The Mountains
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Stewart Edward White >> The Mountains
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IX
THE TRAIL
When you say "trail" to a Westerner, his eye
lights up. This is because it means something
to him. To another it may mean something
entirely different, for the blessed word is of that rare
and beautiful category which is at once of the widest
significance and the most intimate privacy to him
who utters it. To your mind leaps the picture of
the dim forest-aisles and the murmurings of tree-top
breezes; to him comes a vision of the wide dusty
desert; to me, perhaps, a high wild country of wonder.
To all of us it is the slender, unbroken, never-
ending thread connecting experiences.
For in a mysterious way, not to be understood, our
trails never do end. They stop sometimes, and wait
patiently while we dive in and out of houses, but
always when we are ready to go on, they are ready
too, and so take up the journey placidly as though
nothing had intervened. They begin, when? Sometime,
away in the past, you may remember a single
episode, vivid through the mists of extreme youth.
Once a very little boy walked with his father under a
green roof of leaves that seemed farther than the sky
and as unbroken. All of a sudden the man raised
his gun and fired upwards, apparently through the
green roof. A pause ensued. Then, hurtling roughly
through still that same green roof, a great bird fell,
hitting the earth with a thump. The very little boy
was I. My trail must have begun there under the
bright green roof of leaves.
From that earliest moment the Trail unrolls behind
you like a thread so that never do you quite lose
connection with your selves. There is something a
little fearful to the imaginative in the insistence of it.
You may camp, you may linger, but some time or
another, sooner or later, you must go on, and when
you do, then once again the Trail takes up its
continuity without reference to the muddied place you
have tramped out in your indecision or indolence or
obstinacy or necessity. It would be exceedingly
curious to follow out in patience the chart of a man's
going, tracing the pattern of his steps with all its
windings of nursery, playground, boys afield, country,
city, plain, forest, mountain, wilderness, home,
always on and on into the higher country of responsibility
until at the last it leaves us at the summit of the
Great Divide. Such a pattern would tell his story as
surely as do the tracks of a partridge on the snow.
A certain magic inheres in the very name, or at
least so it seems to me. I should be interested to
know whether others feel the same glamour that I do
in the contemplation of such syllables as the Lo-Lo
Trail, the Tunemah Trail, the Mono Trail, the Bright
Angel Trail. A certain elasticity of application too
leaves room for the more connotation. A trail may
be almost anything. There are wagon-trails which
East would rank as macadam roads; horse-trails that
would compare favorably with our best bridle-paths;
foot-trails in the fur country worn by constant use as
smooth as so many garden-walks. Then again there
are other arrangements. I have heard a mule-driver
overwhelmed with skeptical derision because he
claimed to have upset but six times in traversing a
certain bit of trail not over five miles long; in charts
of the mountains are marked many trails which are
only "ways through,"--you will find few traces of
predecessors; the same can be said of trails in the
great forests where even an Indian is sometimes at
fault. "Johnny, you're lost," accused the white man.
"Trail lost: Injun here," denied the red man. And
so after your experience has led you by the campfires
of a thousand delights, and each of those campfires
is on the Trail, which only pauses courteously
for your stay and then leads on untiring into new
mysteries forever and ever, you come to love it as the
donor of great joys. You too become a Westerner, and
when somebody says "trail," your eye too lights up.
The general impression of any particular trail is
born rather of the little incidents than of the big
accidents. The latter are exotic, and might belong to
any time or places; the former are individual. For
the Trail is a vantage-ground, and from it, as your
day's travel unrolls, you see many things. Nine
tenths of your experience comes thus, for in the long
journeys the side excursions are few enough and
unimportant enough almost to merit classification with
the accidents. In time the character of the Trail thus
defines itself.
Most of all, naturally, the kind of country has to
do with this generalized impression. Certain surprises,
through trees, of vista looking out over unexpected
spaces; little notches in the hills beyond which
you gain to a placid far country sleeping under a sun
warmer than your elevation permits; the delicious
excitement of the moment when you approach the
very knife-edge of the summit and wonder what lies
beyond,--these are the things you remember with a
warm heart. Your saddle is a point of vantage. By
it you are elevated above the country; from it you
can see clearly. Quail scuttle away to right and left,
heads ducked low; grouse boom solemnly on the
rigid limbs of pines; deer vanish through distant
thickets to appear on yet more distant ridges, thence
to gaze curiously, their great ears forward; across the
canon the bushes sway violently with the passage of
a cinnamon bear among them,--you see them all
from your post of observation. Your senses are
always alert for these things; you are always bending
from your saddle to examine the tracks and signs that
continually offer themselves for your inspection
and interpretation.
