of a mass of rock on the rim, and built a little camp-fire, around which
we sat closely. Clouds still eddied about us, opening now wide rifts of
deep-blue sky, and then glimpses of the Shasta summit glowing with
evening light, and again views down upon the far earth, where sunlight
had long faded, leaving forest and field and village sunken in purple
gloom. Through the old, broken crater lip, over foreground of pallid ice
and sharp, black lava rocks, the clouds whirled away, and, yawning wide,
revealed an objectless expanse, out of which emerged dim mountain tops,
for a moment seen, then veiled. Thus, in the midst of clouds, I found it
extremely interesting to watch them and their habits. Drifting slowly
across the crater-bowl, I saw them float over and among the points of
cindery lava, whose savage forms contrasted wonderfully with the
infinite softness of their texture.
I found it strange and suggestive that fields of perpetual snow should
mantle the slopes of an old lava caldron, that the very volcano’s throat
should be choked with a pure little lakelet, and sealed with unmelting
ice. That power of extremes which held sway over lifeless nature before
there were human hearts to experience its crush expressed itself with
poetic eloquence. Had Lowell been in our bivouac, I know he must have
felt again the power of his own perfect figure of
“Burned-out craters healed with snow.”
It was a wild moment, wind smiting in shocks against the rock beside us,
flaring up our little fire, and whirling on with its cloud-freight into
the darkening crater gulf.
We turned in; the Clarks together, Emmons and I in our fur bags. Upon
cold stone our bed was anything but comfortable, angular fragments of
trachyte finding their way with great directness among our ribs and
under shoulder-blades, keeping us almost awake, in that despairing
semi-consciousness where dreams and thoughts tangle in tiresome
confusion.
Just after midnight, from sheer weariness, I arose, finding the sky
cloudless, its whole black dome crowded with stars. A silver dawn over
the slope of Shasta brightened till the moon sailed clear. Under its
light all the rugged topography came out with unnatural distinctness,
every impression of height and depth greatly exaggerated. The empty
crater lifted its rampart into the light. I could not tell which seemed
most desolate, that dim, moonlit rim with pallid snow-mantle and gaunt
crags, or the solid, black shadow which was cast downward from southern
walls, darkening half the bowl. From the silent air every breath of wind
or whisper of sound seemed frozen. Naked lava slopes and walls, the
high, gray body of Shasta with ridge and gorge, glacier and snow-field,
all cold and still under the icy brightness of the moon, produced a
scene of arctic terribleness such as I had never imagined. I looked
down, eagerly straining my eyes, through the solemn crater’s lip, hoping
to catch a glimpse of the lower world; but far below, hiding the earth,
stretched out a level plain of cloud, upon which the light fell cold and
gray as upon a frozen ocean.
I scrambled back to bed, and happily to sleep, a real sound, dreamless
repose.
We breakfasted some time after sunrise, and were soon under way with
packs on our shoulders.
The day was brilliant and cloudless, the cold, still air full of life
and inspiration. Through its clear blue the Shasta peak seemed
illusively near, and we hurried down to the saddle which connects our
cone with the peak, and across the head of a small tributary glacier,
and up over the first _débris_ slopes. It was a slow, tedious three
hours’ climb over stones which lay as steeply as loose material possibly
can, up to the base of a red trachyte spur; then on up a gorge, and out
upon a level mountain shoulder, where are considerable flats covered
with deep ice. To the north it overflows in a much-crevassed tributary
of the glacier we had studied below.
Here we rested, and hung the barometer from Clark’s tripod.
The further ascent lies up a long scoria ridge of loose, red pumiceous
rock for seven or eight hundred feet, then across another level step,
curved with rugged ice, and up into a sort of corridor between two
steep, much-broken, and stained ridges. Here in the hollow are boiling
sulphurous springs and hot earth. We sat down by them, eating our lunch
in the lee of some stones.
A short, rapid climb brought us to the top, four hours and thirty
minutes’ working time from our crater bivouac.
