snowy peaks. Turn as you choose, it is
either a water-fall at a new angle, a cliff in profile, a reflection in
river or lake--the sudden appearance of the supreme peak of all, or
ravine, cañon, cavern, pine opening, grove or prairie. There is a point
from which you may count over a hundred rocky fangs, tearing the clouds
to tatters. I can not tell you the exact location of this terrific
climax of savage beauty; try to find it, and perhaps discover half a
dozen as singular scenic combinations for yourself. See all that you are
told must be seen, then go out alone and discover as much more for
yourself, and something no doubt dearer to your memory than any of the
more noted haunts. "See Mirror Lake on a still morning," they said to
me. I saw it, but went again in the evening, and saw a vision that the
reader may not expect to have reflected here. It was the picture of the
morning--so softened and refined a veil of enchantment seemed thrown
over it. Hamadryad or water nymph could not have startled me at that
moment: they belonged there, and were looked for. I shall hardly again
renew those impressions; it was all so unexpected, and one is not twice
surprised in the same manner. That wondrous amphitheatre was for once
made cheerful with the broad, horizontal bars of fire that shifted about
it, yet all its lights were mellowed in the purpling mists of evening,
and the whole was pictured in little on the surface of the lake. There
was nothing earthly visible, I thought then, for every thing seemed
transfigured, floating in a lucent atmosphere. It was the hour when the
birds are silent for the space of one intense moment, stopping with one
accord--perhaps holding their breath till the spell is broken. As I
stood entranced, a large golden leaf, ready and willing to die, let go
its hold on the top bough of a tree overhanging the water. From twig to
twig it swung. I heard every sound in its fall till it was out of the
congregation of its fellows, turning over and over in mid-air, sailing
toward the centre of the lake. There it hung on the rim of that
stainless crystal, while a thin ring of silver light noiselessly
expanded toward the shore. The sun was down. All the birds of heaven
said so with their bubbling throats. Bewildered with the delicious
conclusion of this illustration of still life, I turned homeward,
dispelling the mirage. Then such a ride home in the keen air, while a
pillar of smoke rose over the little cabin, telling me which of the
hundred bowers of autumn sheltered my nest.
But, again and again, I have seen all. Pohono has breathed upon me with
its fatal breath, yet I survive. It is said that three Indian girls were
long ago bewitched by its waters, and now their perturbed spirits haunt
the place. Those perfectly round rainbows may form the nimbus for each
of the martyrs; they, at any rate, look supernatural enough for such an
office. The wildly wooded pass to the Vernal and Nevada Falls has echoed
to my tread. I have been sprayed upon till my spirit is never dry of the
life-giving waters that flow so freely. But I am just a little tired of
all this. I begin to breathe short, irregular breaths. The soul of this
mighty solitude oppresses me; I want more air of the common sort, and
less wisdom in daily talks and walks. I remember the pleasant nonsense
of life over the mountains, and sigh for those flesh-pots of Egypt once
in a while. These rocks are full of texts and teachings--these cliffs
are tables of stone, graven with laws and commandments. I read
everywhere mysterious cyphers and hieroglyphics; every changing season
offers to me a new palimpsest. I do not quite like to play here; I dare
not be simple; I'm altogether too good to last long. How many thousand
ascensions have been made in these worshipful days, I wonder; not merely
getting the body on to the tops of these wonderful peaks, but going
thither in spirit, as when the soul goes up into the mountains to pray?
This eye-climbing is as fatiguing and perilous as any. I feel the want
of some pure blue sky.
A few farewell rambles associate themselves with packing up and plans of
desertion. Not sad farewells in this case, for if I never again meet
these individual mountains, I carry with me their memory, eternal and
incomparably glorious. Let us peep into this nook: I got plentiful
blackberries there in the spring, together with stains and thorny
scratches. I haul myself over the ferry and back, for old acquaintance'
sake; the current is so lazy, it seems incredible that the same waters
are almost impassable at some seasons. I succeed in wrecking a whole
armada of floating leaves with stems like a bowsprit. A few beetles take
passage in these gilded barges--no doubt, for the antipodes.
