eating the big, sweet, California prunes of which we always carried
pockets-full as aids to wayfaring. The Worrier acquiesced in our
mountaineering project, though without enthusiasm. He bade us not
forget that it would be cold up there. The sight of the snow had
already set him shivering. We twitted him with being a "desert rat."
"You may have got along better than we did in Death Valley," we said
to him, "but it's our turn now; that's fair."
The Worrier scorned prunes and always looked on with dour superiority
during our consumption of them. Soon he left us and went to hunt
the "lost mine." There are many legends of lost mines in the
desert-mountains and we paid no especial attention to this one, being
weary enough to sit still, munching prunes, and looking out over the
fearful, majestic landscape. In an hour he came back with a handful of
rocks. He laid them solemnly before us. They were pieces of gold ore
which he had found in a hole a little way below the summit.
"The lost mine," he said.
"You had better come back and work it," we laughed.
"I'll have them assayed." His manner was serious.
"Why, you don't think----"
"I don't know. But anyways, we'll call it the Prune Stone Mine."
As a matter of fact he did have them assayed and did go back with his
partner; but the Prune Stone Mine, like so many mines in the Death
Valley Country, failed to fulfill its first promise.
During the week that we camped at Emigrant Springs we saw no wild life
except a few little brown birds that made a happy twittering in the
mornings. Sometimes in the blue night we heard the distant howling of
coyotes, and once an owl mocked us with a cry that sounded ridiculously
like "Hoo, Hoo, Skidoo!" He was a native, no doubt, and old in wisdom.
In the rambles among the mountains we found our first wild flowers.
They were small except one striking crimson-velvet one with a ragged
blossom like garden balsam. It grew in clumps about six inches high
and made vivid spots of color against the rocks. Later, as the spring
advanced, we found a great variety of flowers, but never this one
except at high altitudes. Seeing it was always a joyful heart-beat. The
graceful greasewood was in bloom, covered with small yellow flowers
that looked like little butterflies perched on the slender branches.
The nights were still very cold, often freezing the water in the pail,
but the days were pleasantly warm. The sun shone with such dazzling
brightness that during the middle of the day the shady sides of rocks
were the best resting places. A fresh, steady wind blew nearly always
up or down the canyon, sometimes piling great white masses of clouds
in the sky, always scouring the world incredibly clean. Each night was
a blue wonder. The mountains were delicate, luminous shapes in front
of a sky infinitely far away. The big stars hung low and burned with a
steady, silver shine.
Every day we climbed one or another of the ridges and smaller mountains
close to the spring. It was good to lie on their summits in the sun.
From any one of them we could look down the canyon and see the whole
length of the Mesquite Valley, always the same, yet, like Death
Valley, always different. You can look day after day at the deep, hot
basins of the desert without ever knowing them. Quickly enough you
can see the obvious features of the Mesquite Valley--the continuation
of the Panamints on the west, the wine-red Grapevine Mountains on
the east, the low blue hills in the north, the level bottom of the
valley streaked with white alkali where Salt Creek crosses it and "Old
Johnnie's" big sand-dunes are glistening little ant hills--but you must
stay all the hours of a long day to find out what she really is, and
then you will not know. Listen:
"Behold me! You think that I am an arid valley with a white alkali
streak down the middle of my level-seeming floor. You think that
I am surrounded by red mountains, or perhaps you think they are
blue, or purple--well, not exactly--more rose.
"Come down to me! I am very deep between the mountains. I am very
white. But if you do not like me so I can be a wide, level plain
covered with velvet for you to lie on.
"Come down to me! Rest beside this lake. See how it shines, how
blue it is! I am all in white like a young girl with a turquoise
breastpin. You don't believe that? I am a Witch, I can be
anything. My wardrobe is full of bright dresses. I will put them
on for you one by one.
"See, I know more colors of blue than you ever dreamed of. When
you tire of blue I change to ripe plums. Now I throw gray gauze
over my purple. I look like a nun, but am not. Here is my yellow
gown. You do not like it? See, I have all degrees of red, fire red
and crimson and pink, the color of bride roses. Here is my finest.
