Steep Trails, by John Muir

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Transcribed by Judy Gibson, of Descanso, California, USA,
from a book in the collection of the San Diego Natural History Museum,
used by the courtesy of the San Diego Society of Natural History.

Steep Trails

California-Utah-Nevada-Washington-Oregon-The Grand Canyon

by

John Muir

EDITOR'S NOTE

The papers brought together in this volume have, in a general way,
been arranged in chronological sequence. They span a period of
twenty-nine years of Muir's life, during which they appeared as
letters and articles, for the most part in publications of limited and
local circulation. The Utah and Nevada sketches, and the two San
Gabriel papers, were contributed, in the form of letters, to the San
Francisco Evening Bulletin toward the end of the seventies. Written
in the field, they preserve the freshness of the author's first
impressions of those regions. Much of the material in the chapters on
Mount Shasta first took similar shape in 1874. Subsequently it was
rewritten and much expanded for inclusion in Picturesque California,
and the Region West of the Rocky Mountains, which Muir began to edit
in 1888. In the same work appeared the description of Washington and
Oregon. The charming little essay "Wild Wool" was written for the
Overland Monthly in 1875. "A Geologist's Winter Walk" is an extract
from a letter to a friend, who, appreciating its fine literary
quality, took the responsibility of sending it to the Overland Monthly
without the author's knowledge. The concluding chapter on "The Grand
Canyon of the Colorado" was published in the Century Magazine in 1902,
and exhibits Muir's powers of description at their maturity.

Some of these papers were revised by the author during the later years
of his life, and these revisions are a part of the form in which they
now appear. The chapters on Mount Shasta, Oregon, and Washington will
be found to contain occasional sentences and a few paragraphs that
were included, more or less verbatim, in The Mountains of California
and Our National Parks. Being an important part of their present
context, these paragraphs could not be omitted without impairing the
unity of the author's descriptions.

The editor feels confident that this volume will meet, in every way,
the high expectations of Muir's readers. The recital of his
experiences during a stormy night on the summit of Mount Shasta will
take rank among the most thrilling of his records of adventure. His
observations on the dead towns of Nevada, and on the Indians gathering
their harvest of pine nuts, recall a phase of Western life that has
left few traces in American literature. Many, too, will read with
pensive interest the author's glowing description of what was one time
called the New Northwest. Almost inconceivably great have been the
changes wrought in that region during the past generation. Henceforth
the landscapes that Muir saw there will live in good part only in his
writings, for fire, axe, plough, and gunpowder have made away with the
supposedly boundless forest wildernesses and their teeming life.

William Frederic Bade

Berkeley, California

May, 1918

STEEP TRAILS

CONTENTS

I. Wild Wool
II. A Geologist's Winter Walk
III. Summer Days at Mount Shasta
IV. A Perilous Night on Shasta's Summit
V. Shasta Rambles and Modoc Memories
VI. The City of the Saints
VII. A Great Storm in Utah
VIII. Bathing in Salt Lake
IX. Mormon Lilies
X. The San Gabriel Valley
XI. The San Gabriel Mountains
XII. Nevada Farms
XIII. Nevada Forests
XIV. Nevada's Timber Belt
XV. Glacial Phenomena in Nevada
XVI. Nevada's Dead Towns
XVII. Puget Sound
XVIII. The Forests of Washington
XIX. People and Towns of Puget Sound
XX. An Ascent of Mount Rainier
XXI. The Physical and Climatic Characteristics of Oregon
XXII. The Forests of Oregon and Their Inhabitants
XXIII. The Rivers of Oregon
XXIV. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado
Footnotes

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Crest of the Wahsatch Range
From a point about four miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

At Shasta Soda Springs
A view of Mossbrae Falls, where a subterranean stream coming
down from the glaciers of Mt. Shasta breaks through the
vegetation and flows into the Sacramento River.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

Mount Shasta after a Snowstorm
A view from the west, near Sisson.
From a photograph by Pillsbury's Pictures, Inc.

