Held Up by the Snow, With the Thermometer at 86°
The next day, sure enough Uncle Billy routed everybody out at five
o’clock. They had pancakes and syrup, and bacon and coffee and toast for
breakfast, and then camp had to be struck and the cars packed again. The
sleeping bags had to be deflated and rolled up by the three boys, and
put in their canvas cases. The tents had to be rolled up and also put in
cases. The dunnage bags had to be repacked, the dishes washed and put
into the boxes on Uncle Billy’s car. It was long after seven before they
got away.
On this day, at last, they began to get a taste of wild Oregon—but just
a taste, the doctor told them. They finally came to the head of the
Willamette valley, and climbed up a long grade, beside a wild, tumbling
stream, amid huge old fir trees, and then down a long, wooded cañon on
the farther side. They rolled through more valleys full of fruit
orchards, and they passed through several towns. In one of them, where
they stopped to get an ice cream soda—or rather ice cream sodas, for
both the scouts had two apiece and Dumplin’ had three—a big banner was
stretched across the street, with the words on it in letters two feet
high:
IT’S THE CLIMATE.
“Golly, you wouldn’t think they had any climate anywhere else,” said
Bennie. “Out here, you’ve only got one kind. In little old Massachusetts
we have every kind.”
“Sure, and on the same day, too,” Uncle Billy laughed.
All that afternoon they climbed up endless grades, where the highway was
cut out of the sides of the cañons, and the great trees shadowed the
road, and down again, and up again.
“Are we in the Cascade Mountains now?” the boys asked.
“No, these are just hills,” said the doctor. “You won’t see any
mountains till we get almost into Medford. Cheer up, they’ll be there
tomorrow.”
The grades were so numerous, and so long and hard, that it was
impossible to make as many miles in a day here as it is in the East. As
the sun began to sink, the doctor began watching for camp sites, and
presently he pulled into a field beside the road where a brook came down
from a hill, and they camped for a second night on the road.
An early start again was ordered, and now the grades grew less severe
again, and after a few hours the cars ran out into a wide plain, and
suddenly the boys gave a yell.
“The mountains!” they cried.
Sure enough, there they were. To the east lay the blue rampart of the
Cascade range, and right in the centre, covered white with snow, shot up
the peaked pyramid of Mount McLaughlin. To the south and west, shutting
the valley in, rose more mountains, some of them still showing snow on
their summits. Across the head of the valley ran a tumbling green
stream, the Rogue River.
“That river comes down from close to Crater Lake,” said Uncle Billy.
“Gee, I’d like to get into it right now,” Bennie remarked.
A dozen miles more, and they were in Medford, a neat, clean little city
(it would be called a town in the East), surrounded by flourishing fruit
orchards and grain fields. The boys scouted around for some crackers and
fireworks, while the men restocked the cars with provisions, got gas and
oil, and inquired about the road to the lake.
“Well,” said the doctor, as they met at the cars again, “we don’t get to
Crater Lake tomorrow.”
“Aw, gee, why not?” Bennie demanded.
“Road’s not open yet to the rim. Can’t get much beyond Government Camp.”
“What’s the trouble—snow?” asked Mr. Stone.
The doctor nodded.
“Snow!” said Spider, wiping his hot forehead. “Don’t sound possible.”
“It’s the climate,” said Bennie.
Everybody laughed, and Dumplin’ announced he was going to get another
ice cream soda while the leaders decided what to do.
When he came back, the doctor and Mr. Stone had decided to go back up
the road and then up the Rogue River for a few miles, on the way to
Crater Lake, and camp there over the Fourth and the day following. By
the third day it was probable, the doctor said, that the government
rangers would have the snow blasted out of the road.
“_Blasted_ out?” said Spider.
“Sure; they use TNT. It would take forever to shovel those drifts.”
“Oh, let’s go up and watch ’em!” Bennie pleaded.
“And get the cars mired? No, thank you! We’ll camp by the Rogue River
and wait. You can swim and Spider can study birds, and Dumplin’ can wish
he was nearer a soda fountain. Come on.”
