the john muir exhibit - writings - my_first_summer_in_the_sierra - chapter 11
My First Summer in the Sierra
by John Muir
Chapter 11
Back to the Lowlands
September 9.
--Weariness rested away and I feel eager and ready for another
excursion a month or two long in the same wonderful wilderness. Now,
however, I must turn toward the lowlands, praying and hoping Heaven
will shove me back again.
The most telling thing learned in these mountain excursions is the
influence of cleavage joints on the features sculptured from the
general mass of the range. Evidently the denudation has been enormous,
while the inevitable outcome is subtle balanced beauty. Comprehended
in general views, the features of the wildest landscape seem to be as
harmoniously related as the features of a human face. Indeed, they
look human and radiate
spiritual beauty, divine thought, however covered and concealed by
rock and snow.
Mr. Delaney has hardly had time to ask me how I enjoyed my trip,
though he has facilitated and encouraged my plans all summer, and
declares I'll be famous some day, a kind guess that seems strange and
incredible to a wandering wilderness-lover with never a thought or
dream of fame while humbly trying to trace and learn and enjoy
Nature's lessons.
The camp stuff is now packed on the horses, and the flock is headed
for the home ranch. Away we go, down through the pines, leaving the
lovely lawn where we have camped so long. I wonder if I'll ever see it
again. The sod is so tough and close it is scarcely at all injured by
the sheep. Fortunately they are not fond of silky glacier meadow
grass. The day is perfectly clear, not a cloud or the faintest hint of
a cloud is visible, and there is no wind. I wonder if in all the
world, at a height of nine thousand
feet, weather so steadily, faithfully calm and bright and hospitable
may anywhere else be found. We are going away fearing destructive
storms, though it is difficult to conceive weather changes so great.
Though the water is now low in the river, the usual difficulty
occurred in getting the flock across it. Every sheep seemed to be
invincibly determined to die any sort of dry death rather than wet its
feet. Carlo has learned the sheep business as perfectly as the best
shepherd, and it is interesting to watch his intelligent efforts to
push or frighten the silly creatures into the water. They had to be
fairly crowded and shoved over the bank; and when at last one crossed
because it could not push its way back, the whole flock suddenly
plunged in headlong together, as if the river was the only desirable
part of the world. Aside from mere money profit one would rather herd
wolves than sheep. As soon as they clambered up the opposite bank,
they began baaing and feeding as if nothing
unusual had happened. We crossed the meadows and drove slowly up the
south rim of the valley through the same woods I had passed on my way
to Cathedral Peak, and camped for the night by the side of a small
pond on top of the big lateral moraine.
September 10.
--In the morning at daybreak not one of the two thousand sheep was in
sight. Examining the tracks, we discovered that they had been
scattered, perhaps by a bear. In a few hours all were found and
gathered into one flock again. Had fine view of a deer. How graceful
and perfect in every way it seemed as compared with the silly, dusty,
tousled sheep! From the high ground hereabouts had another grand view
to the northward, --a heaving, swelling sea of domes and round-backed
ridges fringed with pines, and bounded by innumerable sharp-pointed
peaks, gray and barren-looking, though so full of beautiful life.
Another day of the calm, cloudless kind, purple in the morning and
evening. The evening glow has
been very marked for the last two or three weeks. Perhaps the
"zodiacal light."
September 11.
--Cloudless. Slight frost. Calm. Fairly started down hill, and now are
camped at the west end meadows of Lake Tenaya, --a charming place.
Lake smooth as glass, mirroring its miles of glacier-polished
pavements and bold mountain walls. Find aster still in flower. Here is
about the upper limit of the dwarf form of the goldcup oak, --eight
thousand feet above sea-level, --reaching about two thousand feet
higher than the California black oak (Quercus Californicus). Lovely
evening, the lake reflections after dark marvelously impressive.
September 12.