Mormon Lilies
The plant is known in Utah as the Sego Lily, and in California
and elsewhere as the Mariposa Tulip (Calochortus Nuttallii).
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

Along the Oregon Sea Bluffs
A view near the town of Ecola, Oregon.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

O'Neill's Point
A favorite point of observation overlooking the Grand Canyon
Of Arizona. Now called by the Indian name, Yavapai Point.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

I

WILD WOOL

Moral improvers have calls to preach. I have a friend who has a call
to plough, and woe to the daisy sod or azalea thicket that falls under
the savage redemption of his keen steel shares. Not content with the
so-called subjugation of every terrestrial bog, rock, and moorland, he
would fain discover some method of reclamation applicable to the ocean
and the sky, that in due calendar time they might be brought to bud
and blossom as the rose. Our efforts are of no avail when we seek to
turn his attention to wild roses, or to the fact that both ocean and
sky are already about as rosy as possible--the one with stars, the
other with dulse, and foam, and wild light. The practical
developments of his culture are orchards and clover-fields wearing a
smiling, benevolent aspect, truly excellent in their way, though a
near view discloses something barbarous in them all. Wildness charms
not my friend, charm it never so wisely: and whatsoever may be the
character of his heaven, his earth seems only a chaos of agricultural
possibilities calling for grubbing-hoes and manures.

Sometimes I venture to approach him with a plea for wildness, when he
good-naturedly shakes a big mellow apple in my face, reiterating his
favorite aphorism, "Culture is an orchard apple; Nature is a crab."
Not all culture, however, is equally destructive and inappreciative.
Azure skies and crystal waters find loving recognition, and few there
be who would welcome the axe among mountain pines, or would care to
apply any correction to the tones and costumes of mountain waterfalls.
Nevertheless, the barbarous notion is almost universally entertained
by civilized man, that there is in all the manufactures of Nature
something essentially coarse which can and must be eradicated by human
culture. I was, therefore, delighted in finding that the wild wool
growing upon mountain sheep in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta was
much finer than the average grades of cultivated wool. This FINE
discovery was made some three months ago[1], while hunting among the
Shasta sheep between Shasta and Lower Klamath Lake. Three fleeces
were obtained--one that belonged to a large ram about four years old,
another to a ewe about the same age, and another to a yearling lamb.
After parting their beautiful wool on the side and many places along
the back, shoulders, and hips, and examining it closely with my lens,
I shouted: "Well done for wildness! Wild wool is finer than tame!"

My companions stooped down and examined the fleeces for themselves,
pulling out tufts and ringlets, spinning them between their fingers,
and measuring the length of the staple, each in turn paying tribute to
wildness. It WAS finer, and no mistake; finer than Spanish Merino.
Wild wool IS finer than tame.

"Here," said I, "is an argument for fine wildness that needs no
explanation. Not that such arguments are by any means rare, for all
wildness is finer than tameness, but because fine wool is appreciable
by everybody alike--from the most speculative president of national
wool-growers' associations all the way down to the gude-wife spinning
by her ingleside."

Nature is a good mother, and sees well to the clothing of her many
bairns--birds with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining
jackets, and bears with shaggy furs. In the tropical south, where the
sun warms like a fire, they are allowed to go thinly clad; but in the
snowy northland she takes care to clothe warmly. The squirrel has
socks and mittens, and a tail broad enough for a blanket; the grouse
is densely feathered down to the ends of his toes; and the wild sheep,
besides his undergarment of fine wool, has a thick overcoat of hair
that sheds off both the snow and the rain. Other provisions and
adaptations in the dresses of animals, relating less to climate than
to the more mechanical circumstances of life, are made with the same
consummate skill that characterizes all the love work of Nature.
Land, water, and air, jagged rocks, muddy ground, sand beds, forests,
underbrush, grassy plains, etc., are considered in all their possible
combinations while the clothing of her beautiful wildlings is
preparing. No matter what the circumstances of their lives may be,
she never allows them to go dirty or ragged. The mole, living always
in the dark and in the dirt, is yet as clean as the otter or the wave-washed seal; and our wild sheep, wading in snow, roaming through
bushes, and leaping among jagged storm-beaten cliffs, wears a dress so
exquisitely adapted to its mountain life that it is always found as
unruffled and stainless as a bird.

