reality. High upon a shoulder of Twin Sisters Mountain, a thousand
feet above the floor of the valley, where Parson Lamb's ranch stood,
overlooking the ruins of Kit Carson's own cabin, I built it. Across
the valley, towered Long's Peak and its lofty neighbors. Forty miles
of snowcapped peaks were at my dooryard, and beyond, toward the rising
sun, hazy plains stretched away to the illimitable horizon. Between
its craggy shoulder and the main body of the mountain, lay an
unsuspected, wedge-shaped valley, down which a little brook went
gurgling. There ancient spruce and yellow pine and quaking aspens grew
in sheltered luxuriance.
"Silent valley," I named it, though "Peaceful," or "Hidden," or "Happy"
might have fitted it as well. About eighty years previously, as I
calculated by the age of the new trees since sprung up, fire had burned
over Silent Valley. Many of the fire-killed trees were still standing,
sound to the heart. These solid, seasoned trunks, I cut for the logs
of my cabin walls. The Parson, almost as excitedly happy as I, lent me
a team to drag them to the spot where the house was to stand. They
were far too heavy for me to lift, so I had to roll them into place by
an improvised system of skids. Construction was a toilsome work; I was
not skilled at it, I handled my ax awkwardly, and squandered much
energy in "lost motion." But how I sang and shouted at the task!
Never could Kit Carson nor any other pioneer have exulted at his
building as I did! No wonder the deer paused in the aspen trails and
peered timidly out from their leafy retreat in amazement! No wonder
those sages, the mountain sheep, watched from the cliffs above with
sharp, incredulous eyes. Never before had the ring of an ax echoed in
Silent Valley!
[Illustration: Never before had the ring of an ax echoed in Silent
Valley!]
My cabin grew, as fast as young shoulders and eager hands could build
it. Log walls snugly chinked, and log rafters boarded and sodded; two
windows, "lazy" windows we maligned them, because they lay down instead
of standing, one sash above the other, and opened by sliding past each
other. The few dollars I had saved from my original stake and made
from the sale of hides, I spent, extravagantly, it seemed then, for
boards to make a door and lay a floor. That lumber cost nine dollars
per thousand feet on the job, and had to be hauled eleven miles from a
local sawmill--an exorbitant price that made a lasting impression on my
thrifty mind and left my old leather pouch flat. That same lumber
sells to-day for fifty-two dollars a thousand! Shades of Kit Carson!
How fortunate I lived near your time!
Built-in furniture is nothing new, "we pioneers" always used it! From
the odds and ends of planks left from the door and floor, I built a
wall seat, a chimney corner, a shelf cupboard and a bunk. My scanty
furnishings were all homemade--a rough, pine-board table, which served
for kitchen, dining and library purposes, and a bench which I always
"saved," using the floor before the hearth instead. "Aunt Jane"
insisted on giving me a featherbed to put on the rough slats of my
bunk, and some pieced quilts; I used my camp blankets for sheets. She
gave me, too, a strip of old rag carpet she had brought from her
Eastern home.
The crowning architectural feature of my mansion was the corner
fireplace, raised of the native granite bowlders. With what care I
selected the stones!--choosing those most richly encrusted with green
lichens, fitting each into its place, discarding many, ranging afar for
others to take their place. Chimney building is a job for an artisan,
and even then much of a gamble. Imagine my delight, then, when, the
last stone in place, I built a fire on my hearth, and it roared like a
furnace, and all the smoke went up, and out, the chimney! Later, the
eddying winds sometimes shot prankishly down it and playfully chased
the smoke back into the room, but this only blackened the stones,
giving my fireplace an air of antiquity.
My open fire was cook stove as well as heater. I added to my camping
utensils a Dutch oven, an iron pot with a heavy, deep-rimmed,
tight-fitting iron lid, and a tin basin. My furnishings were complete!
Long evenings I sat on the floor before my hearth, dreaming. Sometimes
I read, but the windy days outdoors, tramping and climbing, left me
relaxed and drowsy. I possessed, perhaps, a dozen books; among them
"Treasure Island," which I read over and over, with my door bolted. My
imagination gave piratical significance to the sighing of the pine
trees and the scampering of the pack rats over my roof.