Did you ever drive up the cattle at milking time? I have; but not
without endless trial and tribulation, for they spill off the path on
either side in a very remarkable way, and when I rush after one with a
flank movement, the column breaks and falls back utterly demoralized. A
little strategy on the part of their commander (which is myself)
triumphs in the end, for I privately reconstruct and march them all up
in detachments of one. I look after the little trees, the unbent twigs;
they are more interesting to me than your monsters. This nursery of
saplings sprang up in a night after a freshet: here are quivering aspens
trembling forever in penance for that one sin. They once were gravely
pointed out by the guide of a party of tourists as "shuddering asps." He
is doubtless the same who, being asked "what that was," (pointing to the
North Dome, six thousand feet in the air) said "he'd be hanged if he
knew; some knob or other." I recall ten thousand pleasant times as I
turn my face seaward; not only the great and omnipotent shadows under
the south wall of the valley, nor the continuous canticles of the
waters, but innumerable little things that fill up and make life
perfect.
The talks, the walks with my friends here, the parrot "Sultan," fed
daily from the table, soliloquizing upon men and things in Arabic and
Hindostanee, for he scorns English and talks in his sleep. There is
_Bobby_, the grossbeak, brought to the door in pin feathers and skin
like oiled silk by an Indian. His history is tragic: this Indian brained
the whole family and an assortment of relatives; Bobby alone remaining
to brood over the massacre, was sold into bondage for two bits and a
tin dipper without the bottom. The sun seems to lift his gloom, for he
sings a little, sharpens his bill with great gusto and tomahawks a bit
of fruit, as though dealing vengeance upon the destroyer of his race.
[Illustration: Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite, in 1869]
When shall I see another such cabin as this--its great fireplaces, and
the loft heaping full of pumpkins? O, Yosemite! O, halcyon days, and
bed-time at eight P.M., tucking in for ten good hours and up again at
six; good eatings and drinkings day by day, mugs of milk and baked
squash forever, plenty of butter to our daily bread; letters at wide
intervals, and long, uninterrupted "thinks" about home and friends (as
the poet of the "Hermitage" writes in one of his letters). Shall I ever
again sit for two mortal hours hearing a housefly buzz in the window and
thinking it a pleasant voice! But alas! those restless days, when the
air was full of driving leaves and I could find nothing on earth to
comfort me.
I leave this morning. Opportunity takes me by the hand and leads me
away. The heart leaps with emotion: everything is momentous in a quiet
life. This is the portal we entered one deepening dusk. Its threshold
will soon be cushioned with snow; let us hasten on. If I were asked when
is the time to visit Yosemite, I should reply: Go in the spring; see the
freshets and the waterfalls in their glory, and the valley in its fresh
and vivid greenness. Go again, by all means, in the autumn, when the
woods are powdered with gold dust and a dreamy haze sleeps in the long
ravines; when the stars sparkle like crystals and the mornings are
frosty; when the clouds visit us in person, and the trees look like
crayon sketches on a vapory background, and the cliffs like leaning
towers traced in sepia on a soft ground glass. Go in spring and autumn,
if possible. I should choose autumn of the two; but go at any hazard,
and do not rest till you have been. You can enter and go out at this
portal. Passing seaward, to the left, out of the gray and groping mists
a form, arises, monstrous and awful in its proportions; spurning the
very earth that crumbles at its very base as it towers to heaven. The
vapors of the air cleave to its massive front. The passing cloud is
caught and torn in the grand carvings of its capitals. Gaze upon it in
the solemnity of its sunlit surface. Impressive, impassive, magnetic;
having a pulse and the organs of life almost; terrible as the forehead
of a god. The full splendor of the noonday can not belittle it, night
can not compass it. The moon is paler in its presence and wastes her
lamp, the stars are hidden and lost over and beyond it. Across the face
of it is borne forever the shadowy semblance of a swift and flying
figure. Despair and desperation are in the nervous energy depicted in
this marvelous medallion. Surely, the Indian may look with a degree of
reverence upon that picture, painted by the morning light, fading in the
meridian day, and gone altogether by evening. A grand etching of
colossal proportions, representing the great chief Tutochanula in his
mysterious flight. The Wandering Jew might look upon it and behold his
traditional beard and flowing robes blown here by the winds in the
rapidity of his desperate haste. It is the last one sees of the valley,
as it is the last any have seen of Tutochanula. He fled into the west,
cycles ago, and I follow him now into the west, nest-building, and
getting into the shadow and resting after the door of the mountain is
passed, and my soul no longer beats impetuously against those stormy
walls.
With uncovered head, having nothing between me and Saturn, wiser, I
trust, for my intercourse with these masters, purer in heart and holier
for my prolonged vigil, with careful and reverential steps I pass out of
Yosemite shadows.