a large umbrella and put it over him, and waited near for him to wake
up. By and by the sleepy eyes half opened, but without a move he
closed them and slept again. Presently he was wide awake, making a
quiet study of the strange thing over him, but except to roll his
eyes, not a move did he make. Then a puff of wind gave sudden movement
to the umbrella, rolling it over a point or two. At this he leaped to
his feet, terribly frightened, and made a dash to escape this
mysterious monster. But, as he jumped, the wind whirled the umbrella,
and plump into it he landed. An instant of desperate clawing, and he
shook off the wrecked umbrella and fled in terror. A minute or two
later I found him standing behind the house, still frightened and
trembling. When I came up and spoke to him, he made three or four
lively attempts to bite my ankles. Plainly, he felt that I had played
a mean and uncalled-for trick upon him. I talked to him for some time
and endeavored to explain the matter to him.
A sudden movement of a new or mysterious object will usually frighten
any animal. On more than one occasion people have taken advantage of
this characteristic of wild beasts, and prevented an attack upon
themselves. In one instance I unconsciously used it to my advantage.
In the woods, one day, as I have related elsewhere, two wolves and
myself unexpectedly met. With bared teeth they stood ready to leap
upon me. Needing something to keep up my courage and divert my
thoughts, it occurred to me to snap a picture of them. This
effectively broke the spell, for when the kodak door flew open they
wheeled and fled.
Autumn came, and I was to leave for a forestry tour. The only man that
I could persuade to stay at my place for the winter was one who
neither understood nor sympathized with my wide-awake and aggressive
young grizzly. Realizing that the man and the bear would surely clash,
and perhaps to the man's disadvantage, I settled things once and for
all by sending Johnny to the Denver Zoo.
He was seven months old when we parted, and apparently as much
attached to me as any dog to master. I frequently had news of him, but
let two years go by before I allowed myself the pleasure of visiting
him. He was lying on the ground asleep when I called, while around him
a number of other bears were walking about. He was no longer a boy
bear, but a big fellow. In my eagerness to see him I forgot to be
cautious and, climbing to the top of the picket fence, leaped into the
pen, calling, "Hello, Johnny!" as I leaped, and repeating this
greeting as I landed on the ground beside him. He jumped up, fully
awake, and at once recognized me. Instantly, he stood erect, with both
arms extended, and gave a few happy grunts of joy and by way of
greeting.
I talked to him for a little while and patted him as I talked. Then I
caught a fore paw in my hand and we hopped and pranced about as in
old times. A yell from the outside brought me to my senses.
Instinctively I glanced about for a way of escape, though I really did
not feel that I was in danger. We were, however, the observed of all
observers, and I do not know which throng was staring with greater
interest and astonishment,--the bears in the pen or the spectators on
the outside.
Alone with a Landslide
Alone with a Landslide
Realizing the importance of traveling as lightly as possible during my
hasty trip through the Uncompahgre Mountains, I allowed myself to
believe that the golden days would continue. Accordingly I set off
with no bedding, with but little food, and without even snowshoes. A
few miles up the trail, above Lake City, I met a prospector coming
down and out of these mountains for the winter. "Yes," he said, "the
first snow usually is a heavy one, and I am going out now for fear of
being snowed-in for the winter." My imagination at once pictured the
grand mountains deeply, splendidly covered with snow, myself by a
camp-fire in a solemn primeval forest without food or bedding, a
camp-bird on a near-by limb sympathizing with me in low, confiding
tones, the snow waist-deep and mountains-wide. Then I dismissed the
imaginary picture of winter and joyfully climbed the grand old
mountains amid the low and leafless aspens and the tall and richly
robed firs.
I was impelled to try to make this mountain realm a National Forest
and felt that sometime it would become a National Park. The wonderful
reports of prospectors about the scenery of this region, together with
what I knew of it from incomplete exploration, eloquently urged this
course upon me. My plan was to make a series of photographs, from
commanding heights and slopes, that would illustrate the forest wealth
and the scenic grandeur of this wonderland. In the centre Uncompahgre
Peak rose high, and by girdling it a little above the timber I
obtained a number of the desired photographs, and then hurried from
height to height, taking other pictures of towering summits or their
slopes below that were black and purpling with impressive, pathless
forests.