It is made of every color, but the tone of it is the gray breast
of a dove. You did not know that the breast of a dove could be
made of all colors, but now I show you.
"Do you not love me? You remember too well that I am hot as a
bake-oven. You think that if any one were fool enough to come down
to me I would steal behind and grip him by the throat.
"What of it? Why do you question me so much? You see how old I am,
how many storms have left their scars on me, and you think I am
wise. But I am only fair. Is it not enough to be old and yet fair?
"Beauty is sitting on my topmost peak making the enchantments that
confirm your dreams. She experiments with many materials; she
makes new combinations forever.
"Behold all the desolate places how they are hers--the lonely
hills, the lonely plains, the lonely green sea, the lonely
sands--she clothes us in gorgeous raiment, she makes us content
with death. Where she is your heart can pasture even to the
emptiness between the stars."
A lifetime is not long enough to listen to the songs of the desolate
places. A whole sunny, timeless day is too short to hear the Mesquite
Valley. The days and nights of the desert merge into each other. They
are like perfectly matched pearls being strung on an endless string.
You delight to run your fingers over their smooth surfaces and detect
no difference.
"Do we move to-morrow?" Thus the Worrier.
"Why to-morrow?"
"We have been here a week."
That is not possible! How could a week slide into past things so soon?
X
_The High White Peaks_
Wild Rose Canyon has a lovely name, justified by a small clump of
bushes that may bear wild roses sometime. The canyon, where it branches
east from Emigrant Pass, is very narrow with precipitous sides.
Emigrant Canyon itself at this point is walled by high cliffs so close
together that the wagon track fills the gorge. A considerable stream,
bordered with feathery trees, flows through the lower end of Wild Rose
Canyon and down Emigrant Pass toward the Panamint Valley and Ballarat,
but dies before it emerges from the cliff-like hills onto the long,
stony slope that leads into the valley. Once more we had been deceived.
From Pinto Peak the rocky cliffs appeared to rise directly out of the
Panamint Valley, but a walk down the western descent of Emigrant Pass
revealed the same long, brush-covered slope that we had learned to
know so well.
The cattlemen had been there and gone away, leaving the cattle in
Wild Rose for their spring range. The young steers huddled together,
staring with their expression of fierce innocence. They had tramped the
stream-bed into a bog and otherwise made camping at the mouth of the
canyon unpleasant. A stone shack with an iron roof was located near the
spring. It was rather a magnificent shack with two rooms, the inner one
windowless like a cave. For some reason that seems to be the approved
way of building sleeping-rooms on the desert. At Keane Wonder veritable
black holes were the sleeping-quarters near the boarding-house. The
shack had no floor and the uneven ground was littered with rubbish, as
indeed were all the surroundings. The mess around the spring at Wild
Rose bothered us more than the litter anywhere else. Perhaps it was
because we were shut in on all sides by high walls, and there were no
vistas nor even any beautifully shaped summits to look at. For once
the desert was all foreground, little trees along the stream, little
bushes, little stones. A tin can in such a small environment can hardly
be ignored.
As soon as possible therefore, we pushed on up the canyon which widened
into what looked like a plain surrounded by mountains. In reality it
was level nowhere, but rounded down like a giant oval basin about five
miles wide and seven or eight miles long. The mountains on the east and
south were covered with cedars whose vanguard dotted the edge of the
mesa under Mount Baldy, now become a great white mass, very near, led
up to by a precipitous ridge broken into jagged peaks. Telescope Peak
lay behind Baldy and was not visible. There was more snow than we had
supposed in our survey from Pinto Mountain, it lay all along the jagged
ridge, coming down in some places almost to the mesa. The northern wall
of the canyon was composed of lower mountains. The one furthest east
was a big, pointed, red mass, polka-dotted with little trees near its
summit. Looking back whence we had come the mountains seemed to close
the narrow gorge.