--Cloudless day, all pure sun-gold. Among the magnificent silver firs
once more, within two miles of the brink of Yosemite, at the famous
Portuguese bear camp. Chaparral of goldcup oak, manzanita, and
ceanothus abundant hereabouts, wanting about the Tuolumne meadows,
though the elevation is but little higher there. The two-leaved pine,
though far more abundant about the Tuolumne meadow region, reaches its
greatest size on stream-sides hereabouts and around meadows that are
rather boggy. All the best dry ground is taken by the magnificent
silver fir, which here reaches its greatest size and forms a
well-defined belt. A glorious tree. Have fine bed of its boughs
to-night.
September 13.
--Camp this evening at Yosemite Creek, close to the stream, on a
little sand flat near our old camp-ground. The vegetation is already
brown and yellow and dry; the creek almost dry also. The slender form
of the two-leaved pine on its banks is, I think, the handsomest I have
anywhere seen. It might easily pass at first sight for a distinct
species, though surely only a variety (Murrayana), due to crowded
and rapid growth on good soil. The yellow pine is as variable, or
perhaps more so. The form here and a thousand
feet higher, on crumbling rocks, is broad branching, with closely
furrowed, reddish bark, large cones, and long leaves. It is one of the
hardiest of pines, and has wonderful vitality. The tassels of long,
stout needles shining silvery in the sun, when the wind is blowing
them all in the same direction, is one of the most splendid spectacles
these glorious Sierra forests have to show. This variety of Pinus
ponderosa is regarded as a distinct species, Pinus Jeffreyi, by some
botanists. The basin of this famous Yosemite stream is extremely
rocky, --seems fairly to be paved with domes like a street with big
cobblestones. I wonder if I shall ever be allowed to explore it. It
draws me so strongly, I would make any sacrifice to try to read its
lessons. I thank God for this glimpse of it. The charms of these
mountains are beyond all common reason, unexplainable and mysterious
as life itself.
September 14.
--Nearly all day in magnificent fir forest, the top branches laden
with superb erect gray cones shining with beads of pure balsam. The
squirrels are cutting them off at a great rate. Bump, bump, I hear
them falling, soon to be gathered and stored for winter bread. Those
that chance to be left by the industrious harvesters drop the scales
and bracts when fully ripe, and it is fine to see the purple-winged
seeds flying in swirling, merry-looking flocks seeking their fortunes.
The bole and dead limbs of nearly every tree in the main forest-belt
are ornamented by conspicuous tufts and strips of a yellow lichen.
Camped for the night at Cascade Creek, near the Mono Trail crossing.
Manzanita berries now ripe. Cloudiness to-day about .10. The sunset
very rich, flaming purple and crimson showing gloriously through the
aisles of the woods.
September 15.
--The weather pure gold, cloudiness about .05, white cirrus flecks and
pencilings around the horizon. Move two or three miles and camp at
Tamarack Flat.
Wandering in the woods here back of the pines which bound the meadows,
I found very noble specimens of the magnificent silver fir, the
tallest about two hundred and forty feet high and five feet in
diameter four feet from the ground.
September 16.
--Crawled slowly four or five miles to-day through the glorious forest
to Crane Flat, where we are camped for the night. The forests we so
admired in summer seem still more beautiful and sublime in this mellow
autumn light. Lovely starry night, the tall, spiring tree-tops
relieved in jet black against the sky. I linger by the fire, loath to
go to bed.
September 17.