The second evening I went into camp among some picturesque trees upon
a skyline at an altitude of eleven thousand feet above the tides.
While gathering wood for a fire, I paused to watch the moon, a great
globe of luminous gold, rise strangely, silently into the mellow haze
of autumn night. For a moment on the horizon it paused to peep from
behind a crag into a scattered group of weird storm-beaten trees on a
ridge before me, then swiftly floated up into lonely, misty space.
Just before I lay down for the night, I saw a cloud-form in the dim,
low distance that was creeping up into my moonlit world of mountains.
Other shadowy forms followed it. A little past midnight I was awakened
by the rain falling gently, coldly upon my face. As I stood shivering
with my back to the fire, there fell an occasional feathery flake of
snow.
Had my snowshoes been with me, a different lot of experiences would
have followed. With them I should have stayed in camp and watched the
filmy flakes form their beautiful white feathery bog upon the earth,
watched robes, rugs, and drapery decorate rocks and cliffs, or the fir
trees come out in pointed, spearhead caps, or the festoons form upon
the limbs of dead and lifeless trees,--crumbling tree-ruins in the
midst of growing forest life. To be without food or snowshoes in
faraway mountain snows is about as serious as to be adrift in a
lifeboat without food or oars in the ocean's wide waste. In a few
minutes the large, almost pelt-like flakes were falling thick and
fast. Hastily I put the two kodaks and the treasured films into
water-tight cases, pocketed my only food, a handful of raisins,
adjusted hatchet and barometer, then started across the strange, snowy
mountains through the night.
The nearest and apparently the speediest way out lay across the
mountains to Ridgway; the first half of this fifteen miles was through
a rough section that was new to me. After the lapse of several years
this night expedition appears a serious one, though at the time it
gave me no concern that I recall. How I ever managed to go through
that black, storm-filled night without breaking my neck amid the
innumerable opportunities for accident, is a thing that I cannot
explain.
I descended a steep, rugged slope for a thousand feet or more with my
eyes useless in the eager falling of mingled rain and snow. Nothing
could be seen, but despite slow, careful going a dead limb
occasionally prodded me. With the deliberation of a blind man I
descended the long, steep, broken, slippery slope, into the bottom of
a cañon. Now and then I came out upon a jumping-off place; here I felt
before and below with a slender staff for a place to descend;
occasionally no bottom could be found, and upon this report I would
climb back a short distance and search out a way.
Activity kept me warm, although the cold rain drenched me and the
slipperiness of slopes and ledges never allowed me to forget the law
of falling bodies. At last a roaring torrent told me that I was at the
bottom of a slope. Apparently I had come down by the very place where
the stream contracted and dashed into a deep, narrow box cañon. Not
being able to go down stream or make a crossing at this point, I
turned and went up the stream for half a mile or so, where I crossed
the swift, roaring water in inky darkness on a fallen Douglas
spruce,--for such was the arrangement of its limbs and the feel of the
wood in its barkless trunk, that these told me it was a spruce, though
I could see nothing. During this night journey I put myself both in
feeling and in fact in a blind man's place,--the best lesson I ever
had to develop deliberation and keenness of touch.
The next hour after crossing the stream I spent in climbing and
descending a low wooded ridge with smooth surface and gentle slopes.
Then there was one more river, the Little Cimarron, to cross. An
Engelmann spruce, with scaly, flaky bark, that had stood perfectly
perpendicular for a century or two but had recently been hurled to the
horizontal, provided a long, vibrating bridge for me to cross on. Once
across, I started to climb the most unstable mountain that I had ever
trodden.
[Illustration: NEAR THE TOP OF MT. COXCOMB]
Mt. Coxcomb, up which I climbed, is not one of the "eternal hills" but
a crumbling, dissolving, tumbling, transient mountain. Every hard rain
dissolves, erodes, and uncovers the sides of this mountain as if it
were composed of sugar, paste, and stones. It is made up of a confused
mingling of parts and masses of soluble and flinty materials. Here
change and erosion run riot after every rain. There is a great falling
to pieces; gravity, the insatiable, is temporarily satisfied, and the
gulches feast on earthy materials, while the river-channel is glutted
with crushed cliffs, acres of earth, and the débris of ruined forests.
