One warm, bright Sunday near the end of April, six of us walked up
from the hotel to Vernal and Nevada Falls, or as near to them as we
could get, and took our fill of the tumult of foaming waters
struggling with the wreck of huge granite cliffs: so impassive and
immobile the rocks, so impetuous and reckless and determined the
onset of the waters, till the falls are reached, when the obstructed
river seems to find the escape and the freedom it was so eagerly
seeking. Better to be completely changed into foam and spray by one
single leap of six hundred feet into empty space, the river seems to
say, than be forever baffled and tortured and torn on this rack of
merciless boulders.
We followed the zigzagging trail up the steep side of the valley,
touching melting snow-banks in its upper courses, passing huge
granite rocks also melting in the slow heat of the geologic ages,
pausing to take in the rugged, shaggy spruces and pines that
sentineled the mountain-sides here and there, or resting our eyes
upon Liberty Cap, which carries its suggestive form a thousand feet
or more above the Nevada Fall. What beauty, what grandeur attended
us that day! the wild tumult of waters, the snow-white falls, the
motionless avalanches of granite rocks, and the naked granite shaft,
Liberty Cap, dominating all!
And that night, too, when we sat around a big camp-fire near our
tents in the valley, and saw the full moon come up and look down
upon us from behind Sentinel Rock, and heard the intermittent
booming of Yosemite Falls sifting through the spruce trees that
towered around us, and felt the tender, brooding spirit of the great
valley, itself touched to lyric intensity by the grandeurs on every
hand, steal in upon us, and possess our souls--surely that was a
night none of us can ever forget. As Yosemite can stand the broad,
searching light of midday and not be cheapened, so its enchantments
can stand the light of the moon and the stars and not be rendered
too vague and impalpable.