Snow Banners
But it is on the mountain tops, when they are laden with loose, dry
snow and swept by a gale from the north, that the most magnificent
storm scenery is displayed. The peaks along the axis of the Range are
then decorated with resplendent banners, some of them more than a mile
long, shining, streaming, waving with solemn exuberant enthusiasm as if
celebrating some surpassingly glorious event.
The snow of which these banners are made falls on the high Sierra in
most extravagant abundance, sometimes to a depth of fifteen or twenty
feet, coming from the fertile clouds not in large angled flakes such as
one oftentimes sees in Yosemite, seldom even in complete crystals, for
many of the starry blossoms fall before they are ripe, while most of
those that attain perfect development as six-petaled flowers are more
or less broken by glinting and chafing against one another on the way
down to their work. This dry frosty snow is prepared for the grand
banner-waving celebrations by the action of the wind. Instead of at
once finding rest like that which falls into the tranquil depths of the
forest, it is shoved and rolled and beaten against boulders and
out-jutting rocks, swirled in pits and hollows like sand in river
pot-holes, and ground into sparkling dust. And when storm winds find
this snow-dust in a loose condition on the slopes above the timber-line
they toss it back into the sky and sweep it onward from peak to peak in
the form of smooth regular banners, or in cloudy drifts, according to
the velocity and direction of the wind, and the conformation of the
slopes over which it is driven. While thus flying through the air a
small portion escapes from the mountains to the sky as vapor; but far
the greater part is at length locked fast in bossy overcurling cornices
along the ridges, or in stratified sheets in the glacier cirques, some
of it to replenish the small residual glaciers and remain silent and
rigid for centuries before it is finally melted and sent singing down
home to the sea.
But, though snow-dust and storm-winds abound on the mountains, regular
shapely banners are, for causes we shall presently see, seldom
produced. During the five winters that I spent in Yosemite I made many
excursions to high points above the walls in all kinds of weather to
see what was going on outside; from all my lofty outlooks I saw only
one banner-storm that seemed in every way perfect. This was in the
winter of 1873, when the snow-laden peaks were swept by a powerful
norther. I was awakened early in the morning by a wild storm-wind and
of course I had to make haste to the middle of the Valley to enjoy it.
Rugged torrents and avalanches from the main wind-flood overhead were
roaring down the side cañons and over the cliffs, arousing the rocks
and the trees and the streams alike into glorious hurrahing enthusiasm,
shaking the whole Valley into one huge song. Yet inconceivable as it
must seem even to those who love all Nature’s wildness, the storm was
telling its story on the mountains in still grander characters.
A Wonderful Winter Scene
I had long been anxious to study some points in the structure of the
ice-hill at the foot of the Upper Yosemite Fall, but, as I have already
explained, blinding spray had hitherto prevented me from getting
sufficiently near it. This morning the entire body of the Fall was
oftentimes torn into gauzy strips and blown horizontally along the face
of the cliff, leaving the ice-hill dry; and while making my way to the
top of Fern Ledge to seize so favorable an opportunity to look down its
throat, the peaks of the Merced group came in sight over the shoulder
of the South Dome, each waving a white glowing banner against the dark
blue sky, as regular in form and firm and fine in texture as if it were
made of silk. So rare and splendid a picture, of course, smothered
everything else and I at once began to scramble and wallow up the
snow-choked Indian Cañon to a ridge about 8000 feet high, commanding a
general view of the main summits along the axis of the Range, feeling
assured I should find them bannered still more gloriously; nor was I in
the least disappointed. I reached the top of the ridge in four or five
hours, and through an opening in the woods the most imposing wind-storm
effect I ever beheld came full in sight; unnumbered mountains rising
sharply into the cloudless sky, their bases solid white their sides
plashed with snow, like ocean rocks with foam, and on every summit a
magnificent silvery banner, from two thousand to six thousand feet in
length, slender at the point of attachment, and widening gradually
until about a thousand or fifteen hundred feet in breadth, and as
shapely and as substantial looking in texture as the banners of the
finest silk, all streaming and waving free and clear in the sun-glow
with nothing to blur the sublime picture they made.
Fancy yourself standing beside me on this Yosemite Ridge. There is a
strange garish glitter in the air and the gale drives wildly overhead,
but you feel nothing of its violence, for you are looking out through a
sheltered opening in the woods, as through a window. In the immediate
foreground there is a forest of silver fir their foliage warm
yellow-green, and the snow beneath them strewn with their plumes,
plucked off by the storm; and beyond broad, ridgy, cañon-furrowed,
dome-dotted middle ground, darkened here and there with belts of pines,
you behold the lofty snow laden mountains in glorious array, waving
their banners with jubilant enthusiasm as if shouting aloud for joy.