They turned off the highway at the Rogue River bridge, and the minute
they were off the macadam the dust began to fly. Spider looked back into
the cloud.
“Glad I’m not in the Stones’ car,” he said. “What makes it so dusty?”
“This soil is all volcanic ash or pumice,” said the doctor, “and it
hasn’t rained here, probably, for a month, and won’t for five or six
more.”
“It’s the climate,” chuckled Bennie.
Two or three miles up this dusty road, and close to a small, dilapidated
looking house, made of boards and huge, hand-hewn shingles or “shakes,”
the doctor put the car off the road and into a field which was baked as
hard as a brick, with the grass dried up and brown. At the edge of this
field was a grove of trees with shiny copper-colored bark and glossy
green leaves, called laurel trees, and beyond them the bank plunged
sharp down for fifty feet to the rushing green river.
“Camp,” said Uncle Billy, stopping the car. “Here’s where we live for
two days at least.”
As soon as camp was made, and wood cut, the entire party ran down the
bank to a gravelly beach by the river’s edge, stripped, and plunged into
the water. Five yells immediately rose in the stillness, and five bodies
came splashing back to shore.
“That water comes down from the snow-fields, all right,” said Mr. Stone.
“That’s why it’s so green,” said the doctor.
“And why Dumplin’s so pink,” laughed Bennie, pointing at Lester, who
certainly looked like a very plump boiled lobster.
That night they sang and joked around the camp fire till nine o’clock,
because there was no early start in the morning. When Bennie woke up,
however, he saw that Spider’s bed was empty. Going down to the river in
his pyjamas, for a plunge, he found Spider, all dressed, with a
note-book in his hand, watching birds.
“Gee, this is a great place to see birds,” Spider called. “I’ve got nine
kinds already, most of ’em that I never saw before. And you want to
watch for the funny little lizards on the ground.”
Bennie almost immediately heard a rustle in the dead leaves beside him,
and looking down saw a small lizard-like creature scurry up on to a flat
stone. He reached down to pick it up—and the lizard wasn’t there! He was
on a stone two feet away.
“Say!” he called, “this is the quickest thing I ever saw. Beats a
weasel.”
“Mr. Stone says they call ’em swifts,” Spider answered.
Among the new birds that Spider saw, and added to his bird list, he
later learned from Mr. Stone and the doctor, were ravens, western
tanagers (a beautiful, bright yellow bird), valley quail, camp robbers,
water ousels, which live always by the water and build their nests
behind the waterfalls, the western catbird, which is much like the
eastern, only brownish, and blue jays of a much darker color than in the
East. These jays fought and squawked around the camp all day long. Then
there were crows and other birds he already knew.
“Well, never mind your old birds now,” Bennie said after breakfast.
“This is the Glorious Fourth. Let’s fire off some crackers and do
something to celebrate.”
“We might run down to Medford and see the parade,” the doctor suggested.
This was hailed with delight, so they unpacked the cars, and started off
for the day. Medford was full of people. There was a parade and a ball
game and a lively time generally.
“Well, this is what I call wild life in Oregon,” Bennie laughed. “We
came 4,000 miles to get into the wilderness, and here we are with about
ten thousand other people watching a parade in a city. Some wilderness!”
“You wait,” his uncle cautioned. “In about a week, you’ll have so much
wilderness you’ll be crying for home and mother.”
That night, back in camp, they set off their own fireworks, shooting the
rockets from an improvised chute out over the water, and the next day
they spent in exploring two or three old gold diggings they found by the
bank—shafts which some prospector had laboriously dug far into the
earth, but without getting much gold, apparently, for the diggings had
all been abandoned. Bennie and Spider spent two or three hours searching
everywhere for nuggets, but they found nothing. It was hot and sultry,
too, and everybody was getting impatient.
“I’m going to start tomorrow for the lake,” the doctor said that night.
“We’ll camp below the rim if we can’t get up. It’s too hot here.”
“It’s the climate,” said Bennie—and the doctor and Dumplin’ fell upon
him and rolled him on the hard ground till he howled for mercy.