There is no reason why anyone of sound wind and limb should not, after a
little mountaineering practice, be able to make the Shasta climb. There
is nowhere the shadow of danger, and never a real piece of mountain
climbing--climbing, I mean, with hands and feet--no scaling of walls or
labor involving other qualities than simple muscular endurance. The fact
that two young girls have made the ascent proves it a comparatively easy
one. Indeed, I have never reached a corresponding altitude with so
little labor and difficulty. Whoever visits California, and wishes to
depart from the beaten track of Yosemite scenes, could not do better
than come to Strawberry Valley and get Mr. Sisson to pilot him up
Shasta.
When I ask myself to-day what were the sensations on Shasta, they render
themselves into three--geography, shadows, and uplifted isolation.
After we had walked along a short, curved ridge which forms the summit,
representing, as I believe, all that remains of the original crater, it
became my occupation to study the view.
A singularly transparent air revealed every plain and peak on till the
earth’s curve rolled them under remote horizons. The whole great disk of
world outspread beneath wore an aspect of glorious cheerfulness. The
Cascade Range, a roll of blue forest land, stretched northward,
surmounted at intervals by volcanoes; the lower, like symmetrical Mount
Pitt, bare and warm with rosy lava colors; those farther north lifting
against the pale horizon-blue solid white cones upon which strong light
rested with brilliance. It seemed incredible that we could see so far
toward the Columbia River, almost across the State of Oregon; but there
stood Pitt, Jefferson, and the Three Sisters in unmistakable plainness.
Northeast and east spread those great plains out of which rise low lava
chains, and a few small, burned-out volcanoes, and there, too, were the
group of Klamath and Goose Lakes lying in mid plain glassing the deep
upper violet. Farther and farther from our mountain base in that
direction the greenness of forest and meadow fades out into rich, mellow
brown, with warm cloudings of sienna over bare lava hills, and shades,
as you reach the eastern limit, in pale ash and lavender and buff, where
stretches of level land slope down over Madelin plains into Nevada
deserts. An unmistakable purity and delicacy of tint, with transparent
air and paleness of tone, give all desert scenes the aspect of
water-color drawings. Even at this immense distance I could see the
gradual change from rich, warm hues of rocky slope, or plain overspread
with ripened vegetation, out to the high, pale key of the desert.
Southeast the mountain spurs are smoothed into a broad glacis, densely
overgrown with chaparral, and ending in open groves around plains of
yellow grass.
A little farther begin the wild, cañon-curved piles of green mountains
which represent the Sierras, and afar, towering over them, eighty miles
away, the lava dome of Lassen’s Peak standing up bold and fine. South,
the Sacramento cañon cuts down to unseen depths, its deep trough opening
a view of the California plain, a brown, sunny expanse, over which loom
in vanishing perspective the coast-range peaks. West of us, and quite
around the semi-circle of view, stretches a vast sea of ridges, chains,
peaks, and sharp walls of cañons, as wild and tumultuous as an ocean
storm. Here and there above the blue billows rise snow-crests and shaggy
rock-chains, but the topography is indistinguishable. With difficulty I
could trace for a short distance the Klamath cañon course, recognizing
Siskiyou peaks, where Professor Brewer and I had been years before; but
in that broad area no further unravelling was possible. So high is
Shasta, so dominant above the field of view, we looked over it all as
upon a great shield which rose gently in all directions to the sky.
Whichever way we turned, the great cone fell off from our feet in
dizzying abruptness. We looked down steep slopes of _névé_, on over
shattered ice-wreck, where glaciers roll over cliffs, and around the
whole, broad, massive base curved deeply through its lava crusts in
straight cañons.
These flutings of ancient and grander glaciers are flanked by straight,
long moraines, for the most part bare, but reaching down part way into
the forest. It is interesting to observe that those on the north and
east, by greater massiveness and length, indicate that in former days
the glacier distribution was related to the points of compass about as
it is now. What volumes of geographical history lay in view! Old
mountain uplift; volcanoes built upon the plain of fiery lava; the chill
of ice and wearing force of torrent, written in glacier-gorge and
water-carved cañon!
