MOUNT HOFFMAN AND LAKE TENAYA
_July 26._ Ramble to the summit of Mount Hoffman, eleven thousand feet
high, the highest point in life’s journey my feet have yet touched. And
what glorious landscapes are about me, new plants, new animals, new
crystals, and multitudes of new mountains far higher than Hoffman,
towering in glorious array along the axis of the range, serene,
majestic, snow-laden, sun-drenched, vast domes and ridges shining below
them, forests, lakes, and meadows in the hollows, the pure blue
bell-flower sky brooding them all,—a glory day of admission into a new
realm of wonders as if Nature had wooingly whispered, “Come higher.”
What questions I asked, and how little I know of all the vast show, and
how eagerly, tremulously hopeful of some day knowing more, learning the
meaning of these divine symbols crowded together on this wondrous page.
Mount Hoffman is the highest part of a ridge or spur about fourteen
miles from the axis of the main range, perhaps a remnant brought into
relief and isolated by unequal denudation. The southern slopes shed
their waters into Yosemite Valley by Tenaya and Dome Creeks, the
northern in part into the Tuolumne River, but mostly into the Merced by
Yosemite Creek. The rock is mostly granite, with some small piles and
crests rising here and there in picturesque pillared and castellated
remnants of red metamorphic slates. Both the granite and slates are
divided by joints, making them separable into blocks like the stones of
artificial masonry, suggesting the Scripture “He hath builded the
mountains.” Great banks of snow and ice are piled in hollows on the cool
precipitous north side forming the highest perennial sources of Yosemite
Creek. The southern slopes are much more gradual and accessible. Narrow
slot-like gorges extend across the summit at right angles, which look
like lanes, formed evidently by the erosion of less resisting beds. They
are usually called “devil’s slides,” though they lie far above the
region usually haunted by the devil; for though we read that he once
climbed an exceeding high mountain, he cannot be much of a mountaineer,
for his tracks are seldom seen above the timber-line.
[Illustration: APPROACH OF DOME CREEK TO YOSEMITE]
The broad gray summit is barren and desolate-looking in general views,
wasted by ages of gnawing storms; but looking at the surface in detail,
one finds it covered by thousands and millions of charming plants
with leaves and flowers so small they form no mass of color visible at a
distance of a few hundred yards. Beds of azure daisies smile confidingly
in moist hollows, and along the banks of small rills, with several
species of eriogonum, silky-leaved ivesia, pentstemon, orthocarpus, and
patches of _Primula suffruticosa_, a beautiful shrubby species. Here
also I found bryanthus, a charming heathwort covered with purple flowers
and dark green foliage like heather, and three trees new to me—a
hemlock and two pines. The hemlock (_Tsuga Mertensiana_) is the most
beautiful conifer I have ever seen; the branches and also the main axis
droop in a singularly graceful way, and the dense foliage covers the
delicate, sensitive, swaying branchlets all around. It is now in full
bloom, and the flowers, together with thousands of last season’s cones
still clinging to the drooping sprays, display wonderful wealth of
color, brown and purple and blue. Gladly I climbed the first tree I
found to revel in the midst of it. How the touch of the flowers makes
one’s flesh tingle! The pistillate are dark, rich purple, and almost
translucent, the staminate blue,—a vivid, pure tone of blue like the
mountain sky,—the most uncommonly beautiful of all the Sierra tree
flowers I have seen. How wonderful that, with all its delicate feminine
grace and beauty of form and dress and behavior, this lovely tree up
here, exposed to the wildest blasts, has already endured the storms of
centuries of winters!
The two pines also are brave storm-enduring trees, the mountain pine
(_Pinus monticola_) and the dwarf pine (_Pinus albicaulis_). The
mountain pine is closely related to the sugar pine, though the cones are
only about four to six inches long. The largest trees are from five to
six feet in diameter at four feet above the ground, the bark rich brown.
Only a few storm-beaten adventurers approach the summit of the mountain.