--Left camp early. Ran over the Tuolumne divide and down a few miles
to a grove of sequoias that I had heard of, directed by the Don. They
occupy an area of perhaps less than a hundred acres. Some of the trees
are noble, colossal old giants, surrounded by magnificent sugar pines
and Douglas spruces. The
perfect specimens not burned or broken are singularly regular and
symmetrical, though not at all conventional, showing infinite variety
in general unity and harmony; the noble shafts with rich purplish
brown fluted bark, free of limbs for one hundred and fifty feet or so,
ornamented here and there with leafy rosettes; main branches of the
oldest trees very large, crooked and rugged, zigzagging stiffly
outward seemingly lawless, yet unexpectedly stopping just at the right
distance from the trunk and dissolving in dense bossy masses of
branchlets, thus making a regular though greatly varied outline, --a
cylinder of leafy, outbulging spray masses, terminating in a noble
dome, that may be recognized while yet far off upheaved against the
sky above the dark bed of pines and firs and spruces, the king of all
conifers, not only in size but in sublime majesty of behavior and
port. I found a black, charred stump about thirty feet in diameter and
eighty or ninety feet high, --a venerable,
![[In Tuolumne Sequoia Grove]](graphics/350.jpg)
In Tuolumne Sequoia Grove
|
impressive old monument of a tree that in its prime may have been the
monarch of the grove; seedlings and saplings growing up here and
there, thrifty and hopeful, giving no hint of the dying out of the
species. Not any unfavorable change of climate, but only fire
threatens the existence of these noblest of God's trees. Sorry I was
not able to get a count of the old monument's annual rings.
Camp this evening at Hazel Green, on the broad back of the dividing
ridge near our old camp-ground when we were on the way up the
mountains in the spring. This ridge has the finest sugar pine groves
and finest manzanita and ceanothus thickets I have yet found on all
this wonderful summer journey.
September 18.
--Made a long descent on the south side of the divide to Brown's Flat,
the grand forests now left above us, though the sugar pine still
flourishes fairly well, and with the yellow pine, libocedrus, and
Douglas spruce, makes forests that would
be considered most wonderful in any other part of the world.
The Indians here, with great concern, pointed to an old garden patch
on the flat and told us to keep away from it. Perhaps some of their
tribe are buried here.
September 19.
--Camped this evening at Smith's Mill, on the first broad mountain
bench or plateau reached in ascending the range, where pines grow
large enough for good lumber. Here wheat, apples, peaches, and grapes
grow, and we were treated to wine and apples. The wine I didn't like,
but Mr. Delaney and the Indian driver and the shepherd seemed to think
the stuff divine. Compared to sparkling Sierra water fresh from the
heavens, it seemed a dull, muddy, stupid drink. But the apples, best
of fruits, how delicious they were!--fit for gods or men.
On the way down from Brown's Flat we stopped at Bower Cave, and I
spent an hour in it, --one of the most novel and
interesting of all Nature's underground mansions. Plenty of sunlight
pours into it through the leaves of the four maple trees growing in
its mouth, illuminating its clear, calm pool and marble chambers, --a
charming place, ravishingly beautiful, but the accessible parts of the
walls sadly disfigured with names of vandals.
September 20.
--The weather still golden and calm, but hot. We are now in the
foot-hills, and all the conifers are left behind except the gray
Sabine pine. Camped at the Dutch Boy's Ranch, where there are
extensive barley fields now showing nothing save dusty stubble.
September 21.
--A terribly hot, dusty, sun-burned day, and as nothing was to be
gained by loitering where the flock could find nothing to eat save
thorny twigs and chaparral, we made a long drive, and before sundown
reached the home ranch on the yellow San Joaquin plain.
September 22.
--The sheep were let out
of the corral one by one, this morning, and counted, and strange to
say, after all their long, adventurous wanderings in bewildering rocks
and brush and streams, scattered by bears, poisoned by azalea, kalmia,
alkali, all are accounted for. Of the two thousand and fifty that left
the corral in the spring lean and weak, two thousand and twenty-five
have returned fat and strong. The losses are: ten killed by bears, one
by a rattle-snake, one that had to be killed after it had broken its
leg on a boulder slope, and one that ran away in blind terror on being
accidentally separated from the flock, --thirteen all told. Of the
other twelve doomed never to return, three were sold to ranchmen and
nine were made camp mutton.
Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have
crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the
Lord has built; and rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully,
hopefully pray I may see it again.
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