Our trail of this summer led at a general high
elevation, with comparatively little climbing and
comparatively easy traveling for days at a time. Then
suddenly we would find ourselves on the brink of a
great box canon from three to seven thousand feet
deep, several miles wide, and utterly precipitous. In
the bottom of this canon would be good feed, fine
groves of trees, and a river of some size in which
swam fish. The trail to the canon-bed was always
bad, and generally dangerous. In many instances we
found it bordered with the bones of horses that had
failed. The river had somehow to be forded. We
would camp a day or so in the good feed and among
the fine groves of trees, fish in the river, and then
address ourselves with much reluctance to the ascent
of the other bad and dangerous trail on the other
side. After that, in the natural course of events,
subject to variation, we could expect nice trails, the
comfort of easy travel, pines, cedars, redwoods, and
joy of life until another great cleft opened before us
or another great mountain-pass barred our way.
This was the web and woof of our summer. But
through it ran the patterns of fantastic delight such
as the West alone can offer a man's utter disbelief in
them. Some of these patterns stand out in memory
with peculiar distinctness.
Below Farewell Gap is a wide canon with high
walls of dark rock, and down those walls run many
streams of water. They are white as snow with the
dash of their descent, but so distant that the eye
cannot distinguish their motion. In the half light of
dawn, with the yellow of sunrise behind the mountains,
they look like gauze streamers thrown out from
the windows of morning to celebrate the solemn
pageant of the passing of many hills.
Again, I know of a canon whose westerly wall is
colored in the dull rich colors, the fantastic patterns
of a Moorish tapestry. Umber, seal brown, red, terra-
cotta, orange, Nile green, emerald, purple, cobalt
blue, gray, lilac, and many other colors, all rich with
the depth of satin, glow wonderful as the craftiest
textures. Only here the fabric is five miles long and
half a mile wide.
There is no use in telling of these things. They,
and many others of their like, are marvels, and exist;
but you cannot tell about them, for the simple reason
that the average reader concludes at once you
must be exaggerating, must be carried away by the
swing of words. The cold sober truth is, you cannot
exaggerate. They haven't made the words. Talk
as extravagantly as you wish to one who will in the
most childlike manner believe every syllable you
utter. Then take him into the Big Country. He will
probably say, "Why, you didn't tell me it was
going to be anything like THIS!" We in the East have
no standards of comparison either as regards size or
as regards color--especially color. Some people
once directed me to "The Gorge" on the New
England coast. I couldn't find it. They led me to it,
and rhapsodized over its magnificent terror. I could
have ridden a horse into the ridiculous thing. As for
color, no Easterner believes in it when such men as
Lungren or Parrish transposit it faithfully, any more
than a Westerner would believe in the autumn foliage
of our own hardwoods, or an Englishman in the
glories of our gaudiest sunsets. They are all true.
In the mountains, the high mountains above the
seven or eight thousand foot level, grows an affair
called the snow-plant. It is, when full grown, about
two feet in height, and shaped like a loosely
constructed pine-cone set up on end. Its entire
substance is like wax, and the whole concern--stalk,
broad curling leaves, and all--is a brilliant scarlet.
Sometime you will ride through the twilight of deep
pine woods growing on the slope of the mountain,
a twilight intensified, rendered more sacred to your
mood by the external brilliancy of a glimpse of vivid
blue sky above dazzling snow mountains far away.
Then, in this monotone of dark green frond and dull
brown trunk and deep olive shadow, where, like
the ordered library of one with quiet tastes, nothing
breaks the harmony of unobtrusive tone, suddenly
flames the vivid red of a snow-plant. You will never
forget it.
Flowers in general seem to possess this concentrated
brilliancy both of color and of perfume. You
will ride into and out of strata of perfume as sharply
defined as are the quartz strata on the ridges. They
lie sluggish and cloying in the hollows, too heavy to
rise on the wings of the air.
As for color, you will see all sorts of queer things.