Here and there these are flung together in fierce confusion.
On this bit of the wild world's stage are theatrical lightning changes
of scenes,--changes that on most mountains would require ten thousand
years or more. It is a place of strange and fleeting landscapes; the
earth is ever changing like the sky. In wreathed clouds a great cliff
is born, stands out bold and new in the sunshine and the blue. The
Storm King comes, the thunders echo among crags and cañons, the broken
clouds clear away, and the beautiful bow bends above a ruined cliff.
Here and there strange, immature monsters are struggling to rise,--to
free themselves from the earth. Occasionally a crag is brought forth
full grown during one operation of gravity, erosion, and storm, and
left upon a foundation that would raise corn but never sustain cliff
or crag. Scattered monoliths at times indulge in a contest of leaning
the farthest from the perpendicular without falling. The potato-patch
foundations of these in time give way, then gravity drags them head
foremost, or in broken installments, down the slope.
Among the forested slopes that I traversed there were rock-slides,
earthy glaciers, and leafless gulches with crumbling walls. Some of
these gulches extended from bottom to top of the mountain, while
others were digging their way. An occasional one had a temporary
ending against the bottom of a kingly cliff, whose short reign was
about to end as its igneous throne was disorganized and decomposed.
The storm and darkness continued as I climbed the mountain of
short-lived scenes,--a mountain so eagerly moving from its place in
the sky to a bed in the sea. The saturation had softened and
lubricated the surface; these sedimentary slopes had been made
restless by the rain.
I endeavored to follow up one of the ridges, but it was narrow and all
the pulpy places very slippery. Fearing to tumble off into the dark
unknown, I climbed down into a gully and up this made my way toward
the top. All my mountain experience told me to stay on the ridge and
not travel in darkness the way in which gravity flings all his spoils.
The clouds were low, and I climbed well up into them. The temperature
was cooler, and snow was whitening the earth. When I was well up to
the silver lining of the clouds, a gust of wind momentarily rent them,
and I stood amid snow-covered statuary,--leaning monoliths and
shattered minarets all weird and enchanting in the moonlight. A few
seconds later I was in darkness and snowstorm again.
The gulch steepened and apparently grew shallower. Occasionally a mass
of mud or a few small stones rolled from the sides of the gulch to my
feet and told that saturation was at work dissolving and loosening
anchorages and foundations. It was time to get out of the gulch. While
I was making haste to do so, there came a sudden tremor instantly
followed by an awful crash and roar. Then _r-r-rip! z-zi-ip!
s-w-w-r-r-ip!_ A bombardment of flying, bounding, plunging rocks from
an overturned cliff above was raking my gulch. Nothing could be seen,
but several slaps in the face from dashes of snow which these rock
missiles disturbed and displaced was expressively comprehensive.
As this brief bombardment ceased, the ominous sounds from above
echoing among the cliffs shouted warning of an advancing landslide.
This gave a little zest to my efforts to get out of the gulch; too
much perhaps, for my scramble ended in a slip and a tumble back to the
bottom. In the second attempt a long, uncovered tree-root reached down
to me in the darkness, and with the aid of this I climbed out of the
way of the avalanche. None too soon, however. With quarreling and
subdued grinding sounds the rushing flood of landslide material went
past, followed by an offensive smell.
While I paused listening to the monster groan and grind his way
downward, the cliffs fired a few more rock missiles in my direction.
One struck a crag beside me. The explosive contact gave forth a blast
of sputtering sparks and an offensive, rotten-egg smell. A flying
fragment of this shattered missile struck my left instep, breaking
one of the small bones.
Fortunately my foot was resting in the mud when struck. When
consciousness came back to me I was lying in the mud and snow,
drenched, mud-bespattered, and cold. The rain and snow had almost
ceased to fall, and while I was bandaging my foot the pale light of
day began to show feebly through heavy clouds. If that luminous place
is in the eastern horizon, then I have lost my sense of direction. An
appeal to the compass brought no consolation, for it said laconically,
"Yes, you are turned around now, even though you never were before."
The accuracy of the compass was at once doubted,--but its decree was
followed.