They are twenty miles away, but you would not wish them nearer, for
every feature is distinct and the whole wonderful show is seen in its
right proportions, like a painting on the sky.
And now after this general view, mark how sharply the ribs and
buttresses and summits of the mountains are defined, excepting the
portions veiled by the banners; how gracefully and nobly the banners
are waving in accord with the throbbing of the wind flood; how trimly
each is attached to the very summit of its peak like a streamer at a
mast-head; how bright and glowing white they are, and how finely their
fading fringes are penciled on the sky! See how solid white and opaque
they are at the point of attachment and how filmy and translucent
toward the end, so that the parts of the peaks past which they are
streaming look dim as if seen through a veil of ground glass. And see
how some of the longest of the banners on the highest peaks are
streaming perfectly free from peak to peak across intervening notches
or passes, while others overlap and partly hide one another.
As to their formation, we find that the main causes of the wondrous
beauty and perfection of those we are looking at are the favorable
direction and force of the wind, the abundance of snow-dust, and the
form of the north sides of the peaks. In general, the north sides are
concave in both their horizontal and vertical sections, having been
sculptured into this shape by the residual glaciers that lingered in
the protecting northern shadows, while the sun-beaten south sides,
having never been subjected to this kind of glaciation, are convex or
irregular. It is essential, therefore, not only that the wind should
move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a sufficiently
copious and continuous stream of snow-dust, but that it should come
from the north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the Sierra peaks by
the south wind. Had the gale today blown from the south, leaving the
other conditions unchanged, only swirling, interfering, cloudy drifts
would have been produced; for the snow, instead of being spouted
straight up and over the tops of the peaks in condensed currents to be
drawn out as streamers, would have been driven over the convex southern
slopes from peak to peak like white pearly fog.
It appears, therefore, that shadows in great part determine not only
the forms of lofty ice mountains, but also those of the snow banners
that the wild winds hang upon them.
Earthquake Storms
The avalanche taluses, leaning against the walls at intervals of a mile
or two, are among the most striking and interesting of the secondary
features of the Valley. They are from about three to five hundred feet
high, made up of huge, angular, well-preserved, unshifting boulders,
and instead of being slowly weathered from the cliffs like ordinary
taluses, they were all formed suddenly and simultaneously by a great
earthquake that occurred at least three centuries ago. And though thus
hurled into existence in a few seconds or minutes, they are the least
changeable of all the Sierra soil-beds. Excepting those which were
launched directly into the channels of swift rivers, scarcely one of
their wedged and interlacing boulders has moved since the day of their
creation; and though mostly made up of huge blocks of granite, many of
them from ten to fifty feet cube, weighing thousands of tons with only
a few small chips, trees and shrubs make out to live and thrive on them
and even delicate herbaceous plants—draperia, collomia, zauschneria,
etc., soothing and coloring their wild rugged slopes with gardens and
groves.
I was long in doubt on some points concerning the origin of those
taluses. Plainly enough they were derived from the cliffs above them,
because they are of the size of scars on the wall, the rough angular
surface of which contrasts with the rounded, glaciated, unfractured
parts. It was plain, too, that instead of being made up of material
slowly and gradually weathered from the cliffs like ordinary taluses,
almost every one of them had been formed suddenly in a single
avalanche, and had not been increased in size during the last three or
four centuries, for trees three or four hundred years old are growing
on them, some standing at the top close to the wall without a bruise or
broken branch, showing that scarcely a single boulder had ever fallen
among them. Furthermore, all these taluses throughout the Range seemed
by the trees and lichens growing on them to be of the same age. All the
phenomena thus pointed straight to a grand ancient earthquake. But for
years I left the question open, and went on from cañon to cañon,
observing again and again; measuring the heights of taluses throughout
the Range on both flanks, and the variations in the angles of their
surface slopes; studying the way their boulders had been assorted and
related and brought to rest, and their correspondence in size with the
cleavage joints of the cliffs from whence they were derived, cautious
about making up my mind. But at last all doubt as to their formation
vanished.
At half-past two o’clock of a moonlit morning in March, I was awakened
by a tremendous earthquake, and though I had never before enjoyed a
storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken,
and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, “A noble
earthquake! A noble earthquake!” feeling sure I was going to learn
something. The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded one
another so closely, that I had to balance myself carefully in walking
as if on the deck of a ship among waves, and it seemed impossible that
the high cliffs of the Valley could escape being shattered. In
particular, I feared that the sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, towering
above my cabin, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a
large yellow pine, hoping that it might protect me from at least the
smaller outbounding boulders. For a minute or two the shocks became
more and more violent—flashing horizontal thrusts mixed with a few
twists and battering, explosive, upheaving jolts,—as if Nature were
wrecking her Yosemite temple, and getting ready to build a still better
one.
