And then we were witnesses of the most marvelous transformation. For
as we neared them, those impregnable mountains, as though
panic-stricken by our advance, shrunk back, dissolved, dwindled, went
to pieces. Where had towered ten-thousand-foot peaks, perfect in the
regular succession from timber to snow, now were little flat hills on
which grew tiny bushes of sage. A passage opened between them. In a
hundred yards we had gained the open country, leaving behind us the
mighty but unreal necromancies of the moon.
Before us gleamed red and green lights. The mass of houses showed half
distinguishable. A feeble glimmer illuminated part of a white sign
above the depot. That which remained invisible was evidently the name
of the town. That which was revealed was the supplementary information
which the Southern Pacific furnishes to its patrons. It read:
"Elevation 482 feet." We were definitely out of the mountains.
XXII
THE LURE OF THE TRAIL
The trail's call depends not at all on your common sense. You know you
are a fool for answering it; and yet you go. The comforts of
civilization, to put the case on its lowest plane, are not lightly to
be renounced: the ease of having your physical labor done for you; the
joy of cultivated minds, of theatres, of books, of participation in the
world's progress; these you leave behind you. And in exchange you
enter a life where there is much long hard work of the hands--work that
is really hard and long, so that no man paid to labor would consider it
for a moment; you undertake to eat simply, to endure much, to lie on
the rack of anxiety; you voluntarily place yourself where cold, wet,
hunger, thirst, heat, monotony, danger, and many discomforts will wait
upon you daily. A thousand times in the course of a woods life even
the stoutest-hearted will tell himself softly--very softly if he is
really stout-hearted, so that others may not be annoyed--that if ever
the fates permit him to extricate himself he will never venture again.
These times come when long continuance has worn on the spirit. You
beat all day to windward against the tide toward what should be but an
hour's sail: the sea is high and the spray cold; there are sunken
rocks, and food there is none; chill gray evening draws dangerously
near, and there is a foot of water in the bilge. You have swallowed
your tongue twenty times on the alkali; and the sun is melting hot, and
the dust dry and pervasive, and there is no water, and for all your
effort the relative distances seem to remain the same for days. You
have carried a pack until your every muscle is strung white-hot; the
woods are breathless; the black flies swarm persistently and bite until
your face is covered with blood. You have struggled through clogging
snow until each time you raise your snowshoe you feel as though some
one had stabbed a little sharp knife into your groin; it has come to be
night; the mercury is away below zero, and with aching fingers you are
to prepare a camp which is only an anticipation of many more such camps
in the ensuing days. For a week it has rained, so that you, pushing
through the dripping brush, are soaked and sodden and comfortless, and
the bushes have become horrible to your shrinking goose-flesh. Or you
are just plain tired out, not from a single day's fatigue, but from the
gradual exhaustion of a long hike. Then in your secret soul you utter
these sentiments:--
"You are a fool. This is not fun. There is no real reason why you
should do this. If you ever get out of here, you will stick right home
where common sense flourishes, my son!"
Then after a time you do get out, and are thankful. But in three months
you will have proved in your own experience the following axiom--I
should call it the widest truth the wilderness has to teach:--
"In memory the pleasures of a camping trip strengthen with time, and
the disagreeables weaken."
I don't care how hard an experience you have had, nor how little of the
pleasant has been mingled with it, in three months your general
impression of that trip will be good. You will look back on the hard
times with a certain fondness of recollection.
I remember one trip I took in the early spring following a long drive
on the Pine River. It rained steadily for six days. We were soaked to
the skin all the time, ate standing up in the driving downpour, and
slept wet. So cold was it that each morning our blankets were so full
of frost that they crackled stiffly when we turned out.
Dispassionately I can appraise that as about the worst I ever got into.
Yet as an impression the Pine River trip seems to me a most enjoyable
one.
So after you have been home for a little while the call begins to make
itself heard. At first it is very gentle. But little by little a
restlessness seizes hold of you. You do not know exactly what is the
matter: you are aware merely that your customary life has lost savor,
that you are doing things more or less perfunctorily, and that you are
a little more irritable than your naturally evil disposition.
And gradually it is borne in on you exactly what is the matter. Then
say you to yourself:--
"My son, you know better. You are no tenderfoot. You have had too long
an experience to admit of any glamour of indefiniteness about this
thing. No use bluffing. You know exactly how hard you will have to
work, and how much tribulation you are going to get into, and how
hungry and wet and cold and tired and generally frazzled out you are
going to be. You've been there enough times so it's pretty clearly
impressed on you. You go into this thing with your eyes open. You
know what you're in for. You're pretty well off right here, and you'd
be a fool to go."
"That's right," says yourself to you. "You're dead right about it, old
man. Do you know where we can get another pack-mule?"