I think such vastness of prospect now and then extremely valuable in
itself; it forcibly widens one’s conception of country, driving away
such false notion of extent or narrowing idea of limitation as we get in
living on lower plains.
I never tire of overlooking these great, wide fields, studying their
rich variety, and giving myself up to the expansion which is the instant
and lasting reward. In presence of these vast spaces and all but
unbounded outlook, the hours hurry by with singular swiftness. Minutes
or miles are nothing; days and degrees seem best fitted for one’s
thoughts. So it came sooner than I could have believed that the sun
neared its setting, sinking into a warm, bright stratum of air. The
light stretched from north to south, reflecting itself with an equal
depth all along the east, until a perfect ring of soft, glowing rose
edged the whole horizon. Over us the ever-dark heaven hung near and
flat. Light swept eastward across the earth, every uplift of hill-ridge
or solitary cone warm and bright with its reflections, and from each
object upon the plains, far and near, streamed out dense, sharp shadows,
slowly lengthening their intense images. We were far enough lifted above
it all to lose the ordinary landscape impression, and reach that
extraordinary effect of black-and-bright topography seen upon the moon
through a telescope.
Afar in the north, bars of blue shadow streamed out from the peaks,
tracing themselves upon rosy air. All the eastern slope of Shasta was of
course in dark shade, the gray glacier forms, broken ridges of stone,
and forest, all dim and fading. A long cone of cobalt-blue, the shadow
of Shasta fell strongly defined over the bright plain, its apex
darkening the earth a hundred miles away. As the sun sank, this gigantic
spectral volcano rose on the warm sky till its darker form stood huge
and terrible over the whole east. It was intensely distinct at the
summit, just as far-away peaks seen against the east in evening always
are, and faded at base as it entered the stratum of earth mist.
Grand and impressive we had thought Shasta when studying in similar
light from the plain. Infinitely more impressive was this phantom
volcano as it stood overshadowing the land and slowly fading into
night.
Before quitting the ridge, Fred Clark and I climbed together out upon
the highest pinnacle, a trachyte needle rising a few feet above the
rest, and so small we could barely balance there together, but we stood
a moment and waved the American flag, looking down over our shoulders
eleven thousand feet.
A fierce wind blew from the southwest, coming in gusts of great force.
Below, we could hear it beat surf-like upon the crags. We hurried down
to the hot-spring flat, and just over the curve of its southern descent
made our bivouac. Even here the wind howled, merciless and cold.
We turned to and built of lava blocks a square pen about two and a half
feet high, filled the chinks with pebbles, and banked it with sand. I
have seen other brown-stone fronts more imposing than our Shasta home,
but I have rarely felt more grateful to four walls than to that little
six-by-six pen. I have not forgotten that through its chinks the sand
and pebbles pelted us all night, nor was I oblivious when sudden gusts
toppled over here and there a good-sized rock upon our feet. When we sat
up for our cup of coffee, which Clark artistically concocted over the
scanty and economical fire, the walls sheltered our backs; and for that
we were thankful, even if the wind had full sweep at our heads and stole
the very draught from our lips, whirling it about north forty east by
compass, in the form of an infinitesimal spray. The zephyr, as we
courteously called it, had a fashion of dropping vertically out of the
sky upon our fire and leaving a clean hearth. For the space of a few
moments after these meteorological jokes there was a lively gathering of
burning knots from among our legs and coats and blankets.
There are times when the extreme of discomfort so overdoes itself as to
extort a laugh and put one in the best of humor. This tempest descended
to so many absurd personal tricks altogether beneath the dignity of a
reputable hurricane, that at last it seemed to us a sort of furious
burlesque.
Not so the cold; that commanded entire respect, whether carefully
abstracting our animal heat through the bed of gravel on which we lay,
or brooding over us hungry for those pleasant little waves of motion
which, taking Tyndall for granted, radiated all night long, in spite of
wildcat bags, from our unwilling particles. I abominate thermometers at
such times. Not one of my set ever owned up the real state of things.