I was now convinced before a single boulder had fallen that earthquakes
were the talus-makers and positive proof soon came. It was a calm
moonlight night, and no sound was heard for the first minute or so,
save low, muffled, underground, bubbling rumblings, and the whispering
and rustling of the agitated trees, as if Nature were holding her
breath. Then, suddenly, out of the strange silence and strange motion
there came a tremendous roar. The Eagle Rock on the south wall, about a
half a mile up the Valley, gave way and I saw it falling in thousands
of the great boulders I had so long been studying, pouring to the
Valley floor in a free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly
sublime spectacle—an arc of glowing, passionate fire, fifteen hundred
feet span, as true in form and as serene in beauty as a rainbow in the
midst of the stupendous, roaring rock-storm. The sound was so
tremendously deep and broad and earnest, the whole earth like a living
creature seemed to have at last found a voice and to be calling to her
sister planets. In trying to tell something of the size of this awful
sound it seems to me that if all the thunder of all the storms I had
ever heard were condensed into one roar it would not equal this
rock-roar at the birth of a mountain talus. Think, then, of the roar
that arose to heaven at the simultaneous birth of all the thousands of
ancient cañon-taluses throughout the length and breadth of the Range!
The first severe shocks were soon over, and eager to examine the
new-born talus I ran up the Valley in the moonlight and climbed upon it
before the huge blocks, after their fiery flight, had come to complete
rest. They were slowly settling into their places, chafing, grating
against one another, groaning, and whispering; but no motion was
visible except in a stream of small fragments pattering down the face
of the cliff. A cloud of dust particles, lighted by the moon, floated
out across the whole breadth of the Valley, forming a ceiling that
lasted until after sunrise, and the air was filled with the odor of
crushed Douglas spruces from a grove that had been mowed down and
mashed like weeds.
After the ground began to calm I ran across the meadow to the river to
see in what direction it was flowing and was glad to find that _down_
the Valley was still down. Its waters were muddy from portions of its
banks having given way, but it was flowing around its curves and over
its ripples and shallows with ordinary tones and gestures. The mud
would soon be cleared away and the raw slips on the banks would be the
only visible record of the shaking it suffered.
The Upper Yosemite Fall, glowing white in the moonlight, seemed to know
nothing of the earthquake, manifesting no change in form or voice, as
far as I could see or hear.
After a second startling shock, about half-past three o’clock, the
ground continued to tremble gently, and smooth, hollow rumbling sounds,
not always distinguishable from the rounded, bumping, explosive tones
of the falls, came from deep in the mountains in a northern direction.
The few Indians fled from their huts to the middle of the Valley,
fearing that angry spirits were trying to kill them; and, as I
afterward learned, most of the Yosemite tribe, who were spending the
winter at their village on Bull Creek forty miles away, were so
terrified that they ran into the river and washed themselves,—getting
themselves clean enough to say their prayers, I suppose, or to die. I
asked Dick, one of the Indians with whom I was acquainted, “What made
the ground shake and jump so much?” He only shook his head and said,
“No good. No good,” and looked appealingly to me to give him hope that
his life was to be spared.
In the morning I found the few white settlers assembled in front of the
old Hutchings Hotel comparing notes and meditating flight to the
lowlands, seemingly as sorely frightened as the Indians. Shortly after
sunrise a low, blunt, muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was
followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so
severe as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and
the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with
startling effect. Then the talkers were suddenly hushed, and the
solemnity on their faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter
neighbors, a somewhat speculative thinker with whom I had often
conversed, was a firm believer in the cataclysmic origin of the Valley;
and I now jokingly remarked that his wild tumble-down-and-engulfment
hypothesis might soon be proved, since these underground rumblings and
shakings might be the forerunners of another Yosemite-making cataclysm,
which would perhaps double the depth of the Valley by swallowing the
floor, leaving the ends of the roads and trails dangling three or four
thousand feet in the air. Just then came the third series of shocks,
and it was fine to see how awfully silent and solemn he became. His
belief in the existence of a mysterious abyss, into which the suspended
floor of the Valley and all the domes and battlements of the walls
might at any moment go roaring down, mightily troubled him. To diminish
his fears and laugh him into something like reasonable faith, I said,
“Come, cheer up; smile a little and clap your hands, now that kind
Mother Earth is trotting us on her knee to amuse us and make us good.”