The cattlemen had told us that Wild Rose Canyon was full of water, but
after we left the spring we found none. The big wash down the middle
was dry--the boy must have seen it on some rare occasion when it had
water in it--and the great bowl far too large and too rough to admit
of much scouting for springs at the bases of the mountains. We had
thought that we would see the deserted charcoal-kilns and thus find
the spring which the cattlemen had described, but there was no sign of
any kilns. We supposed that they were somewhere along the bottom of
the precipitous ridge that led up to Mount Baldy. In that direction
the mesa was so terribly cut up that we could not attempt to take the
wagon there until we had first explored it, so we made a dry camp in
the middle of the basin under the shelter of the eight-foot-high bank
of the wash.
The wind had blown harder than usual all day with an icy bite from
the snowy heights. During the night a racing cloud deposited snow
on the northern hills which before had been bare. A real storm now
became our fear, for a little more snow would defeat our project.
Moreover Wild Rose Canyon is at an altitude where the cold at that
time of year is intense, and we had to depend on the sun's fires to
warm us sufficiently during the day to make life possible through the
night. The "desert rat" became a bundle of misery. We had not realized
the paralyzing effect cold would have on him. He sat and shivered,
apparently unable to move or to think, so utterly wretched that
Charlotte and I offered to give up the Panamints and "beat it" to a
more salubrious climate. We could not bear to see our friend suffer;
but he flatly refused, angry with us for even making the suggestion,
saying that when he started to do a thing be generally did it.
The next morning was as cold as ever. Still the Worrier refused to
consider moving out, and when the sun had warmed the great windy bowl
a little, he went back to fetch more water from the spring by the
old shack. We explored the base of the long ridge under Mount Baldy
as well as we could, but failed to find the charcoal-kilns. However,
it was possible to get the wagon over there, so in the afternoon we
moved the whole outfit up to the first cedar trees. There the mesa
became so steep that Molly and Bill could no longer pull the load. The
Worrier had brought ten gallons of water, enough for several days, and
the "desert-proof" horses were turned loose to find their way back to
the spring at the mouth of the canyon. What either they or the cattle
ate at Wild Rose remained a profound mystery to us. The mesa was
covered with low, dry brush, interspersed occasionally with bunches
of yellow grass. We could see the dark backs of the steers like spots
moving through it, but it looked like anything rather than a spring
feeding-ground.
Camp-in-the-Cedars was charming. A real tree had become a wonderful
object. For once there was plenty of wood and the Worrier kept himself
warm chopping and carrying. After the feeble little fires of roots
and twigs to which we had been accustomed, that blazing, crackling
camp-fire was a rich luxury. Dinner was a banquet. Our bed was laid
under a big piñon tree through whose tufts of fine needles the
enormous stars looked down. We had a glimpse through the far-off mouth
of the canyon of distant peaks, vague in the starlight. The wind rose
and fell softly through the pines and cedars, like the breathing of the
great white mountain beneath whose side we slept.
The white dawn of a clear day filtered through the blue darkness.
Before the sun had climbed over the ridge we were started on our long
anticipated adventure. It began with a stiff scramble up the first
buttressing ridge, then a long pull to the crest of the barrier that
walls the southern side of Wild Rose Canyon. The steep inclines of
gravelly rock were varied with ledges. Soon we reached the snow, so
hard that steps had to be dug in it with much scuffling of hobnailed
shoes. The green trees growing out of the white snow were very lovely,
and also useful to hold on to. When they were far apart we had some
exciting moments when we zigzagged over the smooth, white crust, which
was as steep as a shingled roof. In about two hours we reached the top
of the ridge. Until then we had faced the white slope, working too hard
to look back very often at the basin that was falling away below us.
Suddenly we stood on top. The world opened beyond into an immense white
amphitheater shut in by snowy peaks with the pyramid of Telescope,
visible once more, at the far side. After the hot, dry sands, how
miraculous seemed this glittering winter!
We pressed on toward Baldy along the ridge, which proved to be much
steeper than it had looked. It was covered with trees, and great
patches of snow grown soft now in the sun. However, by keeping a little
below the crest on the southern side most of the snow could be avoided.
There the ground fell so precipitously from the ridge to the canyon
below that only an occasional tree grew on it, and we had an unimpeded
view of the two white summits and the magnificent sweep of snow between
them.