Yes, my dream cabin was come true. There it stood on its lofty
vantage, watching over me as I fared forth on my explorations, waiting
faithfully for my return, never reproaching me for my absence, its snug
walls always ready to welcome me like sheltering arms, its quickly
blazing hearth cheering me like a warm, loving heart. So high was it
perched, that I could see it, while on my excursions, from many miles
away. It was a beacon to my wandering spirit, a compass and a guide to
my wandering feet.
From it, as my knowledge of woodcraft, which I came to know was nothing
more than common sense and resourcefulness applied to outdoor living,
increased, I ranged farther and farther, into the wilder, more remote
regions, which, except for an occasional trapper, no other white man
had ever penetrated. The country around my homestead, Long's Peak, and
the adjacent mountains, which have since been made a part of Rocky
Mountain National Park, is itself exceptionally high and rugged.
There, in a comparatively small area, are more than sixty peaks over
twelve thousand feet high, Long's, of course, being over fourteen
thousand feet. As the years passed my wanderings took me along the
Continental Divide, from the Wyoming line at the north to the southern
boundary of Colorado.
The vastness of the Rocky Mountains is beyond comprehension, they
sprawl the length of the continent. No one can hope to see all their
beauty, all their grandeur and awesomeness in a single lifetime. From
the crest of the Divide, north, west, and south, stretches a world of
rugged peaks. Range on range, tier on tier, like the waves of a
solidified ocean in a Titanic storm they roll away to the distant
horizon shore.
Always, as a boy, that compelling panorama fascinated me. On pleasant,
sunny days, those rugged slopes, from a distance, looked safe and
plushy, for all the world like deerskin; the dark green canyons
mysteriously beckoned to me, the myriad lakes sparkled knowingly,
intimately, the swift brooks chattered incessantly, urging action,
adventure. On stormy days, when violent winds swept over the Divide
and hid the heads of the peaks beneath the scuttling clouds, that
overwhelming vista, with its tremendous, deep-gashed canyons, its
towering, forbidding cliffs, still challenged even while it repelled me.
To explore every mile, vertical and horizontal, of that uncharted sea
of peaks! That was my boyish ambition! that was what led me westward,
that was what lured me on and on! And my field of exploration was
limitless--one peak conquered, there was always another just beyond, a
little higher, a little harder, waiting to be climbed. The wilder the
region the greater was its fascination for me. No matter how
difficult, how slow my progress, it never became tedious--there was
always the unexpected, the mysterious, as a guarantee against monotony.
Timberline always interested me and those vast, naked plateaus above it
never ceased to move me to wonder--miles and miles of great, granite
desert, up-flung into space. The very tip-top of the world. I used to
marvel that so much of the earth was waste. It was an everlasting
enigma.
Timberline was not all grotesque trees with bleak winds forever
scourging them. In late summer, it was a veritable hanging garden.
Sweet blue and pink forget-me-nots hid in the moss of its bowlders,
Edelweiss starred its stony trails. King's crown, alpine primrose, and
many other flowers nodded a gracious welcome.
And just below it, what a riot of bloom there was! I had learned, oft
to my inconvenience, that the higher the altitude the greater the
precipitation. Around and just below timberline are many lakes, and
miles of marshy, boggy land. On those first winter excursions to the
heights I marveled at the deep snowdrifts banked in the heavy Englemann
forests just below timberline. Long after the last white patch had
melted or evaporated from the exposed slopes, these sheltered drifts
would lie undiminished and when summer really came, they gave birth to
scores of trickling rills. Vegetation sprang up in that moist,
needle-mulched soil as luxuriant as any in the tropics. From the time
the furry anemone lifted its lavender-blue petals above the dwindling
snow patch, until the apples formed on the wild rose bushes and the
kinnikinic berries turned red, it was a continuous nosegay. Indian
paintbrush, marigolds, blue and white columbines as big as my hand and
nearly as high as my head, fragile orchids, hiding their heads in the
dusky dells, thousands of varieties I never knew or learned. Some few
I recognized as glorified cousins of my Kansas acquaintances. The
denser towering spruce forests sheltered them, conserved the moisture,
and scattered their needles over their winter beds.
