The white-barked pine grew on the slope of Kearsarge highest up of all
the pines, so high that nothing grew above it but brown tufts of grass
and the rosy Sierra primroses that shelter under the edges of broken
boulders. The white-barked pines are squat and short, trunks creeping
along the rocks, and foliage all matted in a close green thatch by the
winter's weight. Snow lies on the slope of Kearsarge eight months in the
year, deep and smooth over the pines and the jagged rocks; other months
there are great storms of rain, and always a strong wind roaring through
the Pass, so that, try as it might, no tree could stand erect on those
heights. The white-barked pine stretched its body along the ground, and
though it was four hundred years old, it was no thicker than a man's
leg, and its young branches of seventy-five or a hundred years were
still so supple that one could tie knots in them. It grew near the
trail, which here crossed through a gap in the crest of the range and
straggled on down the other side of the mountain.
Along this trail went many strange things in their season. Early in the
year, before the snow had melted at all on the high places, went a great
lumbering bear that had a lair above Big Meadows, going down to the
calf-pens and pig-sties of the town at the foot of Kearsarge. He ranged
back and forth on these little excursions of fifteen or twenty miles in
the hungry season of the year, and sometimes there were hunters on his
trail with dogs and guns, but nothing ever came of it. When the trail
began to run a rivulet from the drip of melting snow banks, the forest
ranger went up the Pass, singing as he went and beating his arms to keep
himself warm. Afterwards when the snow water was all drained off, he
came back and mended the trail. All through the summer there would be
parties of miners and hunters with long strings of pack mules, going
over Kearsarge to camp in Big Meadows or on the fork of King's River.
Sometimes there were parties of Indians with women and children, making
very merry with berries, fish, and deer meat. Nearly always, whatever
went over the mountain came back again, and the white pine noticed that
the same people came again another season. In four hundred years one has
space for observation and reflection. Gradually the pine tree grew into
the conviction that the other side of the mountain must be much finer
than this.
"Else why," said he, "should so many people go there every year?"
It was very fine, you may be sure, on the white pine's side, but the
tree had known it all for so many years, it no longer pleased him. From
where he grew he looked down between the ridges on a great winding canyon
full of singing trees, with blue lakes like eyes winking between them.
He could watch in the open places the white feet of the water on its way
to the valley, and from the falls long rainbows of spray blown out as if
they were blowing kisses to the white-barked pine. Below all this lay
the valley, hollow like a cup, full of fawn-colored and violet mist,
and the farms and orchards lay like dregs at the bottom of the cup.
Beyond the valley rose other noble ranges with cloud shadows playing all
along their slopes.
"It is very tiresome to look at the same things for four hundred years,"
said the white-barked pine. "If I could only get to the top, now. Do
tell me, what is it like on the other side?" he said to the wind.
"Oh!" said the wind, "it rains and snows. There are trees and bushes and
blue lakes. It is not at all different from this side."
A deer said the same thing when it slept one night under the thatch of
the highest pine. "It is all meadows and hills, only sometimes the grass
is not so good there, and again sometimes it is better. It is very much
like this."
"I do not believe them," said the pine to himself. "They are simply
trying to console me for not realizing my ambition. But I am not a
sapling any longer, let me tell you that."
"At least," said a young tree that grew a little farther down, "you are
higher up than any of us."
"Of what use is that if I do not get to the top?" said the unhappy pine.
"There is a bunch of blue flowers there, I can see it quite plainly just
where the trail dips over the ridge. Surely I am as capable of climbing
as any blue weed."
"But," said the young pine, "weeds do not have to grow cones."
"Oh, as for cones," cried the tree quite crossly, "the seasons are so
short I hardly ever ripen any, and if I do the squirrels get them. I do
believe I have not started a seedling these two hundred years. It is no
use to talk to me, I shall be happy only when I have seen the other side
of the mountain."
It seems what one desires with all one's heart for a long time finally
comes to pass in some fashion or other. That very season the
white-barked pine went up over Kearsarge to the other side. Early in the
summer, when the rosy primroses had just begun to blow beside the drifts
that hugged the shade of the boulders, a party of miners went up the
trail with a long string of pack mules burdened with picks and shovels,
flour and potatoes, and other things that miners use. The last pull up
the Kearsarge trail is the hardest, over a steep waste of loose stones
that want very little encouragement to go roaring down as an avalanche
into the ravine below. The miners shouted, the mules scrambled and
panted on the steep, but just as they came by the last of the
white-barked pines, one slipped and went rolling over and over on the
jagged stones. As happens very frequently when a pack animal falls, the
mule was not very much hurt, but the pack saddle was quite ruined.
"We must do the best we can," said one of the men, and he cut down the
white-barked pine. He chopped off the boughs, and split the trunk in
four pieces to mend the pack. It was a very small tree though it was so
old.
"Ah! Ah!" said the tree, "it hurts, but one does not mind that when one
is realizing an ambition. Now I shall go to the top." So he went over
Kearsarge on mule-back quite like an old traveler.
"Well, we are rid of his complaining," said the pine who stood next to
him, "and now _I_ am the highest up of all the pines. I wonder if it is
really so much finer on the other side."
His old companion, in four pieces, was swinging down the other side of
the mountain, and as he went, he saw high peaks and soddy meadows, long
winding canons with white glancing waters; and heard the chorus of the
falls. When it was night the miners lit a fire and loosened up the
packs, and after dark, when the wind began to move among the trees and
the fire burned low, one of the men threw a piece of the white-barked
pine on it.
"Oh! Oh!" cried the pine as the flames caught hold of it, "and is this
really the end of all my travels?"
"How that green wood sputters!" said the man; "it is not fit even for
firewood."
The next day the wind took up the ash and carried it back over the pass,
and dropped it where the chopped boughs lay fainting on the ground.
"Ah, is that you?" they said; "now you can tell us what it is like on
the other side."
"How ignorant you are," said the ash of the white-barked pine, "one
would know you have never traveled. It is exactly like this side." But
he could not hear what they had to say to that, for the wind whirled him
away.