Slowly, painfully, the slippery, snowy steeps were scaled beneath a
low, gloomy sky. My plan was to cross the north shoulder of Mt.
Coxcomb and then down slope and gulch descend to the deeply filled
alluvium Uncompahgre valley and the railroad village of Ridgway. With
the summit only a few feet above, the wall became so steep and the
hold so insecure that it appeared best to turn back lest I be
precipitated from the cliff. The small, hard points in the sedimentary
wall had been loosened in their settings by the rain. Climbing this
wall with two good feet in a dry time would be adventurous pastime.
While I was flattened against the wall, descending with greatest
caution, there came a roaring crash together with a trembling of earth
and air. An enormous section of the opposite side of the mass that I
was on had fallen away, and the oscillations of the cliff nearly
hurled me to the rock wreckage at the bottom of the wall.
On safe footing at last, I followed along the bottom of the summit
cliff and encountered the place from which the rocks had been hurled
at me in the darkness and where a cliff had fallen to start the slide.
It was evident that the storm waters had wrecked the foundation of the
cliff. Ridges and gullies of the Bad Land's type fluted the slope and
prevented my traveling along close to the summit at right angles to
the slope. There appeared no course for me but to descend to the
Little Cimarron River. Hours were required for less than two miles of
painful though intensely interesting travel.
It was a day of landslides,--just as there are, in the heights, days
of snow slides. This excessive saturation after months of drought left
cohesion and adhesion but slight hold on these strange sedimentary
mixtures. The surface tore loose and crawled; cliffs tumbled. After
counting the crash and echoing roar of forty-three fallen cliffs, I
ceased counting and gave more attention to other demonstrations.
On the steeps, numerous fleshy areas crawled, slipped, and crept. The
front of a long one had brought up against a rock ledge while the
blind rear of the mass pressed powerfully forward, crumpling, folding,
and piling the front part against the ledge. At one place an enormous
rocky buttress had tumbled over. Below, the largest piece of this, a
wreck in a mass of mud, floated slowly down the slope in a shallow,
moderately tilted gulch. This buttress had been something of an
impounding, retaining wall against which loosened, down-drifting
materials had accumulated into a terrace. The terrace had long been
adorned with a cluster of tall spruces whose presence produced
vegetable mould and improved soil conditions.
On the falling-away of this buttress the tree-plumed terrace commenced
to sag and settle. The soil-covered débris was well roped together and
reinforced with tree-roots. When I came along, these tall trees, so
long bravely erect, were leaning, drooping forward. Their entire
foundation had slipped several feet and was steadily crowding out over
the pit from which gravity had dragged the buttress. The trees, with
their roots wedged in crevices, were anchored to bed-rock and clinging
on for dear life. Now and then a low, thudding, earth-muffled sound
told of strained or ruptured roots. The foundation steadily gave way
while the trees drooped dangerously forward. United on the heights,
the brave trees had struggled through the seasons, and united they
would go down together. They had fixed and fertilized the spoil from
the slopes above. This spoil had been held and made to produce, and
prevented from going down to clog the channel of the Little Cimarron
or making with the waters the long, sifting, shifting journey, joining
at last the lifeless soil deposits in the delta tongues of the
Colorado. But the steadfast trees, with all their power to check
erosion and create soil, were to fall before the overwhelming
elements.
Farther and farther the unsupported and water-lubricated foundation
slipped; more and more the trees leaned and drooped forward; until
gravity tore all loose and plunged the trees head foremost into the
pit, crushing down upon tumbled tons of rocks, soil, matted mud, and
roots,--all the wreckage of the time-formed, tree-crowned terrace.
The slide that narrowly missed me in the night was a monster one and
grew in magnitude as it brutally rooted and gouged its way downward.
After descending more than half a mile it struck an enormous dome
rock, which stayed a small part of it, while the remainder, deflected,
made an awesome plunge and engulfed a small, circular grove in an
easily sloping grassy plot. Most of the towering spruces were thrown
down and deeply buried beneath mud, smashed cliffs, and the mangled
forms of trees from up the slope. A few trees on the margin of the
grove were left standing, but they suffered from cruel bruises and
badly torn bark.