The dwarf or white-bark pine is the species that forms the timber-line,
where it is so completely dwarfed that one may walk over the top of a
bed of it as over snow-pressed chaparral.
How boundless the day seems as we revel in these storm-beaten sky
gardens amid so vast a congregation of onlooking mountains! Strange and
admirable it is that the more savage and chilly and storm-chafed the
mountains, the finer the glow on their faces and the finer the plants
they bear. The myriads of flowers tingeing the mountain-top do not seem
to have grown out of the dry, rough gravel of disintegration, but rather
they appear as visitors, a cloud of witnesses to Nature’s love in what
we in our timid ignorance and unbelief call howling desert. The surface
of the ground, so dull and forbidding at first sight, besides being rich
in plants, shines and sparkles with crystals: mica, hornblende,
feldspar, quartz, tourmaline. The radiance in some places is so great as
to be fairly dazzling, keen lance rays of every color flashing,
sparkling in glorious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave
beauty-work—every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a
mirror reflecting the Creator.
From garden to garden, ridge to ridge, I drifted enchanted, now on my
knees gazing into the face of a daisy, now climbing again and again
among the purple and azure flowers of the hemlocks, now down into the
treasuries of the snow, or gazing afar over domes and peaks, lakes and
woods, and the billowy glaciated fields of the upper Tuolumne, and
trying to sketch them. In the midst of such beauty, pierced with its
rays, one’s body is all one tingling palate. Who wouldn’t be a
mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.
The largest of the many glacier lakes in sight, and the one with the
finest shore scenery, is Tenaya, about a mile long, with an imposing
mountain dipping its feet into it on the south side, Cathedral Peak a
few miles above its head, many smooth swelling rock-waves and domes on
the north, and in the distance southward a multitude of snowy peaks, the
fountain-heads of rivers. Lake Hoffman lies shimmering beneath my feet,
mountain pines around its shining rim. To the northward the picturesque
basin of Yosemite Creek glitters with lakelets and pools; but the eye is
soon drawn away from these bright mirror wells, however attractive, to
revel in the glorious congregation of peaks on the axis of the range in
their robes of snow and light.
[Illustration: Cathedral Peak]
Carlo caught an unfortunate woodchuck when it was running from a grassy
spot to its boulder-pile home—one of the hardiest of the mountain
animals. I tried hard to save him, but in vain. After telling Carlo that
he must be careful not to kill anything, I caught sight, for the first
time, of the curious pika, or little chief hare, that cuts large
quantities of lupines and other plants and lays them out to dry in the
sun for hay, which it stores in underground barns to last through the
long, snowy winter. Coming upon these plants freshly cut and lying in
handfuls here and there on the rocks has a startling effect of busy life
on the lonely mountain-top. These little haymakers, endowed with
brain stuff something like our own,—God up here looking after
them,—what lessons they teach, how they widen our sympathy!
An eagle soaring above a sheer cliff, where I suppose its nest is, makes
another striking show of life, and helps to bring to mind the other
people of the so-called solitude—deer in the forest caring for their
young; the strong, well-clad, well-fed bears; the lively throng of
squirrels; the blessed birds, great and small, stirring and sweetening
the groves; and the clouds of happy insects filling the sky with joyous
hum as part and parcel of the down-pouring sunshine. All these come to
mind, as well as the plant people, and the glad streams singing their
way to the sea. But most impressive of all is the vast glowing
countenance of the wilderness in awful, infinite repose.
Toward sunset, enjoyed a fine run to camp, down the long south slopes,
across ridges and ravines, gardens and avalanche gaps, through the firs
and chaparral, enjoying wild excitement and excess of strength, and so
ends a day that will never end.
