the john muir exhibit - writings - my_first_summer_in_the_sierra - chapter 3
My First Summer in the Sierra
by John Muir
Chapter 3
A Bread Famine
July 4.
--The air beyond the flock range, full of the essences of the woods,
is growing sweeter and more fragrant from day to day, like ripening
fruit.
Mr. Delaney is expected to arrive soon
from the lowlands with a new stock of provisions, and as the flock is
to be moved to fresh pastures we shall all be well fed. In the mean
time our stock of beans as well as flour has failed--everything but
mutton, sugar, and tea. The shepherd is somewhat demoralized, and
seems to care but little what becomes of his flock. He says that since
the boss has failed to feed him he is not rightly bound to feed the
sheep, and swears that no decent white man can climb these steep
mountains on mutton alone. "It's not fittin' grub for a white man
really white. For dogs and coyotes and Indians it's different. Good
grub, good sheep. That's what I say." Such was Billy's Fourth of July
oration.
July 5.
--The clouds of noon on the high Sierra seem yet more marvelously,
indescribably beautiful from day to day as one becomes more wakeful to
see them. The smoke of the gunpowder burned yesterday on the lowlands,
and the eloquence
of the orators has probably settled or been blown away by this time.
Here every day is a holiday, a jubilee ever sounding with serene
enthusiasm, without wear or waste or cloying weariness. Everything
rejoicing. Not a single cell or crystal unvisited or forgotten.
July 6.
--Mr. Delaney has not arrived, and the bread famine is sore. We must
eat mutton a while longer, though it seems hard to get accustomed to
it. I have heard of Texas pioneers living without bread of anything
made from the cereals for months without suffering, using the
breast-meat of wild turkeys for bread. Of this kind they had plenty in
the good old days when life, though considered less safe, was fussed
over the less. The trappers and fur traders of early days in the Rocky
Mountain regions lived on bison and beaver meat for months.
Salmon-eaters, too, there are among both Indians and whites who seem
to suffer little or not at all from the want of bread. Just
at this moment mutton seems the least desirable of food, though of
good quality. We pick out the leanest bits, and down they go against
heavy disgust, causing nausea and an effort to reject the offensive
stuff. Tea makes matters worse, if possible. The stomach begins to
assert itself as an independent creature with a will of its own. We
should boil lupine leaves, clover, starchy petioles, and saxifrage
rootstocks like the Indians. We try to ignore our gastric troubles,
rise and gaze about us, turn our eyes to the mountains, and climb
doggedly up through brush and rocks into the heart of the scenery. A
stifled calm comes on, and the day's duties and even enjoyments are
languidly got through with. We chew a few leaves of ceanothus by way
of luncheon, and smell or chew the spicy monardella for the dull
headache and stomach-ache that now lightens, now comes muffling down
upon us and into us like fog. At night more mutton, flesh to flesh,
down with it,
not too much, and there are the stars shining through the cedar plumes
and branches above our beds.
July 7.
--Rather weak and sickish this morning, and all about a piece of
bread. Can scarce command attention to my best studies, as if one
couldn't take a few days' saunter in the Godful woods without
maintaining a base on a wheat-field and grist-mill. Like caged parrots
we want a cracker, any of the hundred kinds, --the remainder biscuit
of a voyage around the world would answer well enough, nor would the
wholesomeness of saleratus biscuit be questioned. Bread without flesh
is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea
also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil
is all I need, --not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained
and tempered to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence
of any particular kind of nourishment. That this may be accomplished
is manifest, as far as bodily
welfare is concerned, in the lives of people of other climes. The
Eskimo, for example, gets a living far north of the wheat line, from
oily seals and whales. Meat, berries, bitter weeds, and blubber, or
only the last, for months at a time; and yet these people all around
the frozen shores of our continent are said to be hearty, jolly,
stout, and brave. We hear, too, of fish-eaters, carnivorous as
spiders, yet well enough as far as stomachs are concerned, while we
are so ridiculously helpless, making wry faces over our fare, looking
sheepish in digestive distress amid rumbling, grumbling sounds that
might well pass for smothered baas. We have a large supply of sugar,
and this evening it occurred to me that these belligerent stomachs
might possibly, like complaining children, be coaxed with candy.
Accordingly the frying-pan was cleansed, and a lot of sugar cooked in
it to a sort of wax, but this stuff only made matters worse.
Man seems to be the only animal whose
food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and
napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as
clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash. And, as
we have seen, the squirrels in these resiny woods keep themselves
clean in some mysterious way; not a hair is sticky, though they handle
the gummy cones, and glide about apparently without care. The birds,
too, are clean, though they seem to make a good deal of fuss washing
and cleaning their feathers. Certain flies and ants I see are in a
fix, entangled and sealed up in the sugar-wax we threw away, like some
of their ancestors in amber. Our stomachs, like tired muscles, are
sore with long squirming. Once I was very hungry in the Bonaventure
graveyard near Savannah, Georgia, having fasted for several days; then
the empty stomach seemed to chafe in much the same way as now, and a
somewhat similar tenderness and aching was produced,
hard to bear, though the pain was not acute. We dream of bread, a sure
sign we need it. Like the Indians, we ought to know how to get the
starch out of fern and saxifrage stalks, lily bulbs, pine bark, etc.
Our education has been sadly neglected for many generations. Wild rice
would be good. I noticed a leersia in wet meadow edges, but the seeds
are small. Acorns are not ripe, nor pine nuts, nor filberts. The inner
bark of pine or spruce might be tried. Drank tea until half
intoxicated. Man seems to crave a stimulant when anything
extraordinary is going on, and this is the only one I use. Billy chews
great quantities of tobacco, which I suppose helps to stupefy and
moderate his misery. We look and listen for the Don every hour. How
beautiful upon the mountains his big feet would be!