On leaving the Shasta hunting grounds I selected a few specimen tufts,
and brought them away with a view to making more leisurely
examinations; but, owing to the imperfectness of the instruments at my
command, the results thus far obtained must be regarded only as rough
approximations.

As already stated, the clothing of our wild sheep is composed of fine
wool and coarse hair. The hairs are from about two to four inches
long, mostly of a dull bluish-gray color, though varying somewhat with
the seasons. In general characteristics they are closely related to
the hairs of the deer and antelope, being light, spongy, and elastic,
with a highly polished surface, and though somewhat ridged and
spiraled, like wool, they do not manifest the slightest tendency to
felt or become taggy. A hair two and a half inches long, which is
perhaps near the average length, will stretch about one fourth of an
inch before breaking. The diameter decreases rapidly both at the top
and bottom, but is maintained throughout the greater portion of the
length with a fair degree of regularity. The slender tapering point
in which the hairs terminate is nearly black: but, owing to its
fineness as compared with the main trunk, the quantity of blackness is
not sufficient to affect greatly the general color. The number of
hairs growing upon a square inch is about ten thousand; the number of
wool fibers is about twenty-five thousand, or two and a half times
that of the hairs. The wool fibers are white and glossy, and
beautifully spired into ringlets. The average length of the staple is
about an inch and a half. A fiber of this length, when growing
undisturbed down among the hairs, measures about an inch; hence the
degree of curliness may easily be inferred. I regret exceedingly that
my instruments do not enable me to measure the diameter of the fibers,
in order that their degrees of fineness might be definitely compared
with each other and with the finest of the domestic breeds; but that
the three wild fleeces under consideration are considerably finer than
the average grades of Merino shipped from San Francisco is, I think,
unquestionable.

When the fleece is parted and looked into with a good lens, the skin
appears of a beautiful pale-yellow color, and the delicate wool fibers
are seen growing up among the strong hairs, like grass among stalks of
corn, every individual fiber being protected about as specially and
effectively as if inclosed in a separate husk. Wild wool is too fine
to stand by itself, the fibers being about as frail and invisible as
the floating threads of spiders, while the hairs against which they
lean stand erect like hazel wands; but, notwithstanding their great
dissimilarity in size and appearance, the wool and hair are forms of
the same thing, modified in just that way and to just that degree that
renders them most perfectly subservient to the well-being of the
sheep. Furthermore, it will be observed that these wild modifications
are entirely distinct from those which are brought chancingly into
existence through the accidents and caprices of culture; the former
being inventions of God for the attainment of definite ends. Like the
modifications of limbs--the fin for swimming, the wing for flying, the
foot for walking--so the fine wool for warmth, the hair for additional
warmth and to protect the wool, and both together for a fabric to wear
well in mountain roughness and wash well in mountain storms.

The effects of human culture upon wild wool are analogous to those
produced upon wild roses. In the one case there is an abnormal
development of petals at the expense of the stamens, in the other an
abnormal development of wool at the expense of the hair. Garden roses
frequently exhibit stamens in which the transmutation to petals may be
observed in various stages of accomplishment, and analogously the
fleeces of tame sheep occasionally contain a few wild hairs that are
undergoing transmutation to wool. Even wild wool presents here and
there a fiber that appears to be in a state of change. In the course
of my examinations of the wild fleeces mentioned above, three fibers
were found that were wool at one end and hair at the other. This,
however, does not necessarily imply imperfection, or any process of
change similar to that caused by human culture. Water lilies contain
parts variously developed into stamens at one end, petals at the
other, as the constant and normal condition. These half wool, half
hair fibers may therefore subserve some fixed requirement essential
to the perfection of the whole, or they may simply be the fine
boundary-lines where and exact balance between the wool and the hair
is attained.