_July 27._ Up and away to Lake Tenaya,—another big day, enough for a
lifetime. The rocks, the air, everything speaking with audible voice or
silent; joyful, wonderful, enchanting, banishing weariness and sense of
time. No longing for anything now or hereafter as we go home into the
mountain’s heart. The level sunbeams are touching the fir-tops, every
leaf shining with dew. Am holding an easterly course, the deep cañon of
Tenaya Creek on the right hand, Mount Hoffman on the left, and the lake
straight ahead about ten miles distant, the summit of Mount Hoffman
about three thousand feet above me, Tenaya Creek four thousand feet
below and separated from the shallow, irregular valley, along which most
of the way lies, by smooth domes and wave-ridges. Many mossy emerald
bogs, meadows, and gardens in rocky hollows to wade and saunter
through—and what fine plants they give me, what joyful streams I have
to cross, and how many views are displayed of the Hoffman and Cathedral
Peak masonry, and what a wondrous breadth of shining granite pavement to
walk over for the first time about the shores of the lake! On I
sauntered in freedom complete; body without weight as far as I was
aware; now wading through starry parnassia bogs, now through gardens
shoulder deep in larkspur and lilies, grasses and rushes, shaking off
showers of dew; crossing piles of crystalline moraine boulders, bright
mirror pavements, and cool, cheery streams going to Yosemite; crossing
bryanthus carpets and the scoured pathways of avalanches, and thickets
of snow-pressed ceanothus; then down a broad, majestic stairway into the
ice-sculptured lake-basin.
The snow on the high mountains is melting fast, and the streams are
singing bank-full, swaying softly through the level meadows and bogs,
quivering with sun-spangles, swirling in pot-holes, resting in deep
pools, leaping, shouting in wild, exulting energy over rough boulder
dams, joyful, beautiful in all their forms. No Sierra landscape that I
have seen holds anything truly dead or dull, or any trace of what in
manufactories is called rubbish or waste; everything is perfectly clean
and pure and full of divine lessons. This quick, inevitable interest
attaching to everything seems marvelous until the hand of God becomes
visible; then it seems reasonable that what interests Him may well
interest us. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it
hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our
own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping
to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers.
Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more
visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are
fountains—beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal
ken.
I found three kinds of meadows: (1) Those contained in basins not yet
filled with earth enough to make a dry surface. They are planted with
several species of carex, and have their margins diversified with robust
flowering plants such as veratrum, larkspur, lupine, etc. (2) Those
contained in the same sort of basins, once lakes like the first, but so
situated in relation to the streams that flow through them and beds of
transportable sand, gravel, etc., that they are now high and dry and
well drained. This dry condition and corresponding difference in their
vegetation may be caused by no superiority of position, or power of
transporting filling material in the streams that belong to them, but
simply by the basin being shallow and therefore sooner filled. They are
planted with grasses, mostly fine, silky, and rather short-leaved,
_Calamagrostis_ and _Agrostis_ being the principal genera. They form
delightfully smooth, level sods in which one finds two or three species
of gentian and as many of purple and yellow orthocarpus, violet,
vaccinium, kalmia, bryanthus, and lonicera. (3) Meadows hanging on ridge
and mountain slopes, not in basins at all, but made and held in place
by masses of boulders and fallen trees, which, forming dams one above
another in close succession on small, outspread, channelless streams,
have collected soil enough for the growth of grasses, carices, and many
flowering plants, and being kept well watered, without being subject to
currents sufficiently strong to carry them away, a hanging or sloping
meadow is the result. Their surfaces are seldom so smooth as the others,
being roughened more or less by the projecting tops of the dam rocks or
logs; but at a little distance this roughness is not noticed, and the
effect is very striking—bright green, fluent, down-sweeping flowery
ribbons on gray slopes. The broad shallow streams these meadows belong
to are mostly derived from banks of snow and because the soil is well
drained in some places, while in others the dam rocks are packed close
and caulked with bits of wood and leaves, making boggy patches; the
vegetation, of course, is correspondingly varied. I saw patches of
willow, bryanthus, and a fine show of lilies on some of them, not
forming a margin, but scattered about among the carex and grass. Most of
these meadows are now in their prime. How wonderful must be the temper
of the elastic leaves of grasses and sedges to make curves so perfect
and fine. Tempered a little harder, they would stand erect, stiff and
bristly, like strips of metal; a little softer, and every leaf would lie
flat. And what fine painting and tinting there is on the glumes and
pales, stamens and feathery pistils. Butterflies colored like the
flowers waver above them in wonderful profusion, and many other
beautiful winged people, numbered and known and loved only by the Lord,
are waltzing together high over head, seemingly in pure play and
hilarious enjoyment of their little sparks of life. How wonderful they
are! How do they get a living, and endure the weather? How are their
little bodies, with muscles, nerves, organs, kept warm and jolly in such
admirable exuberant health? Regarded only as mechanical inventions, how
wonderful they are! Compared with these, Godlike man’s greatest machines
are as nothing.