Noon brought us to a little saddle north of Baldy, which connects it
with another rounded summit of the same name. Here were no trees and
the snow was blown off clean. With what eagerness we panted up the
last few yards! The mountain climber has his great reward when he
"looks over." That is his own peculiar joy. He toils for hours with
the ground rising before him to a ridge that seems to cut the sky,
only to find a higher one beyond. He surmounts that, and another and
another, until at last he gains the highest and the mountains yield
their secret. Breathlessly we stood on the little saddle. We looked
down into Death Valley from the still height to which we had looked up
so long. The white floor shimmered through layers of heated air, 10,000
feet below. Again the valley was different. That day it was full of
sky, as the Imperial Valley had been when we first saw it. Nothing was
distinguishable down there, it was a well of clear blue. The Funeral
Mountains looked like hills. Behind them the jagged ranges of desert
mountains spread back with one tall, snowy peak in their midst, Mount
Charleston, sixty miles away on the border of Nevada.
Southward on the saddle the mound of Baldy's summit presented its snowy
side. For the most part the snow was hard enough for us to walk over
the crust, but sometimes we floundered in nearly to the waist. That
was hard work. By one o'clock we reached the top where the snow was
blown off, leaving bare black rocks. It was a quiet day for the desert
and especially for the mountains. A slight wind came from the south;
the sky was cloudless, a deep, still blue. Mount Baldy overlooks all
the country in a complete panorama, save where the beautiful pyramid
of Telescope Peak cuts into the view. The horizon was bounded on three
sides by snow mountains, Mount Charleston, the San Bernadinos and
the wonderful Sierra Nevada. Between these white barriers spread the
desert, deep white valleys, yellow dry lakes, ranges of rose and blue
and dark-violet mountains, all shining in the incomparable brightness
of the sun.
Now, at last, we saw the famous "H. and L." of which we had heard so
much. "You see the highest and the lowest points in the United States
at the same time," everybody had told us. From the top of the Panamints
we could see Mount Whitney towering in the west, while in the east the
mountain sides fall precipitously into Death Valley, 280 feet below sea
level. There must be some more accessible viewpoint which commands
this dramatic spectacle, for it is not likely that our informants
expected us to climb Mount Baldy.
From the summit of Baldy the long curving arête that had looked so
beautiful from Death Valley on one side and from Pinto Peak on the
other led over to Telescope Peak. It was no disappointment. Sloping
sharply down from Baldy, level for a ways, then rising again toward the
white pyramid, it extended for about three miles, precipitous on both
sides, often not more than ten feet wide on top. The exhilaration of
walking thus in the clear air high above the spread-out world is always
a boundless joy; on this shining wall in the middle of the desert the
joy was almost unbearable. The great plain of the world was clear cut,
no veiling haze softened its distances, it flashed and sparkled, full
of strong, austere lines and strong, satisfying contrasts. Like a
victorious lover, you walk the heights of your conquest; everything to
the great circle of the horizon is yours; by right of patience and love
you possess it.
If we could only be like the three old cedars that have withstood the
hurricanes on the ridge and gaze with them until sunset, through the
night and the wonder of morning! They are so gnarled and old, and so
calm. Watchers, they stand on the summit of the world, and they might
tell us, if we could stay, why the mountain-tops are joyful. Instead,
we must drag around these aching bodies clamoring to be kept warm and
to be fed, never letting us listen long enough. Already the sun was
descending toward the west, and we had to hasten on if we wanted to
reach Telescope Peak and get back to fire and food before the cold of
night.
When the arête began to rise it became rapidly very steep. The snow
became harder and harder until it turned to ice. The lovely pyramid,
now directly overhead, shone blindingly in the slanting sun. The
only possible way to its peak was up a sharp knife-edge, from which
both sides fell sheer for thousands of feet. Was it all solid ice?
The conviction that it was had been hinting defeat to each of us
for the last half hour of the climb, but no one cared to speak of
that possibility until we were within four hundred feet of the top,
clinging to trees and slipping badly. The peak rose at a possible, but
terrific angle; the trees for the remainder of the way were much too
far apart to hold on to; the ice was perfectly smooth, and glistened
like a skating rink set on edge. No amount of kicking with hobnailed
shoes could make a foothold on it, and one slip on that knife-edge
either way meant a slide down the ice-sheet to almost sure destruction.