In spite of the Parson's experienced advice on my first trips, boylike,
I ladened myself with blanket roll, cooking utensils and an unnecessary
amount of food. I soon found, however, that besides tiring me early in
the afternoon and robbing me of my zest for scenery, my pack limited
the scope of my operations, for with it I did not dare attempt many
precipitous slopes where a single slip might land me in eternity. I
found, too, that without it I could practically double the length of a
day's journey, and arrive at the end of it still fresh enough to enjoy
things. So I soon simplified my camp equipment. Campfires took the
place of blankets, a pocketful of raisins, a few shelled peanuts, some
sweet chocolate bars provided satisfying feasts. Eventually, when I
became adept at snaring game, I made a spit of twigs and roasted the
game over hot coals.
Sometimes this primitive method of camping was inconvenient, but it was
lots of fun. It was pioneering! What boy has not wished himself
Robinson Crusoe? Somehow, in this way I retrieved that early frontier
period passed before my birth. So I met the challenge of the
mountains, met whatever emergencies arose, with such resourcefulness as
I could muster; made my own way with what ingeniousness I possessed,
and lived off the land. Indians could do no more!
Having given up my gun, I learned other, and for me, at least, more
reliable methods of taking game for food. Setting snares was an
intriguing sport, but when I did not have time for it, I resorted to a
more primitive method, stone-throwing. Of course there were days when
neither of these methods succeeded, when the meal hour had to be
postponed, while I whetted my appetite, rather superfluously, with more
miles of tramping. I was surprised to find I could go foodless for
several days and still have strength to plod ahead and maintain my
interest in the scenery.
The cottontail of the Rockies is the commonest and easiest source of
meat, not only to the camper, but to the rabbit's cannibalistic
neighbors. He is a sort of universal food--a sort of staff of life to
the animal world. But for him famine would stalk the big killers.
Fortunately for himself and for his preying foes, he is most prolific,
and holds his own, in numbers at least, despite man and beast.
Occasionally some ravaging disease carries his kind off by the
thousands, then starvation faces those dependent on him for food. The
killers have to seek other hunting grounds, frequently far from their
home range, and often they become gaunt and lank, driven to take
desperate chances to save themselves from starvation and death.
As you can easily imagine, it keeps Bunny Cottontail moving to outwit
his many enemies. He has no briar patches in that rugged country,
though the jumper thickets might serve as such, so he lives beneath the
rocks, usually planning a front and back door to his burrow. In this
way he has a private exit when weasels or bobcats make their uninvited
visitations. A whole Rooseveltian family of bunnies live in congested
districts. Learning this, I usually set a number of snares in their
runways, or at likely holes beneath the rocks.
Part of the game of making nature yield one a living is keeping an eye
out at all times for possible food supplies. If a rabbit scurried
across my path, I marked the spot of his refuge. If he dodged beneath
a certain slab, I set my snare there. Then I poked about, hoping to
scare him into the snare. I did not always succeed in this, though,
for my stick could not turn the corners of his burrow, and he often
appeared out of some other exit, laughing at my stupidity, no doubt.
Sometimes, when very hungry, I tried smoking him out. The stone porch
of his burrow usually sloped, so a small smudge started at its lower
side would travel up-hill, into the tunnel. Mr. Rabbit, thinking the
woods were on fire, would make a dash for the open and fall victim to
the snare. But despite the fact that rabbits are credited with little
wit, I have often known them to nose aside my traps and escape.
Cottontails I found up to eight or nine thousand feet, but even higher
I ran across their cousins, the snowshoe. He quite excelled me in
manipulating his "webs"--his tremendous hind feet with long, clawlike
toes, covered with stiff and, I judged, waterproof hairs. He made his
way nimbly over the soft, deep snow, while I on my webs often
floundered and fell. Like the ptarmigan and the weasel, the snowshoe
rabbit changed to a white coat for winter. In the spring, he was
bluish, though underneath he still retained his arctic snowiness. In
the fall, with good taste and a sense of the fitness of things, he put
on a tan coat, and then, as the winter snows began to drift, he once
more donned his ermine robes.
Grouse were plentiful, except during the winter months. Usually I
found them between six thousand and nine thousand feet altitude, but as
the fall coloring painted the mountain slopes, and the juniper berries
ripened, they moved to the higher, exposed wind-swept cliffs. Above
timberline were the ptarmigan, always easy targets for a well-aimed
stone.