Most of the sandy gardens on moraines are in prime beauty like the
meadows, though some on the north sides of rocks and beneath groves of
sapling pines have not yet bloomed. On sunny sheets of crystal soil
along the slopes of the Hoffman Mountains, I saw extensive patches of
ivesia and purple gilia with scarce a green leaf, making fine clouds of
color. Ribes bushes, vaccinium, and kalmia, now in flower, make
beautiful rugs and borders along the banks of the streams. Shaggy beds
of dwarf oak (_Quercus chrysolepis_, var. _vaccinifolia_) over which one
may walk are common on rocky moraines, yet this is the same species as
the large live oak seen near Brown’s Flat. The most beautiful of the
shrubs is the purple-flowered bryanthus, here making glorious carpets at
an elevation of nine thousand feet.
The principal tree for the first mile or two from camp is the
magnificent silver fir, which reaches perfection here both in size and
form of individual trees, and in the mode of grouping in groves with
open spaces between. So trim and tasteful are these silvery, spiry
groves one would fancy they must have been placed in position by some
master landscape gardener, their regularity seeming almost conventional.
But Nature is the only gardener able to do work so fine. A few noble
specimens two hundred feet high occupy central positions in the groups
with younger trees around them; and outside of these another circle of
yet smaller ones, the whole arranged like tastefully symmetrical
bouquets, every tree fitting nicely the place assigned to it as if made
especially for it; small roses and eriogonums are usually found blooming
on the open spaces about the groves, forming charming pleasure grounds.
Higher, the firs gradually become smaller and less perfect, many
showing double summits, indicating storm stress. Still, where good
moraine soil is found, even on the rim of the lake-basin, specimens one
hundred and fifty feet in height and five feet in diameter occur nearly
nine thousand feet above the sea. The saplings, I find, are mostly bent
with the crushing weight of the winter snow, which at this elevation
must be at least eight or ten feet deep, judging by marks on the trees;
and this depth of compacted snow is heavy enough to bend and bury young
trees twenty or thirty feet in height and hold them down for four or
five months. Some are broken; the others spring up when the snow melts
and at length attain a size that enables them to withstand the snow
pressure. Yet even in trees five feet thick the traces of this early
discipline are still plainly to be seen in their curved insteps, and
frequently in old dried saplings protruding from the trunk, partially
overgrown by the new axis developed from a branch below the break. Yet
through all this stress the forest is maintained in marvelous beauty.