On the farther side of the grove a number of the trees were bent
forward but only partly buried; with heads and shoulders out, they
were struggling to extricate themselves, and now and then one shook an
arm free from the débris. Over the place where a few hours before tall
tree plumes had stood in the sky, a fierce confusion of slide wreckage
settled and tumbled to pieces while the buried and half-buried trees
whispered, murmured, and sighed as they struggled to rise.
Out with nature trees are supposed to stand in one place all their
lives, but one of the most interesting movements of this elemental day
was the transplanting, by gravity, of an entire clump of tall old
firs. Water released these trees, and they appeared to enjoy being
dragged by gravity to a new home and setting. I was resting my foot
and watching a gigantic monolithic stone settle and come down
gracefully, when a tree-clump on the skyline just beyond appeared to
move forward several yards, then make a stop. While I was trying to
decide whether they really had moved or not, they moved forward again
with all their earthly claims, a few square rods of surface together
with their foundations beneath. With all tops merrily erect they slid
forward, swerving right and left along the line of least resistance,
and finally came to rest in a small unclaimed flat in which no doubt
they grew up with the country.
The many-sized slides of that weird day showed a change of position
varying from a few feet to a mile. Several ploughed out into the
Little Cimarron and piled its channel more than full of spoils from
the slopes. Through this the river fought its way, and from it the
waters flowed richly laden with earthy matter.
The great changes which took place on Mt. Coxcomb in a few hours were
more marked and extensive than the alterations in most mountains since
the Sphinx began to watch the shifting, changing sands by the Nile.
By mid-afternoon the air grew colder and the snow commenced to deepen
upon the earth. Bedraggled and limping, I made slow progress down the
slope. Just at twilight a mother bear and her two cubs met me. They
probably were climbing up to winter-quarters. I stood still to let
them pass. When a few yards distant the bear rose up and looked at me
with a combination of curiosity, astonishment, and perhaps contempt.
With _Woof! Woof!_ more in a tone of disgust than of fear or anger,
she rushed off, followed by the cubs, and the three disappeared in the
darkening, snow-filling forest aisles.
The trees were snow-laden and dripping, but on and on I went. Years of
training had given me great physical endurance, and this, along with a
peculiar mental attitude that Nature had developed in me from being
alone in her wild places at all seasons, gave me a rare trust in her
and an enthusiastic though unconscious confidence in the ultimate
success of whatever I attempted to accomplish out of doors.
About two o'clock in the morning I at last descended to the river. The
fresh débris on my side of the stream so hampered traveling that it
became necessary to cross. Not finding any fallen-tree bridge, I
started to wade across in a wide place that I supposed to be shallow.
Midway and hip-deep in the swift water, I struck the injured foot
against a boulder, momentarily flinching, and the current swirled me
off my feet. After much struggling and battling with the turbulent
waters, I succeeded in reaching the opposite shore. This immersion did
not make me any wetter than I was or than I had been for hours, but
the water chilled me; so I hurried forward as rapidly as possible to
warm up.
After a few steps the injured leg suddenly became helpless, and I
tumbled down in the snow. Unable to revive the leg promptly and being
very cold from my icy-water experience, I endeavored to start a fire.
Everything was soaked and snow-covered; the snow was falling and the
trees dripping water; I groped about on my hands and one knee,
dragging the paralyzed leg; all these disadvantages, along with
chattering teeth and numb fingers, made my fire-starting attempts a
series of failures.
That night of raw, primitive life is worse in retrospect than was the
real one. Still I was deadly in earnest at the time. Twenty-four
hours of alertness and activity in the wilds, swimming and wading a
torrent of ice-water at two o'clock in the morning, tumbling out into
the wet, snowy wilds miles from food and shelter, a crushed foot and a
helpless leg, the penetrating, clinging cold, and no fire, is going
back to nature about ten thousand years farther than it is desirable
to go. But I was not discouraged even for a moment, and it did not
occur to me to complain, though, as I look back now, the theory of
non-resistance appears to have been carried a trifle too far. At last
the fire blazed. After two hours beside it I went down the river
greatly improved. The snow was about fifteen inches deep.
[Illustration: COURT-HOUSE ROCK]