But the well-meant joke seemed irreverent and utterly failed, as if
only prayerful terror could rightly belong to the wild beauty-making
business. Even after all the heavier shocks were over I could do
nothing to reassure him, on the contrary, he handed me the keys of his
little store to keep, saying that with a companion of like mind he was
going to the lowlands to stay until the fate of poor, trembling
Yosemite was settled. In vain I rallied them on their fears, calling
attention to the strength of the granite walls of our Valley home, the
very best and solidest masonry in the world, and less likely to
collapse and sink than the sedimentary lowlands to which they were
looking for safety; and saying that in any case they sometime would
have to die, and so grand a burial was not to be slighted. But they
were too seriously panic-stricken to get comfort from anything I could
say.
During the third severe shock the trees were so violently shaken that
the birds flew out with frightened cries. In particular, I noticed two
robins flying in terror from a leafless oak, the branches of which
swished and quivered as if struck by a heavy battering-ram. Exceedingly
interesting were the flashing and quivering of the elastic needles of
the pines in the sunlight and the waving up and down of the branches
while the trunks stood rigid. There was no swaying, waving or swirling
as in wind-storms, but quick, quivering jerks, and at times the heavy
tasseled branches moved as if they had all been pressed down against
the trunk and suddenly let go, to spring up and vibrate until they came
to rest again. Only the owls seemed to be undisturbed. Before the
rumbling echoes had died away a hollow-voiced owl began to hoot in
philosophical tranquillity from near the edge of the new talus as if
nothing extraordinary had occurred, although, perhaps, he was curious
to know what all the noise was about. His “hoot-too-hoot-too-whoo”
might have meant, “what’s a’ the steer, kimmer?”
It was long before the Valley found perfect rest. The rocks trembled
more or less every day for over two months, and I kept a bucket of
water on my table to learn what I could of the movements. The blunt
thunder in the depths of the mountains was usually followed by sudden
jarring, horizontal thrusts from the northward, often succeeded by
twisting, upjolting movements. More than a month after the first great
shock, when I was standing on a fallen tree up the Valley near Lamon’s
winter cabin, I heard a distinct bubbling thunder from the direction of
Tenaya Cañon Carlo, a large intelligent St. Bernard dog standing beside
me seemed greatly astonished, and looked intently in that direction
with mouth open and uttered a low _Wouf!_ as if saying, “What’s that?”
He must have known that it was not thunder, though like it. The air was
perfectly still, not the faintest breath of wind perceptible, and a
fine, mellow, sunny hush pervaded everything, in the midst of which
came that subterranean thunder. Then, while we gazed and listened, came
the corresponding shocks, distinct as if some mighty hand had shaken
the ground. After the sharp horizontal jars died away, they were
followed by a gentle rocking and undulating of the ground so distinct
that Carlo looked at the log on which he was standing to see who was
shaking it. It was the season of flooded meadows and the pools about
me, calm as sheets of glass, were suddenly thrown into low ruffling
waves.
Judging by its effects, this Yosemite, or Inyo earthquake, as it is
sometimes called, was gentle as compared with the one that gave rise to
the grand talus system of the Range and did so much for the cañon
scenery. Nature, usually so deliberate in her operations, then created,
as we have seen, a new set of features, simply by giving the mountains
a shake—changing not only the high peaks and cliffs, but the streams.
As soon as these rock avalanches fell the streams began to sing new
songs; for in many places thousands of boulders were hurled into their
channels, roughening and half-damming them, compelling the waters to
surge and roar in rapids where before they glided smoothly. Some of the
streams were completely dammed; driftwood, leaves, etc., gradually
filling the interstices between the boulders, thus giving rise to lakes
and level reaches; and these again, after being gradually filled in,
were changed to meadows, through which the streams are now silently
meandering; while at the same time some of the taluses took the places
of old meadows and groves. Thus rough places were made smooth, and
smooth places rough. But, on the whole, by what at first sight seemed
pure confounded confusion and ruin, the landscapes were enriched; for
gradually every talus was covered with groves and gardens, and made a
finely proportioned and ornamental base for the cliffs. In this work of
beauty, every boulder is prepared and measured and put in its place
more thoughtfully than are the stones of temples. If for a moment you
are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps,
climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling,
puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even
speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly
discover the music and poetry of these magnificent rock piles—a fine
lesson; and all Nature’s wildness tells the same story—the shocks and
outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves
and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every
sort—each and all are the orderly beauty-making love-beats of Nature’s
heart.