Beyond the silver firs I find the two-leaved pine (_Pinus contorta_,
var. _Murrayana_) forms the bulk of the forest up to an elevation of ten
thousand feet or more—the highest timber-belt of the Sierra. I saw a
specimen nearly five feet in diameter growing on deep, well-watered
soil at an elevation of about nine thousand feet. The form of this
species varies very much with position, exposure, soil, etc. On
stream-banks, where it is closely planted, it is very slender; some
specimens seventy-five feet high do not exceed five inches in diameter
at the ground, but the ordinary form, as far as I have seen, is well
proportioned. The average diameter when full grown at this elevation is
about twelve or fourteen inches, height forty or fifty feet, the
straggling branches bent up at the end, the bark thin and bedraggled
with amber-colored resin. The pistillate flowers form little crimson
rosettes a fourth of an inch in diameter on the ends of the branchlets,
mostly hidden in the leaf-tassels; the staminate are about three eighths
of an inch in diameter, sulphur-yellow, in showy clusters, giving a
remarkably rich effect—a brave, hardy mountaineer pine, growing
cheerily on rough beds of avalanche boulders and joints of rock
pavements, as well as in fertile hollows, standing up to the waist in
snow every winter for centuries, facing a thousand storms and blooming
every year in colors as bright as those worn by the sun-drenched trees
of the tropics.
A still hardier mountaineer is the Sierra juniper (_Juniperus
occidentalis_), growing mostly on domes and ridges and glacier
pavements. A thickset, sturdy, picturesque highlander, seemingly content
to live for more than a score of centuries on sunshine and snow; a truly
wonderful fellow, dogged endurance expressed in every feature, lasting
about as long as the granite he stands on. Some are nearly as broad as
high. I saw one on the shore of the lake nearly ten feet in diameter,
and many six to eight feet. The bark, cinnamon-colored, flakes off in
long ribbon-like strips with a satiny luster. Surely the most enduring
of all tree mountaineers, it never seems to die a natural death, or even
to fall after it has been killed. If protected from accidents, it would
perhaps be immortal. I saw some that had withstood an avalanche from
snowy Mount Hoffman cheerily putting out new branches, as if repeating,
like Grip, “Never say die.” Some were simply standing on the pavement
where no fissure more than half an inch wide offered a hold for its
roots. The common height for these rock-dwellers is from ten to twenty
feet; most of the old ones have broken tops, and are mere stumps, with a
few tufted branches, forming picturesque brown pillars on bare
pavements, with plenty of elbow-room and a clear view in every
direction. On good moraine soil it reaches a height of from forty to
sixty feet, with dense gray foliage. The rings of the trunk are very
thin, eighty to an inch of diameter in some specimens I examined. Those
ten feet in diameter must be very old—thousands of years. Wish I could
live, like these junipers, on sunshine and snow, and stand beside them
on the shore of Lake Tenaya for a thousand years. How much I should see,
and how delightful it would be! Everything in the mountains would find
me and come to me, and everything from the heavens like light.
[Illustration: JUNIPERS IN TENAYA CA—ON]
The lake was named for one of the chiefs of the Yosemite tribe. Old
Tenaya is said to have been a good Indian to his tribe. When a company
of soldiers followed his band into Yosemite to punish them for
cattle-stealing and other crimes, they fled to this lake by a trail that
leads out of the upper end of the valley, early in the spring, while the
snow was still deep; but being pursued, they lost heart and surrendered.
A fine monument the old man has in this bright lake, and likely to last
a long time, though lakes die as well as Indians, being gradually filled
with detritus carried in by the feeding streams, and to some extent also
by snow avalanches and rain and wind. A considerable portion of the
Tenaya basin is already changed into a forested flat and meadow at the
upper end, where the main tributary enters from Cathedral Peak. Two
other tributaries come from the Hoffman Range. The outlet flows westward
through Tenaya Cañon to join the Merced River in Yosemite. Scarce a
handful of loose soil is to be seen on the north shore. All is bare,
shining granite, suggesting the Indian name of the lake, Pywiack,
meaning shining rock. The basin seems to have been slowly excavated by
the ancient glaciers, a marvelous work requiring countless thousands of
years. On the south side an imposing mountain rises from the water’s
edge to a height of three thousand feet or more, feathered with hemlock
and pine; and huge shining domes on the east, over the tops of which the
grinding, wasting, molding glacier must have swept as the wind does
to-day.