The ordered flower-science of your childhood has
gone mad. You recognize some of your old friends,
but strangely distorted and changed,--even the dear
old "butter 'n eggs" has turned pink! Patches of
purple, of red, of blue, of yellow, of orange are laid
in the hollows or on the slopes like brilliant blankets
out to dry in the sun. The fine grasses are spangled
with them, so that in the cup of the great fierce
countries the meadows seem like beautiful green
ornaments enameled with jewels. The Mariposa
Lily, on the other hand, is a poppy-shaped flower
varying from white to purple, and with each petal
decorated by an "eye" exactly like those on the
great Cecropia or Polyphemus moths, so that their
effect is that of a flock of gorgeous butterflies come
to rest. They hover over the meadows poised. A
movement would startle them to flight; only the
proper movement somehow never comes.
The great redwoods, too, add to the colored-
edition impression of the whole country. A redwood,
as perhaps you know, is a tremendous big tree sometimes
as big as twenty feet in diameter. It is exquisitely
proportioned like a fluted column of noble
height. Its bark is slightly furrowed longitudinally, and
of a peculiar elastic appearance that lends it an almost
perfect illusion of breathing animal life. The color
is a rich umber red. Sometimes in the early morning
or the late afternoon, when all the rest of the forest
is cast in shadow, these massive trunks will glow as
though incandescent. The Trail, wonderful always,
here seems to pass through the outer portals of the
great flaming regions where dwell the risings and
fallings of days.
As you follow the Trail up, you will enter also the
permanent dwelling-places of the seasons. With us
each visits for the space of a few months, then steals
away to give place to the next. Whither they go you
have not known until you have traveled the high
mountains. Summer lives in the valley; that you
know. Then a little higher you are in the spring-
time, even in August. Melting patches of snow
linger under the heavy firs; the earth is soggy with
half-absorbed snow-water, trickling with exotic little
rills that do not belong; grasses of the year before
float like drowned hair in pellucid pools with an air
of permanence, except for the one fact; fresh green
things are sprouting bravely; through bare branches
trickles a shower of bursting buds, larger at the top,
as though the Sower had in passing scattered them
from above. Birds of extraordinary cheerfulness sing
merrily to new and doubtful flowers. The air tastes
cold, but the sun is warm. The great spring
humming and promise is in the air. And a few thousand
feet higher you wallow over the surface of drifts
while a winter wind searches your bones. I used to
think that Santa Claus dwelt at the North Pole.
Now I am convinced that he has a workshop somewhere
among the great mountains where dwell the
Seasons, and that his reindeer paw for grazing in the
alpine meadows below the highest peaks.
Here the birds migrate up and down instead of
south and north. It must be a great saving of trouble
to them, and undoubtedly those who have discovered
it maintain toward the unenlightened the same
delighted and fraternal secrecy with which you and I
guard the knowledge of a good trout-stream. When
you can migrate adequately in a single day, why
spend a month at it?
Also do I remember certain spruce woods with
openings where the sun shone through. The shadows
were very black, the sunlight very white. As I looked
back I could see the pack-horses alternately suffer
eclipse and illumination in a strange flickering manner
good to behold. The dust of the trail eddied
and billowed lazily in the sun, each mote flashing
as though with life; then abruptly as it crossed the
sharp line of shade it disappeared.
From these spruce woods, level as a floor, we came
out on the rounded shoulder of a mountain to find
ourselves nearly nine thousand feet above the sea.
Below us was a deep canon to the middle of the
earth. And spread in a semicircle about the curve
of our mountain a most magnificent panoramic view.
First there were the plains, represented by a brown
haze of heat; then, very remote, the foot-hills, the
brush-hills, the pine mountains, the upper timber,
the tremendous granite peaks, and finally the barrier
of the main crest with its glittering snow. From the
plains to that crest was over seventy miles. I should
not dare say how far we could see down the length of
the range; nor even how distant was the other wall of
the canon over which we rode. Certainly it was many
miles; and to reach the latter point consumed three days.
It is useless to multiply instances. The principle
is well enough established by these. Whatever
impression of your trail you carry away will come from
the little common occurrences of every day. That is true
of all trails; and equally so, it seems to me, of our
Trail of Life sketched at the beginning of this essay.
But the trail of the mountains means more than
wonder; it means hard work. Unless you stick to
the beaten path, where the freighters have lost so
many mules that they have finally decided to fix
things up a bit, you are due for lots of trouble. Bad
places will come to be a nightmare with you and a
topic of conversation with whomever you may meet.
We once enjoyed the company of a prospector three
days while he made up his mind to tackle a certain
bit of trail we had just descended. Our accounts did
not encourage him. Every morning he used to squint
up at the cliff which rose some four thousand feet
above us. "Boys," he said finally as he started, "I
may drop in on you later in the morning." I am
happy to say he did not.