I have been offering samples of mountain wool to my friends, demanding
in return that the fineness of wildness be fairly recognized and
confessed, but the returns are deplorably tame. The first question
asked, is, "Now truly, wild sheep, wild sheep, have you any wool?"
while they peer curiously down among the hairs through lenses and
spectacles. "Yes, wild sheep, you HAVE wool; but Mary's lamb had
more. In the name of use, how many wild sheep, think you, would be
required to furnish wool sufficient for a pair of socks?" I endeavor
to point out the irrelevancy of the latter question, arguing that wild
wool was not made for man but for sheep, and that, however deficient
as clothing for other animals, it is just the thing for the brave
mountain-dweller that wears it. Plain, however, as all this appears,
the quantity question rises again and again in all its commonplace
tameness. For in my experience it seems well-nigh impossible to
obtain a hearing on behalf of Nature from any other standpoint than
that of human use. Domestic flocks yield more flannel per sheep than
the wild, therefore it is claimed that culture has improved upon
wildness; and so it has as far as flannel is concerned, but all to the
contrary as far as a sheep's dress is concerned. If every wild sheep
inhabiting the Sierra were to put on tame wool, probably only a few
would survive the dangers of a single season. With their fine limbs
muffled and buried beneath a tangle of hairless wool, they would
become short-winded, and fall an easy prey to the strong mountain
wolves. In descending precipices they would be thrown out of balance
and killed, by their taggy wool catching upon sharp points of rocks.
Disease would also be brought on by the dirt which always finds a
lodgment in tame wool, and by the draggled and water-soaked condition
into which it falls during stormy weather.

No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so
insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the
relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the
world as made especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant,
and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught
from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the
resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.

I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show
that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made
for itself. Not that Nature manifests any such thing as selfish
isolation. In the making of every animal the presence of every other
animal has been recognized. Indeed, every atom in creation may be
said to be acquainted with and married to every other, but with
universal union there is a division sufficient in degree for the
purposes of the most intense individuality; no matter, therefore, what
may be the note which any creature forms in the song of existence, it
is made first for itself, then more and more remotely for all the
world and worlds.

Were it not for the exercise of individualizing cares on the part of
Nature, the universe would be felted together like a fleece of tame
wool. But we are governed more than we know, and most when we are
wildest. Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled
along appointed ways, WITH one another, and THROUGH THE MIDST of one
another--killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in
harmonious proportions and quantities. And it is right that we should
thus reciprocally make use of one another, rob, cook, and consume, to
the utmost of our healthy abilities and desires. Stars attract one
another as they are able, and harmony results. Wild lambs eat as many
wild flowers as they can find or desire, and men and wolves eat the
lambs to just the same extent.

This consumption of one another in its various modifications is a kind
of culture varying with the degree of directness with which it is
carried out, but we should be careful not to ascribe to such culture
any improving qualities upon those on whom it is brought to bear. The
water-ousel plucks moss from the riverbank to build its nest, but is
does not improve the moss by plucking it. We pluck feathers from
birds, and less directly wool from wild sheep, for the manufacture of
clothing and cradle-nests, without improving the wool for the sheep,
or the feathers for the bird that wore them. When a hawk pounces upon
a linnet and proceeds to pull out its feathers, preparatory to making
a meal, the hawk may be said to be cultivating the linnet, and he
certainly does effect an improvement as far as hawk-food is concerned;
but what of the songster? He ceases to be a linnet as soon as he is
snatched from the woodland choir; and when, hawklike, we snatch the
wild sheep from its native rock, and, instead of eating and wearing it
at once, carry it home, and breed the hair out of its wool and the
bones out of its body, it ceases to be a sheep.

These breeding and plucking processes are similarly improving as
regards the secondary uses aimed at; and, although the one requires
but a few minutes for its accomplishment, the other many years or
centuries, they are essentially alike. We eat wild oysters alive with
great directness, waiting for no cultivation, and leaving scarce a
second of distance between the shell and the lip; but we take wild
sheep home and subject them to the many extended processes of
husbandry, and finish by boiling them in a pot--a process which
completes all sheep improvements as far as man is concerned. It will
be seen, therefore, that wild wool and tame wool--wild sheep and tame
sheep--are terms not properly comparable, nor are they in any correct
sense to be considered as bearing any antagonism toward each other;
they are different things. Planned and accomplished for wholly
different purposes.