_July 28._ No cloud mountains, only curly cirrus wisps scarce
perceptible, and the want of thunder to strike the noon hour seems
strange, as if the Sierra clock had stopped. Have been studying the
_magnifica_ fir—measured one near two hundred and forty feet high, the
tallest I have yet seen. This species is the most symmetrical of all
conifers, but though gigantic in size it seldom lives more than four or
five hundred years. Most of the trees die from the attacks of a fungus
at the age of two or three centuries. This dry-rot fungus perhaps enters
the trunk by way of the stumps of limbs broken off by the snow that
loads the broad palmate branches. The younger specimens are marvels of
symmetry, straight and erect as a plumb-line, their branches in regular
level whorls of five mostly, each branch as exact in its divisions as a
fern frond, and thickly covered by the leaves, making a rich plush over
all the tree, excepting only the trunk and a small portion of the main
limbs. The leaves turn upward, especially on the branchlets, and are
stiff and sharp, pointed on all the upper portion of the tree. They
remain on the tree about eight or ten years, and as the growth is rapid
it is not rare to find the leaves still in place on the upper part of
the axis where it is three to four inches in diameter, wide apart of
course, and their spiral arrangement beautifully displayed. The
leaf-scars are conspicuous for twenty years or more, but there is a good
deal of variation in different trees as to the thickness and sharpness
of the leaves.
After the excursion to Mount Hoffman I had seen a complete cross-section
of the Sierra forest, and I find that _Abies magnifica_ is the most
symmetrical tree of all the noble coniferous company. The cones are
grand affairs, superb in form, size, and color, cylindrical, stand
erect on the upper branches like casks, and are from five to eight
inches in length by three or four in diameter, greenish gray, and
covered with fine down which has a silvery luster in the sunshine, and
their brilliance is augmented by beads of transparent balsam which seems
to have been poured over each cone, bringing to mind the old ceremonies
of anointing with oil. If possible, the inside of the cone is more
beautiful than the outside; the scales, bracts, and seed wings are
tinted with the loveliest rosy purple with a bright lustrous
iridescence; the seeds, three fourths of an inch long, are dark brown.
When the cones are ripe the scales and bracts fall off, setting the
seeds free to fly to their predestined places, while the dead spike-like
axes are left on the branches for many years to mark the positions of
the vanished cones, excepting those cut off when green by the Douglas
squirrel. How he gets his teeth under the broad bases of the sessile
cones, I don’t know. Climbing these trees on a sunny day to visit the
growing cones and to gaze over the tops of the forest is one of my best
enjoyments.
_July 29._ Bright, cool, exhilarating. Clouds about .05. Another
glorious day of rambling, sketching, and universal enjoyment.
_July 30._ Clouds .20, but the regular shower did not reach us, though
thunder was heard a few miles off striking the noon hour. Ants, flies,
and mosquitoes seem to enjoy this fine climate. A few house-flies have
discovered our camp. The Sierra mosquitoes are courageous and of good
size, some of them measuring nearly an inch from tip of sting to tip of
folded wings. Though less abundant than in most wildernesses, they
occasionally make quite a hum and stir, and pay but little attention to
time or place. They sting anywhere, any time of day, wherever they can
find anything worth while, until they are themselves stung by frost. The
large, jet-black ants are only ticklish and troublesome when one is
lying down under the trees. Noticed a borer drilling a silver fir.
Ovipositor about an inch and a half in length, polished and straight
like a needle. When not in use, it is folded back in a sheath, which
extends straight behind like the legs of a crane in flying. This
drilling, I suppose, is to save nest building, and the after care of
feeding the young. Who would guess that in the brain of a fly so much
knowledge could find lodgment? How do they know that their eggs will
hatch in such holes, or, after they hatch, that the soft, helpless grubs
will find the right sort of nourishment in silver fir sap? This
domestic arrangement calls to mind the curious family of gallflies.