Rabbits, grouse and ptarmigan were all available and filling, but the
most abundant and most easily caught food in all the Rockies at that
time were the mountain trout. When I was a boy, every stream, even as
far down as the plains, was alive with them. Like salmon, they swam
upstream till they came to rapids or cataracts which they could not
leap. Those in the lakes were exceptionally large, but too well fed to
be interested in my bait. In the valleys were deep pools made by
beavers' dams and in these the trout "holed up" for the winter.
Fishing through the ice was common sport years ago. I remember that
one of Jim Oss's neighbors brought a mess of trout to him when he gave
his homesteading dance in January. With fish so abundant and unwary,
and fishermen few, fishing was easy. It took me only five or ten
minutes to catch all the trout I could use. Usually a few feet of
line, a hook, and a willow or aspen rod, was all I found necessary.
Sometimes I used bait--grasshoppers, bugs or worms.
Campfire cooking is an art comparatively primitive and elementary, but
it requires experience and intelligence to master. Like most
accomplishments worth learning, it takes application, and a world of
patience. Since I did not carry any utensils with me, I invariably
roasted or broiled the game I cooked, using hot rocks like the Indians.
I heated stones in my campfire, dug a shallow hole, and when the stones
were hot lined it with them, then put in my meat, covering it with a
hot flat stone. From time to time, I renewed the cooled first stones
for fresh ones, hot from the fire. Sometimes I intensified that heat
of my "fireless" by covering its top with moss or with pine needles.
If I decided to broil my bunny or grouse, I got out my short fishing
line and tied one end of it to a limb of a tree or to a tripod which I
made by fastening three poles together, setting them over the fire.
The other end I fastened to a green stick, three or four feet long,
which I skewered into the meat. Then I gave my "broiler" a spin which
wound up the line. When it was twisted tight, it reversed itself,
unwinding, and so revolving my cookery, exposing all sides to the fire.
Of course it gradually lost its spin, then I gave it another twirl.
Given plenty of time, over a slow fire of glowing coals, my bird would
be done to a queen's taste--a much too delicious dish to waste on any
king!
During dry, warm weather, I raked pine or spruce needles together for a
bed, but in the winter I used green pine or spruce boughs, putting
heavy, coarse ones on the bottom, planting their butt ends deeps in the
snow. Upon these I placed smaller twigs, which gave "spring" to my
couch, and finally I tufted it with the soft, tender tips of the
branches. Never have I rested better on mahogany beds than I did on
such pungent bunks! Lying there, physically weary, mentally relaxed,
drowsily gazing into my campfire, I lived over the day's adventures,
and would not have changed places with any man alive!
I found making camp in temperate weather was no task at all. It was
when it was cold or wet that the real test of my woodcraft came. I
learned that the first requisite in camp-making was the selection of a
suitable camp site. It had to be chosen with thought of the
accessibility to fuel and water. It had to be sheltered from the wind,
which was not always easy to manage in high altitudes, for though the
prevailing winter wind in the Rockies blows from the west, it swirls
and eddies in the canyons, coming from most unexpected and unwelcome
directions and often from all points of the compass in turn. Usually
ready-made camps, overhanging cliffs, were available. When they were
not, my ingenuity rose to the occasion and I thatched together twigs of
willow or birch, or even spruce or pine, though the latter were stiffer
and more difficult to fit tightly together. Beginning at the bottom, I
worked upward, lapping each successive layer over the one beneath, as
in laying shingles, and pointing the tips of the leaves or needles
downward, so they would shed water.
Sometimes I had difficulty in starting my fire. If there had been
daily showers for weeks, and the needles and the deadwood, as well as
the ground itself, were soaked, or if in winter the deadwood were
buried beneath snow and the dead limbs of standing trees difficult to
break off, it was a discouraging task. Sometimes after what seemed
like eons of struggling, I would get a sickly little flame flickering,
when, puff! along would come a blast of wind and smother it out with
snow. I did learn eventually that pitch knots were so rich in gum or
resin that they would always catch fire, and so I shaved off splinters
with my trusty hunting knife and used them for tinder. One night as I
lighted a candle in my cabin, it came to me that a piece of it would be
handy to tuck in my pocket for emergencies. Ever afterwards I carried
several short, burned-down ends along on my excursions. I discovered
that one of these stubs, set solidly on the ground and lighted, would
start my fire under the most adverse conditions. But for them I would
have had many a cold camp.