Whenever I am nearly frozen and conscious of every indurated bone, that
bland little instrument is sure to read twenty or thirty degrees above
any unprejudiced estimate. Lying there and listening to the whispering
sounds that kindly drifted, ever adding to our cover, and speculating as
to any further possible meteorological affliction, was but indifferent
amusement, from which I escaped to a slumber of great industry. We lay
like sardines, hoping to encourage animal heat, but with small success.
The sunrise effect, with all its splendor, I find it convenient to leave
to some future traveller. I shall be generous with him, and say nothing
of that hour of gold. It had occurred long before we awoke, and many
precious minutes were consumed in united appeals to one another to get
up and make coffee. It was horridly cold and uncomfortable where we
were, but no one stirred. How natural it is under such circumstances to
“Rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.”
I lay musing on this, finding it singular that I should rather be there
stiff and cold while my like-minded comrades appealed to me, than to get
up and comfort myself with camp-fire and breakfast. We severally awaited
developments.
At last Clark gave up and made the fire, and he has left me in doubt
whether he loved cold less or coffee more.
Digging out our breakfast from drifted sand was pleasant enough, nor did
we object to excavating the frozen shoes, but the mixture of
disintegrated trachyte discovered among the sugar, and the manner in
which our brown-stone front had blown over and flattened out the family
provisions, were received by us as calamity.
However, we did justice to Clark’s coffee, and socially toasted our bits
of meat, while we chatted and ate zestfully portions not too freely
brecciated with lava sand. I have been at times all but morbidly aware
of the power of local attachment, finding it absurdly hard to turn the
key on doors I have entered often and with pleasure. My own early home,
though in other hands, holds its own against greater comfort, larger
cheer; and a hundred times, when our little train moved away from grand
old trees or willow-shaded springs by mountain camps, I have felt all
the pathos of nomadism, from the Aryan migration down.
As we shouldered our loads and took to the ice-field I looked back on
our modest edifice, and for the first time left my camp with gay relief.
Elation of success and the vital mountain air lent us their quickening
impulse. We tramped rapidly across the ice-field and down a long spur of
red trachyte, which extended in a southerly course around the head of a
glacier. It was our purpose to descend the southern slope of the
mountain, to a camp which had been left there awaiting us. The declivity
in that direction is more gentle than by our former trail, and had,
besides, the merit of lying open to our view almost from the very start.
It was interesting, as we followed the red trachyte spur, to look down
to our left upon _névé_ of the McCloud glacier. From its very head,
dislocation and crevasses had begun, the whole mass moving away from the
wall, leaving a deep gap between ice and rock. In its further descent
this glacier pours over such steep cascades, and is so tortuous among
the lava crags, that we could only see its beginning. To avoid those
great pyramidal masses which sprang fully a thousand feet from the
general flank of the mountain, we turned to the right and entered the
head of one of those long, eroded glacier cañons which are scored down
the slope. The ridges from both sides had poured in their freight of
_débris_ until the cañon was one mass of rock fragments of every
conceivable size and shape. Here and there considerable masses of ice
and relics of former glaciers lay up and down the shaded sides, and, as
we descended, occupied the whole broad bottom of the gorge. We
congratulated ourselves when the steep, upper _débris_ slope was passed
and we found ourselves upon the wavy ice of the old glacier. Numerous
streams flowed over its irregular face, losing themselves in the cracks
and reappearing among the accumulation of bowlders upon its surface.
Here and there glacier tables of considerable size rose above the
general level, supported on slender ice-columns. As the angle here was
very steep, we amused ourselves by prying these off their pedestals with
our alpine stocks, and watching them slide down before us.
More and more the ice became burdened with rocks, until at last it
wholly disappeared under accumulation of moraine. Over this, for a half
mile, we tramped, thinking the glacier ended; but in one or two
depressions I again caught sight of the ice, which led me to believe
that a very large portion of this rocky gorge may be underlaid by old
glacial remains.