Each species seems to know what kind of plant will respond to the
irritation or stimulus of the puncture it makes and the eggs it lays, in
forming a growth that not only answers for a nest and home but also
provides food for the young. Probably these gallflies make mistakes at
times, like anybody else; but when they do, there is simply a failure of
that particular brood, while enough to perpetuate the species do find
the proper plants and nourishment. Many mistakes of this kind might be
made without being discovered by us. Once a pair of wrens made the
mistake of building a nest in the sleeve of a workman’s coat, which was
called for at sundown, much to the consternation and discomfiture of the
birds. Still the marvel remains that any of the children of such small
people as gnats and mosquitoes should escape their own and their
parents’ mistakes, as well as the vicissitudes of the weather and hosts
of enemies, and come forth in full vigor and perfection to enjoy the
sunny world. When we think of the small creatures that are visible, we
are led to think of many that are smaller still and lead us on and on
into infinite mystery.
_July 31._ Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as
nectar to the tongue; indeed the body seems one palate, and tingles
equally throughout. Cloudiness about .05, but our ordinary shower has
not yet reached us, though I hear thunder in the distance.
The cheery little chipmunk, so common about Brown’s Flat, is common here
also, and perhaps other species. In their light, airy habits they recall
the familiar species of the Eastern States, which we admired in the oak
openings of Wisconsin as they skimmed along the zigzag rail fences.
These Sierra chipmunks are more arboreal and squirrel-like. I first
noticed them on the lower edge of the coniferous belt, where the Sabine
and yellow pines meet,—exceedingly interesting little fellows, full of
odd, funny ways, and without being true squirrels, have most of their
accomplishments without their aggressive quarrelsomeness. I never weary
watching them as they frisk about in the bushes gathering seeds and
berries, like song sparrows poising daintily on slender twigs, and
making even less stir than most birds of the same size. Few of the
Sierra animals interest me more; they are so able, gentle, confiding,
and beautiful, they take one’s heart, and get themselves adopted as
darlings. Though weighing hardly more than field mice, they are
laborious collectors of seeds, nuts, and cones, and are therefore well
fed, but never in the least swollen with fat or lazily full. On the
contrary, of their frisky, birdlike liveliness there is no end. They
have a great variety of notes corresponding with their movements, some
sweet and liquid, like water dripping with tinkling sounds into pools.
They seem dearly to love teasing a dog, coming frequently almost within
reach, then frisking away with lively chipping, like sparrows, beating
time to their music with their tails, which at each chip describe half
circles from side to side. Not even the Douglas squirrel is surer-footed
or more fearless. I have seen them running about on sheer precipices of
the Yosemite walls seemingly holding on with as little effort as flies,
and as unconscious of danger, where, if the slightest slip were made,
they would have fallen two or three thousand feet. How fine it would be
could we mountaineers climb these tremendous cliffs with the same sure
grip! The venture I made the other day for a view of the Yosemite Fall,
and which tried my nerves so sorely, this little Tamias would have made
for an ear of grass.
The woodchuck (_Arctomys monax_) of the bleak mountain-tops is a very
different sort of mountaineer—the most bovine of rodents, a heavy
eater, fat, aldermanic in bulk and fairly bloated, in his high pastures,
like a cow in a clover field. One woodchuck would outweigh a hundred
chipmunks, and yet he is by no means a dull animal. In the midst of what
we regard as storm-beaten desolation he pipes and whistles right
cheerily, and enjoys long life in his skyland homes. His burrow is made
in disintegrated rocks or beneath large boulders. Coming out of his den
in the cold hoarfrost mornings, he takes a sun-bath on some favorite
flat-topped rock, then goes to breakfast in garden hollows, eats grass
and flowers until comfortably swollen, then goes a-visiting to fight and
play. How long a woodchuck lives in this bracing air I don’t know, but
some of them are rusty and gray like lichen-covered boulders.
_August 1._ A grand cloudland and five-minute shower, refreshing the
blessed wilderness, already so fragrant and fresh, steeping the black
meadow mold and dead leaves like tea.