The most discouraging to the tenderfoot, but in
reality the safest of all bad trails, is the one that skirts
a precipice. Your horse possesses a laudable desire
to spare your inside leg unnecessary abrasion, so he
walks on the extreme outer edge. If you watch the
performance of the animal ahead, you will observe
that every few moments his outer hind hoof slips off
that edge, knocking little stones down into the abyss.
Then you conclude that sundry slight jars you have
been experiencing are from the same cause. Your
peace of mind deserts you. You stare straight ahead,
sit VERY light indeed, and perhaps turn the least bit
sick. The horse, however, does not mind, nor will
you, after a little. There is absolutely nothing to do
but to sit steady and give your animal his head. In
a fairly extended experience I never got off the edge
but once. Then somebody shot a gun immediately
ahead; my horse tried to turn around, slipped, and
slid backwards until he overhung the chasm.
Fortunately his hind feet caught a tiny bush. He gave
a mighty heave, and regained the trail. Afterwards
I took a look and found that there were no more
bushes for a hundred feet either way.
Next in terror to the unaccustomed is an ascent by
lacets up a very steep side hill. The effect is
cumulative. Each turn brings you one stage higher, adds
definitely one more unit to the test of your hardihood.
This last has not terrified you; how about the
next? or the next? or the one after that? There is
not the slightest danger. You appreciate this point
after you have met head-on some old-timer. After
you have speculated frantically how you are to pass
him, he solves the problem by calmly turning his
horse off the edge and sliding to the next lacet below.
Then you see that with a mountain horse it does not
much matter whether you get off such a trail or not.
The real bad places are quite as likely to be on
the level as on the slant. The tremendous granite
slides, where the cliff has avalanched thousands of
tons of loose jagged rock-fragments across the passage,
are the worst. There your horse has to be a goat
in balance. He must pick his way from the top of
one fragment to the other, and if he slips into the
interstices he probably breaks a leg. In some parts
of the granite country are also smooth rock aprons
where footing is especially difficult, and where often
a slip on them means a toboggan chute off into space.
I know of one spot where such an apron curves
off the shoulder of the mountain. Your horse slides
directly down it until his hoofs encounter a little
crevice. Checking at this, he turns sharp to the left
and so off to the good trail again. If he does not
check at the little crevice, he slides on over the curve
of the shoulder and lands too far down to bury.
Loose rocks in numbers on a very steep and narrow
trail are always an abomination, and a numerous
abomination at that. A horse slides, skates, slithers.
It has always seemed to me that luck must count
largely in such a place. When the animal treads on
a loose round stone--as he does every step of the
way--that stone is going to roll under him, and he
is going to catch himself as the nature of that stone
and the little gods of chance may will. Only furthermore
I have noticed that the really good horse keeps
his feet, and the poor one tumbles. A judgmatical
rider can help a great deal by the delicacy of his
riding and the skill with which he uses his reins. Or
better still, get off and walk.
Another mean combination, especially on a slant,
is six inches of snow over loose stones or small
boulders. There you hope for divine favor and flounder
ahead. There is one compensation; the snow is soft
to fall on. Boggy areas you must be able to gauge
the depth of at a glance. And there are places, beautiful
to behold, where a horse clambers up the least
bit of an ascent, hits his pack against a projection,
and is hurled into outer space. You must recognize
these, for he will be busy with his feet.
Some of the mountain rivers furnish pleasing
afternoons of sport. They are deep and swift, and below
the ford are rapids. If there is a fallen tree of any sort
across them,--remember the length of California
trees, and do not despise the rivers,--you would
better unpack, carry your goods across yourself, and
swim the pack-horses. If the current is very bad, you
can splice riatas, hitch one end to the horse and the
other to a tree on the farther side, and start the
combination. The animal is bound to swing across
somehow. Generally you can drive them over loose. In
swimming a horse from the saddle, start him well
upstream to allow for the current, and never, never,
never attempt to guide him by the bit. The Tenderfoot
tried that at Mono Creek and nearly drowned
himself and Old Slob. You would better let him
alone, as he probably knows more than you do. If
you must guide him, do it by hitting the side of his
head with the flat of your hand.
Sometimes it is better that you swim. You can
perform that feat by clinging to his mane on the
downstream side, but it will be easier both for you
and him if you hang to his tail. Take my word for
it, he will not kick you.
Once in a blue moon you may be able to cross
the whole outfit on logs. Such a log bridge spanned
Granite Creek near the North Fork of the San Joaquin
at an elevation of about seven thousand feet.