Illustrative examples bearing upon this interesting subject may be
multiplied indefinitely, for they abound everywhere in the plant and
animal kingdoms wherever culture has reached. Recurring for a moment
to apples. The beauty and completeness of a wild apple tree living
its own life in the woods is heartily acknowledged by all those who
have been so happy as to form its acquaintance. The fine wild
piquancy of its fruit is unrivaled, but in the great question of
quantity as human food wild apples are found wanting. Man, therefore,
takes the tree from the woods, manures and prunes and grafts, plans
and guesses, adds a little of this and that, selects and rejects,
until apples of every conceivable size and softness are produced, like
nut galls in response to the irritating punctures of insects. Orchard
apples are to me the most eloquent words that culture has ever spoken,
but they reflect no imperfection upon Nature's spicy crab. Every
cultivated apple is a crab, not improved, BUT COOKED, variously
softened and swelled out in the process, mellowed, sweetened, spiced,
and rendered pulpy and foodful, but as utterly unfit for the uses of
nature as a meadowlark killed and plucked and roasted. Give to Nature
every cultured apple--codling, pippin, russet--and every sheep so
laboriously compounded--muffled Southdowns, hairy Cotswolds, wrinkled
Merinos--and she would throw the one to her caterpillars, the other to
her wolves.

It is now some thirty-six hundred years since Jacob kissed his mother
and set out across the plains of Padan-aram to begin his experiments
upon the flocks of his uncle, Laban; and, notwithstanding the high
degree of excellence he attained as a wool-grower, and the innumerable
painstaking efforts subsequently made by individuals and associations
in all kinds of pastures and climates, we still seem to be as far from
definite and satisfactory results as we ever were. In one breed the
wool is apt to wither and crinkle like hay on a sun-beaten hillside.
In another, it is lodged and matted together like the lush tangled
grass of a manured meadow. In one the staple is deficient in length,
in another in fineness; while in all there is a constant tendency
toward disease, rendering various washings and dippings indispensable
to prevent its falling out. The problem of the quality and quantity
of the carcass seems to be as doubtful and as far removed from a
satisfactory solution as that of the wool. Desirable breeds blundered
upon by long series of groping experiments are often found to be
unstable and subject to disease--bots, foot rot, blind staggers, etc.
--causing infinite trouble, both among breeders and manufacturers.
Would it not be well, therefore, for some one to go back as far as
possible and take a fresh start?

The source or sources whence the various breeds were derived is not
positively known, but there can be hardly any doubt of their being
descendants of the four or five wild species so generally distributed
throughout the mountainous portions of the globe, the marked
differences between the wild and domestic species being readily
accounted for by the known variability of the animal, and by the long
series of painstaking selection to which all its characteristics have
been subjected. No other animal seems to yield so submissively to the
manipulations of culture. Jacob controlled the color of his flocks
merely by causing them to stare at objects of the desired hue; and
possibly Merinos may have caught their wrinkles from the perplexed
brows of their breeders. The California species (Ovis montana)[2] is a
noble animal, weighing when full-grown some three hundred and fifty
pounds, and is well worthy the attention of wool-growers as a point
from which to make a new departure, for pure wildness is the one great
want, both of men and of sheep.

II

A Geologist's Winter Walk[3]

After reaching Turlock, I sped afoot over the stubble fields and
through miles of brown hemizonia and purple erigeron, to Hopeton,
conscious of little more than that the town was behind and beneath me,
and the mountains above and before me; on through the oaks and
chaparral of the foothills to Coulterville; and then ascended the
first great mountain step upon which grows the sugar pine. Here I
slackened pace, for I drank the spicy, resiny wind, and beneath the
arms of this noble tree I felt that I was safely home. Never did pine
trees seem so dear. How sweet was their breath and their song, and
how grandly they winnowed the sky! I tingled my fingers among their
tassels, and rustled my feet among their brown needles and burrs, and
was exhilarated and joyful beyond all I can write.

When I reached Yosemite, all the rocks seemed talkative, and more
telling and lovable than ever. They are dear friends, and seemed to
have warm blood gushing through their granite flesh; and I love them
with a love intensified by long and close companionship. After I had
bathed in the bright river, sauntered over the meadows, conversed with
the domes, and played with the pines, I still felt blurred and weary,
as if tainted in some way with the sky of your streets. I determined,
therefore, to run out for a while to say my prayers in the higher
mountain temples. "The days are sunful," I said, "and, though now
winter, no great danger need be encountered, and no sudden storm will
block my return, if I am watchful."

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