The waycup, or flicker, so familiar to every boy in the old Middle West
States, is one of the most common of the wood-peckers hereabouts, and
makes one feel at home. I can see no difference in plumage or habits
from the Eastern species, though the climate here is so different,—a
fine, brave, confiding, beautiful bird. The robin, too, is here, with
all his familiar notes and gestures, tripping daintily on open garden
spots and high meadows. Over all America he seems to be at home, moving
from the plains to the mountains and from north to south, back and
forth, up and down, with the march of the seasons and food supply. How
admirable the constitution and temper of this brave singer, keeping in
cheery health over so vast and varied a range! Oftentimes, as I wander
through these solemn woods, awe-stricken and silent, I hear the
reassuring voice of this fellow wanderer ringing out, sweet and clear,
“Fear not! fear not!”
The mountain quail (_Oreortyx ricta_) I often meet in my walks—a small
brown partridge with a very long, slender, ornamental crest worn
jauntily like a feather in a boy’s cap, giving it a very marked
appearance. This species is considerably larger than the valley quail,
so common on the hot foothills. They seldom alight in trees, but love to
wander in flocks of from five or six to twenty through the ceanothus and
manzanita thickets and over open, dry meadows and rocks of the ridges
where the forest is less dense or wanting, uttering a low clucking sound
to enable them to keep together. When disturbed they rise with a strong
birr of wing-beats, and scatter as if exploded to a distance of a
quarter of a mile or so. After the danger is past they call one another
together with a loud piping note—Nature’s beautiful mountain chickens.
I have not yet found their nests. The young of this season are already
hatched and away—new broods of happy wanderers half as large as their
parents. I wonder how they live through the long winters, when the
ground is snow-covered ten feet deep. They must go down towards the
lower edge of the forest, like the deer, though I have not heard of them
there.
The blue, or dusky, grouse is also common here. They like the deepest
and closest fir woods, and when disturbed, burst from the branches of
the trees with a strong, loud whir of wing-beats, and vanish in a
wavering, silent slide, without moving a feather—a stout, beautiful
bird about the size of the prairie chicken of the old west, spending
most of the time in the trees, excepting the breeding season, when it
keeps to the ground. The young are now able to fly. When scattered by
man or dog, they keep still until the danger is supposed to be passed,
then the mother calls them together. The chicks can hear the call a
distance of several hundred yards, though it is not loud. Should the
young be unable to fly, the mother feigns desperate lameness or death to
draw one away, throwing herself at one’s feet within two or three yards,
rolling over on her back, kicking and gasping, so as to deceive man or
beast. They are said to stay all the year in the woods hereabouts,
taking shelter in dense tufted branches of fir and yellow pine during
snowstorms, and feeding on the young buds of these trees. Their legs are
feathered down to their toes, and I have never heard of their suffering
in any sort of weather. Able to live on pine and fir buds, they are
forever independent in the matter of food, which troubles so many of us
and controls our movements. Gladly, if I could, I would live forever on
pine buds, however full of turpentine and pitch, for the sake of this
grand independence. Just to think of our sufferings last month merely
for grist-mill flour. Man seems to have more difficulty in gaining food
than any other of the Lord’s creatures. For many in towns it is a
consuming, lifelong struggle; for others, the danger of coming to want
is so great, the deadly habit of endless hoarding for the future is
formed, which smothers all real life, and is continued long after every
reasonable need has been over-supplied.
On Mount Hoffman I saw a curious dove-colored bird that seemed half
woodpecker, half magpie, or crow. It screams something like a crow, but
flies like a woodpecker, and has a long, straight bill, with which I saw
it opening the cones of the mountain and white-barked pines. It seems
to keep to the heights, though no doubt it comes down for shelter during
winter, if not for food. So far as food is concerned, these
bird-mountaineers, I guess, can glean nuts enough, even in winter, from
the different kinds of conifers; for always there are a few that have
been unable to fly out of the cones and remain for hungry winter
gleaners.