In the warm, hospitable Sierra, shepherds and mountain men in general,
as far as I have seen, are easily satisfied as to food
supplies and bedding. Most of them are heartily content to "rough it,"
ignoring Nature's fineness as bothersome or unmanly. The shepherd's
bed is often only the bare ground and a pair of blankets, with a
stone, a piece of wood, or a pack-saddle for a pillow. In choosing the
spot, he shows less care than the dogs, for they usually deliberate
before making up their minds in so important an affair, going from
place to place, scraping away loose sticks and pebbles, and trying for
comfort by making many changes, while the shepherd casts himself down
anywhere, seemingly the least skilled of all rest seekers. His food,
too, even when he has all he wants, is usually far from delicate,
either in kind or cooking. Beans, bread of any sort, bacon, mutton,
dried peaches, and sometimes potatoes and onions, make up his
bill-of-fare, the two latter articles being regarded as luxuries on
account of their weight as compared with the nourishment they contain;
a half-sack or so of each
may be put into the pack in setting out from the home ranch and in a
few days they are done. Beans are the main standby, portable,
wholesome, and capable of going far, besides being easily cooked,
although curiously enough a great deal of mystery is supposed to lie
about the bean-pot. No two cooks quite agree on the methods of making
beans do their best, and, after petting and coaxing and nursing the
savory mess, --well oiled and mellowed with bacon boiled into the
heart of it, --the proud cook will ask, after dishing out a quart or
two for trial, "Well, how do you like my beans?" as if by no
possibility could they be like any other beans cooked in the same way,
but must needs possess some special virtue of which he alone is
master. Molasses, sugar, or pepper may be used to give desired
flavors; or the first water may be poured off and a spoonful or two of
ashes or soda added to dissolve or soften the skins more fully,
according to various tastes and notions.
But, like casks of wine, no two potfuls are exactly alike to every
palate. Some are supposed to be spoiled by the moon, by some unlucky
day, by the beans having been grown on soil not suitable; or the whole
year may be to blame as not favorable for beans.
Coffee, too, has its marvels in the camp kitchen, but not so many, and
not so inscrutable as those that beset the bean-pot. A low complacent
grunt follows a mouthful drawn in with a gurgle, and the remark cast
forth aimlessly, "That's good coffee." Then another gurgling sip and
repetition of the judgment, "Yes, sir, that is good coffee." As to
tea, there are but two kinds, weak and strong, the stronger the
better. The only remark heard is, "That tea's weak," otherwise it is
good enough and not worth mentioning. If it has been boiled an hour or
two or smoked on a pitchy fire, no matter, --who cares for a little
tannin or creosote? they make the black beverage all
the stronger and more attractive to tobacco-tanned palates.
Sheep-camp bread, like most California camp bread, is baked in Dutch
ovens, some of it in the form of yeast powder biscuit, an unwholesome
sticky compound leading straight to dyspepsia. The greater part,
however, is fermented with sour dough, a handful from each batch being
saved and put away in the mouth of the flour sack to inoculate the
next. The oven is simply a cast-iron pot, about five inches deep and
from twelve to eighteen inches wide. After the batch has been mixed
and kneaded in a tin pan, the oven is slightly heated and rubbed with
a piece of tallow or pork rind. The dough is then placed in it,
pressed out against the sides, and left to rise. When ready for baking
a shovelful of coals is spread out by the side of the fire and the
oven set upon them, while another shovelful is placed on top of the
lid, which is raised from time to time to see that the requisite
amount of heat
is being kept up. With care good bread may be made in this way, though
it is liable to be burned or to be sour, or raised too much, and the
weight of the oven is a serious objection.
At last Don Delaney comes doon the lang glen, --hunger vanishes, we
turn our eyes to the mountains, and to-morrow we go climbing toward
cloudland.
Never while anything is left of me shall this first camp be forgotten.
It has fairly grown into me, not merely as memory pictures, but as
part and parcel of mind and body alike. The deep hopper-like hollow,
with its majestic trees through which all the wonderful nights the
stars poured their beauty. The flowery wildness of the high steep
slope toward Brown's Flat, and its bloom-fragrance descending at the
close of the still days. The embowered river-reaches with their
multitude of voices making melody, the stately flow and rush and glad
exulting onsweeping currents caressing the
![[A Mountain Stream]](graphics/112.jpg)
A Mountain Stream
|
dipping sedge-leaves and bushes and mossy stones, swirling in pools,
dividing against little flowery islands, breaking gray and white here
and there, ever rejoicing, yet with deep solemn undertones recalling
the ocean, --the brave little bird ever beside them, singing with
sweet human tones among the waltzing foam-bells, and like a blessed
evangel explaining God's love. And the Pilot Peak Ridge, its long
withdrawing slopes gracefully modeled and braided, reaching from
climate to climate, feathered with trees that are the kings of their
race, their ranks nobly marshaled to view, spire above spire, crown
above crown, waving their long, leafy arms, tossing their cones like
ringing bells, --blessed sun-fed mountaineers rejoicing in their
strength, every tree tuneful, a harp for the winds and the sun. The
hazel and buckthorn pastures of the deer, the sun-beaten brows purple
and yellow with mint and golden-rods, carpeted with chambatia, humming
with bees.
And the dawns and sunrises and sundowns of these mountain days, --the
rose light creeping higher among the stars, changing to daffodil
yellow, the level beams bursting forth, streaming across the ridges,
touching pine after pine, awakening and warming all the mighty host to
do gladly their shining day's work. The great sun-gold noons, the
alabaster cloud-mountains, the landscape beaming with consciousness
like the face of a god. The sunsets, when the trees stood hushed
awaiting their good-night blessings. Divine, enduring, unwastable
wealth.
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