This park is very special. The people who know it well feel proprietary
toward its mountains, scattered lakes, and glaciers. Perhaps it is the
arrangement of the land, an unsurpassed concentration of American
wilderness. Time and again I have thought, as I regarded some aspect of
this country, _yes, this is exactly right_—almost, it would seem, as if
some magic existed that could translate thought and emotion into rock
and bark.
Glacier remains largely unexploited, bearing still the aspect of the
Earth the Indians knew for 500 generations—a land where it is yet
possible to feel a sense of discovery, sense that a single man matters.
On too many mountains, man has tarnished whatever he has touched; but
here the land has shed, as a fir sloughs snow, a long succession of
traders, trappers, explorers, hunters, surveyors, prospectors, loggers,
settlers, and tourists.
You may walk the same trail a dozen times and not tire of the view. I
have given up wondering why. I know only that these are mountains a man
might grow old with, and that mountain-fever never diminishes but only
changes its look, as a forest does over many years.
Repeatedly I have noticed that this park creates an instant bond between
strangers. A certain pause intrudes at the first mention of Glacier
National Park, and a look of distance comes, as Red Eagle becomes real
again, or the wind at Firebrand is remembered, or the flowers of
Fifty-Mountain converge once more upon the senses.
Never are we quenched. If a goshawk rushes past, straining upward with
its squirming load of ground squirrel, forever afterward our blood
demands more. The sight of a wolverine running is not enough. Nor the
magnificent assemblage of bald eagles feasting on November salmon. More
days of this: mountain goats leaping impossible ledges, wave tracks from
a beaver reaching out on dawn water. There are messages here, loud as
kingfishers. The land has languages, stories to tell.
But in wilderness there is no moral, save that it must continue. For all
our probings and plottings we discover no adequate interpretation of the
forces we find swirling about us. A larch you must touch to know; your
neck must feel the ache of too much looking up. Watch its treepoint
pirouette. Then, looking back at the world level, you will find that you
have lost all answers. We have learned the art of building bridges,
cataloging plants, predicting what a shrew might do. Of the essential
mystery, we know nothing.
For nature assigns no “roles” to its creatures; there is no “reason” for
a forest fire, which burns mightily but with no intent. Life’s only
“purpose” is the feeding of life, and the beauty we see therein is but
its lack of guarantee: for the chipmunk and the weasel, and the man who
measures his life to theirs, no assurance of long days and tempered
seasons, abundant seeds, ample meat. In wilderness there is mystery yet,
unsimplified, not reduced, resplendent and immense.
Whatever the conclusion of this planet, however many the acts to follow
in this consuming drama—mountains coming up, mountains going down,
forests, lakes, and seas skimming past like wind-driven scud clouds
before a storm—at least in the scant shadow of this present age there is
an achievement of sorts. For now, with this creature man, such things as
mountains can be loved. And men have memories to fill.
Tomorrow I will look for shooting stars—purple spring flowers that point
their fire down, always down toward the center of the Earth, as if to
give in their brief term beneath the sun a tribute to this most
excellent mystery.
Today I can say nothing more, neck-sore now from looking at larchtops
swaying with the wind of this splendid morning.
[Illustration: Shooting star.]
[Illustration: Mountain goats.]