You cannot climb such an ice wall without either an ax or a rope; with
either one we would have tried it. We could have cut steps with an ax,
or we might have been able to lasso the trees above with a long rope,
and pull ourselves up by it. So lately come from the furnace of Death
Valley, how should we suppose that we would need the implements of an
Alpine mountain-climber? Down, down, more than 11,000 feet, lay that
white pit veiled with the smoke of iridescent haze.
The Worrier, who professed deep scorn of all mountains for their own
sakes, looked longingly at the smooth peak. It fascinated us all like a
hard, glittering jewel. He said he "hated to be beat." So did we all
"hate to be beat," but we would have been ungrateful indeed for the
joy of that day had we not been able to turn back and remain thankful.
There was no sense of defeat in the going-down.
The descent was easy except for the heartbreaking pull up Mount
Baldy again. His sides were far too straight up and down to admit of
any going around him. On the summit we made a concession to aching
bodies by taking a long rest and eating what was left of the bread
and cheese and the everlasting prunes. The Worrier had long since
dubbed our route "The Prune Stone Trail." We jested light-heartedly
about building cairns along it with a prune stone carved on the top of
each, and insisted that we owned a half interest in the Prune Stone
Mine, as he would never have found it had we not dragged him up Pinto.
Mountain-hater as he was and heat-loving "desert-rat," he genially
admitted that, snow or no snow, the top of Baldy was "fine." As we sat
there Death Valley turned a dark, deep, luminous blue. We could see the
Avawatz Mountains by Silver Lake and the notch in the hills where the
blue pool of Saratoga cherishes its little darting fish. The slanting
sunlight was resplendent on the arête and the west slopes of Telescope
Peak. The Worrier called him an old rascal; but we were glad to leave
him so, with his white robes unsullied by scrambling feet. His image
would remain always to the inward eye in dull days and difficult days,
a reminder of how beauty watches around the world.
When the sun stood just above the wall of the Sierras we began the long
descent down the rounded, snowy side of Baldy to the little saddle, and
down the long, steep slope and the little, buttress slope where the
cedar trees had been so lovely in the snow. Night came while we were
still going down, and the basin of Wild Rose Canyon was a violet lake.
XI
_Snowstorm and Sandstorm_
Breakfast was late next morning like Sunday breakfasts in houses.
Charlotte asked if it was Sunday. No one knew what day it was in the
far-off world, but we proclaimed it Sunday at Wild Rose. It was a true
Sunday, a day of rest after hard exertion, a still day washed clean by
the mighty sun. Immense and still. The great bowl curved tranquilly to
the tranquil hills, the cedars and piñons along its edge glistened like
little bright fingers pointing at the sky.
During the middle of the day the sun was hot, in the morning and the
evening the big fire blazed. Camp-in-the-Cedars was lovely enough to
stay in forever, but shortly after noon the Worrier announced that
he must find the charcoal-kilns, he could not "be beat" by them. The
little trees were so beguiling, the tranquil brightness of the mesa
so inviting, that we followed him, buoyed up by the cold, clear air.
We wandered along the base of Baldy to where a small, purple mountain
jutted into the great basin. Around that we went, leisurely picking
our way over the rough ground until at the extreme northern end of the
bowl we found an attenuated wraith of a road leading up into a heavily
wooded canyon. A road must once have been the way to somewhere, and
we followed it, climbing steeply for nearly a mile. It brought us
to a small, level spot where, made of rocks like the mountains and
indistinguishable until we were right on them, stood seven immense
charcoal-kilns like a row of giant beehives. They were so big that we
could walk upright through their doorways, that looked like arched
openings in their sides. Old Tom Adams had said that they were used
in the seventies to make fuel of the cedars and piñons, to be hauled
thirty miles to the smelter at a lead mine. They had been deserted so
long that the camp rubbish had disappeared from around them and they
merged into their background, become again a part of Nature herself.