I had read of the Eskimo igloos and I tried to make them. But the snow
at hand in my mountains was never packed hard enough to freeze solid so
building blocks could be cut from it. It is blown about and drifted
too much. I did get an idea from "Buck" in Jack London's "Call of the
Wild," that I adapted. On winter explorations I always carried
snowshoes, even though not compelled to wear them at the outset. These
made handy shovels. When ready to make camp I selected a snowdrift
three or four feet deep, and with my web shovel dug a triangular hole,
about seven feet long on each side. In the angle farthest from the
wind I built my fire. It soon assisted me in enlarging the corner.
Opposite it, I roofed over my dugout with dead limbs, thatching them
with green boughs, and finally heaping the excavated snow over all. I
had a practically windproof nest which a little fire would keep snug
and warm. True I had to fire up frequently throughout the night, for a
big blaze is too hot in a snow-hole, but I soon learned to rouse up,
put on more fuel, and drop back to sleep, all in a few minutes.
But the smoke nuisance in my early dugouts was terrible. Pittsburgh
had nothing on me! Many a morning I crawled out smelling like a smoked
ham, my eyes smarting, my throat sore and dry. Years later, my rambles
led me to Mesa Verde and the kivas of the cliff dwellers. Those
primitive people built fires deep underground, with no chimneys or
flues to conduct the smoke outside. They ingeniously constructed cold
air passages down to the floor of the kivas near the fire bowl. These
fed the fires fresh air, causing the smoke to rise steadily and pass
out through a small aperture in the roof. I tried this, and to my
delight, found it rid me of the strangling plague.
I had discarded my gun, but my camera was with me always. Frequent
dashing showers are common in the mountains. Often, too, I had to
cross swollen streams, and sometimes got a ducking in transit.
Matches, salt and camera plates were ruined by wetting, so I had to
contrive a waterproof carrier for them. I hit upon a light rubber
blanket, which added practically no pounds or bulk to my pack, and in
it wrapped my perishables. It saved them more often than not, but even
it could not protect them in some predicaments.
There, was no month of the year I didn't camp out. Naturally I was
caught in many kinds of weather. In severe storms I learned to stick
close to camp, lying low and waiting for the furies to relent. In the
early days, as in my first camp, I attempted to return home at once,
but traveling over the soft, yielding snow only sapped my strength and
got me nowhere. I learned that by remaining inactive by my campfire, I
conserved both food and energy and had a far better chance to reach the
shelter of my cabin without mishap.
Being young and inexperienced, I was the recipient of much free advice,
the most common being warnings about the imminent weather or the
oncoming winter. Most of these prognosticators used the cone-storing
squirrels or the beavers, working busily on their dams and houses, as
barometers. But I found the old adage that only fools and newcomers
could forecast weather to hold true in the mountains. I got so I
didn't believe in signs. I saw the squirrels and the beavers make
preparation for winter every fall. I took each day, with its vagaries,
as it came and made the best of it.
Returning from one of my midwinter trips to the wilds, one day I
coasted down a very steep slope and shot out of the woods into a little
clearing--a snug log cabin stood there, buried in snow up to its eyes.
In a snow trench, not far from the door, an old trapper was chopping
wood. As I burst upon the scene he dropped his ax and stared at me.
Then he found words.
"See all fools ain't dead yit," he observed with a grin. Then, as I
started on he yelled after me.
"But I bet they soon will be!"
[Illustration: "See all fools ain't dead yit," he observed.]
So I spent the days of my boyhood--tramping, climbing, exploring! Was
ever another mortal so fortunate as I in the realization of his dreams?
Was ever another lad so happy?
CHAPTER SEVEN
GLACIERS AND FOREST FIRES
When I first came West, with my imagination fired by the reminiscent
tales of my mother and my father, and our pioneer neighbors, I looked
only for mountains made of gold, for roaming buffaloes and skulking
savages, for fierce wild beasts and mighty hunters. That the mountains
were golden only in the sunset, and the Indians and bison alive only in
the immortal epics of the frontier, somehow did not disappoint me. So
wonderful were those rocky upheavals in the reality, so intriguing were
the traces of redskin and buffalo, I forgot my fantastic
misconceptions. To my enthusiastic youth, everything was
extraordinary, alluring, primitively satisfying. Parson Lamb said the
big game were gone, but there were enough left to give me many a thrill.