Tramping over this unstable moraine, where melting ice had left the
bowlders in every state of uncertain equilibrium, we were greatly
fatigued, and at last, the strain telling seriously on our legs, we
climbed over a ridge to the left of our amphitheatre into the next
cañon, which was very broad and open, with gentle, undulating surface
diversified by rock plateaus and fields of glacier sand. Here, by the
margin of a little snow-brook, and among piles of immense _débris_,
Emmons and I sat down to lunch, and rested until our friends came up.
A few scanty bunches of alpine plants began to deck the gray earth and
gradually to gather themselves in bits of open sward, here and there
decorated with delicate flowers. Near one little spring meadow we came
upon gardens of a pale yellow flower with an agreeable, aromatic
perfume, and after another mile of straining on among erratic bowlders
and over the thick-strewn rock of the old moraines, we came to the
advanced guard of the forest. Battle-twisted and gnarled old specimens
of trees, of rugged, muscular trunk, and scanty, irregular branch, they
showed in every line and color a life-long struggle against their
enemies, the avalanche and cold. Gathering closer, they grew in groves
separated by long, open, grassy glades, the clumps of trees twisting
their roots among the glacier blocks.
For a long time we followed the pathway of an avalanche. To the right
and left of us, upon considerable heights, the trees were sound and
whole, and preserved, even at their ripe age, the health of youth. But
down the straight pathway of the valley every tree had been swept away,
the prostrate trunks, lying here and there, half buried in drifts of
sand and rock. Here, over the whole surface, a fresh young growth not
more than six or seven years old has sprung up, and begun a hopeless
struggle for ground which the snow claims for its own. Before us opened
winding avenues through forest; green meadows spread their pale, fresh
herbage in sunny beauty. Along the little stream which, after a mile’s
musical cascades, we knew flowed past camp, tender green plants and
frail mountain flowers edged our pathway. All was still and peaceful
with the soft, brooding spirit of life. The groves were absolutely alive
like ourselves, and drinking in the broad, affluent light in their
silent, beautiful way. Back over sunny tree-tops, the great cone of rock
and ice loomed in the cold blue; but we gladly turned away and let our
hearts open to the gentle influence of our new world.
There, at last, as we tramped over a knoll, were the mules dozing in
sunshine or idling about among trees, and there that dear, blue wreath
floating up from our camp-fire and drifting softly among boughs of
overhanging fir.
I always feel a strange renewal of life when I come down from one of
these climbs; they are with me points of departure more marked and
powerful than I can account for upon any reasonable ground. In spite of
any scientific labor or presence of fatigue, the lifeless region, with
its savage elements of sky, ice and rock, grasps one’s nature, and,
whether he will or no, compels it into a stern, strong accord. Then, as
you come again into softer air, and enter the comforting presence of
trees, and feel the grass under your feet, one fetter after another
seems to unbind from your soul, leaving it free, joyous, grateful!
XII
SHASTA FLANKS
1870
There are certain women, I am informed, who place men under their spell
without leaving them the melancholy satisfaction of understanding how
the thing was done. They may have absolutely repulsive features, and a
pretty permanent absence of mind; without that charm of cheerful grace
before which we are said to succumb. Yet they manage to assume command
of certain. It is thus with mules. I have heard them called awkward and
personally plain, nor is it denied that their disposition, though rich
in individuality, lacks some measure of qualities which should endear
them to humanity. Despite all this, and even more, they have a way of
tenderly getting the better of us, and, in the long run, absolutely
enthroning themselves in our affections. Mystery as it is, I confess to
its potent sway, long ago owning it beyond solution.
Live on the intimate terms of brother-explorer with your mule, be
thoughtful for his welfare, and you by-and-by take an emotional start
toward him which will surprise you. You look into that reserved face,
the embodiment of self-contained drollery, and begin to detect soft
thought and tender feeling; and sometimes, as you cinch your saddle a
little severely, the calm, reproachful visage will swing round and melt
you with a single look. Nothing is left but to rub the velvet nose and
loosen up the girth. When the mere brightness and gayety of mountain
life carries one away with their hilarious current, there is something
in the meek and humble air of a lot of pack animals altogether
chastening in its prompt effect.