It was suspended a good twenty feet above the water,
which boiled white in a most disconcerting manner
through a gorge of rocks. If anything fell off that
log it would be of no further value even to the
curiosity seeker. We got over all the horses save
Tunemah. He refused to consider it, nor did peaceful
argument win. As he was more or less of a fool,
we did not take this as a reflection on our judgment,
but culled cedar clubs. We beat him until we were
ashamed. Then we put a slip-noose about his neck.
The Tenderfoot and I stood on the log and heaved
while Wes stood on the shore and pushed. Suddenly
it occurred to me that if Tunemah made up his silly
mind to come, he would probably do it all at once,
in which case the Tenderfoot and I would have about
as much show for life as fossil formations. I didn't
say anything about it to the Tenderfoot, but I hitched
my six-shooter around to the front, resolved to find
out how good I was at wing-shooting horses. But
Tunemah declared he would die for his convictions.
"All right," said we, "die then," with the embellishment
of profanity. So we stripped him naked, and
stoned him into the raging stream, where he had one
chance in three of coming through alive. He might
as well be dead as on the other side of that stream.
He won through, however, and now I believe he'd
tackle a tight rope.
Of such is the Trail, of such its wonders, its
pleasures, its little comforts, its annoyances, its dangers.
And when you are forced to draw your six-shooter
to end mercifully the life of an animal that has served
you faithfully, but that has fallen victim to the leg-
breaking hazard of the way, then you know a little
of its tragedy also. May you never know the greater
tragedy when a man's life goes out, and you unable
to help! May always your trail lead through fine trees,
green grasses, fragrant flowers, and pleasant waters!
X
ON SEEING DEER
Once I happened to be sitting out a dance with
a tactful young girl of tender disposition who
thought she should adapt her conversation to the
one with whom she happened to be talking. Therefore
she asked questions concerning out-of-doors. She
knew nothing whatever about it, but she gave a very
good imitation of one interested. For some occult
reason people never seem to expect me to own evening
clothes, or to know how to dance, or to be able
to talk about anything civilized; in fact, most of
them appear disappointed that I do not pull off a
war-jig in the middle of the drawing-room.
This young girl selected deer as her topic. She
mentioned liquid eyes, beautiful form, slender ears;
she said "cute," and "darlings," and "perfect dears."
Then she shuddered prettily.
"And I don't see how you can ever BEAR to shoot
them, Mr. White," she concluded.
"You quarter the onions and slice them very thin,"
said I dreamily. "Then you take a little bacon fat
you had left over from the flap-jacks and put it in
the frying-pan. The frying-pan should be very hot.
While the onions are frying, you must keep turning
them over with a fork. It's rather difficult to get
them all browned without burning some. I should
broil the meat. A broiler is handy, but two willows,
peeled and charred a little so the willow taste won't
penetrate the meat, will do. Have the steak fairly
thick. Pepper and salt it thoroughly. Sear it well
at first in order to keep the juices in; then cook
rather slowly. When it is done, put it on a hot
plate and pour the browned onions, bacon fat and
all, over it."
"What ARE you talking about?" she interrupted.
"I'm telling you why I can bear to shoot deer,"
said I.
"But I don't see--" said she.
"Don't you?" said I. "Well; suppose you've
been climbing a mountain late in the afternoon when
the sun is on the other side of it. It is a mountain of
big boulders, loose little stones, thorny bushes. The
slightest misstep would send pebbles rattling, brush
rustling; but you have gone all the way without
making that misstep. This is quite a feat. It means
that you've known all about every footstep you've
taken. That would be business enough for most
people, wouldn't it? But in addition you've managed
to see EVERYTHING on that side of the mountain
--especially patches of brown. You've seen lots of
patches of brown, and you've examined each one
of them. Besides that, you've heard lots of little
rustlings, and you've identified each one of them. To
do all these things well keys your nerves to a high
tension, doesn't it? And then near the top you look
up from your last noiseless step to see in the brush
a very dim patch of brown. If you hadn't been looking
so hard, you surely wouldn't have made it out.
Perhaps, if you're not humble-minded, you may
reflect that most people wouldn't have seen it at all.
You whistle once sharply. The patch of brown
defines itself. Your heart gives one big jump. You
know that you have but the briefest moment, the
tiniest fraction of time, to hold the white bead of
your rifle motionless and to press the trigger. It has
to be done VERY steadily, at that distance,--and you
out of breath, with your nerves keyed high in the
tension of such caution."
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