THE MOUNTAINS
BY
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
PREFACE
The author has followed a true sequence of events
practically in all particulars save in respect to the
character of the Tenderfoot. He is in one sense fictitious;
in another sense real. He is real in that he is the
apotheosis of many tenderfeet, and that everything he does
in this narrative he has done at one time or another in the
author's experience. He is fictitious in the sense that he
is in no way to be identified with the third member of our
party in the actual trip.
CONTENTS
I. THE RIDGE TRAIL
II. ON EQUIPMENT
III. ON HORSES
IV. HOW TO GO ABOUT IT
V. THE COAST RANGES
VI. THE INFERNO
VII. THE FOOT-HILLS
VIII. THE PINES
IX. THE TRAIL
X. ON SEEING DEER
XI. ON TENDERFEET
XII. THE CANON
XIII. TROUT, BUCKSKIN, AND PROSPECTORS
XIV. ON CAMP COOKERY
XV. ON THE WIND AT NIGHT
XVI. THE VALLEY
XVII. THE MAIN CREST
XVIII. THE GIANT FOREST
XIX. ON COWBOYS
XX. THE GOLDEN TROUT
XXI. ON GOING OUT
XXII. THE LURE OF THE TRAIL
THE MOUNTAINS
I
THE RIDGE TRAIL
Six trails lead to the main ridge. They are all
good trails, so that even the casual tourist in the
little Spanish-American town on the seacoast need
have nothing to fear from the ascent. In some spots
they contract to an arm's length of space, outside of
which limit they drop sheer away; elsewhere they
stand up on end, zigzag in lacets each more hairraising than the last, or fill to demoralization with
loose boulders and shale. A fall on the part of your
horse would mean a more than serious accident; but
Western horses do not fall. The major premise stands:
even the casual tourist has no real reason for fear,
however scared he may become.
Our favorite route to the main ridge was by a way
called the Cold Spring Trail. We used to enjoy
taking visitors up it, mainly because you come on
the top suddenly, without warning. Then we collected
remarks. Everybody, even the most stolid,
said something.
You rode three miles on the flat, two in the leafy
and gradually ascending creek-bed of a canon, a half
hour of laboring steepness in the overarching mountain
lilac and laurel. There you came to a great rock
gateway which seemed the top of the world. At the
gateway was a Bad Place where the ponies planted
warily their little hoofs, and the visitor played "eyes
front," and besought that his mount should not
stumble.
Beyond the gateway a lush level canon into which
you plunged as into a bath; then again the laboring
trail, up and always up toward the blue California
sky, out of the lilacs, and laurels, and redwood
chaparral into the manzanita, the Spanish bayonet, the
creamy yucca, and the fine angular shale of the
upper regions. Beyond the apparent summit you
found always other summits yet to be climbed. And
all at once, like thrusting your shoulders out of a
hatchway, you looked over the top.
Then came the remarks. Some swore softly; some
uttered appreciative ejaculation; some shouted aloud;
some gasped; one man uttered three times the word
"Oh,"--once breathlessly, Oh! once in awakening
appreciation, OH! once in wild enthusiasm, OH!
Then invariably they fell silent and looked.
For the ridge, ascending from seaward in a gradual
coquetry of foot-hills, broad low ranges, cross-systems,
canons, little flats, and gentle ravines, inland
dropped off almost sheer to the river below. And
from under your very feet rose, range after range, tier
after tier, rank after rank, in increasing crescendo of
wonderful tinted mountains to the main crest of the
Coast Ranges, the blue distance, the mightiness of
California's western systems. The eye followed them
up and up, and farther and farther, with the accumulating
emotion of a wild rush on a toboggan. There
came a point where the fact grew to be almost too
big for the appreciation, just as beyond a certain
point speed seems to become unbearable. It left you
breathless, wonder-stricken, awed. You could do
nothing but look, and look, and look again, tonguetied by the impossibility of doing justice to what you
felt. And in the far distance, finally, your soul, grown
big in a moment, came to rest on the great precipices
and pines of the greatest mountains of all, close under
the sky.
In a little, after the change had come to you, a
change definite and enduring, which left your inner
processes forever different from what they had been,
you turned sharp to the west and rode five miles
along the knife-edge Ridge Trail to where Rattlesnake
Canon led you down and back to your accustomed
environment.
To the left as you rode you saw, far on the horizon,
rising to the height of your eye, the mountains
of the channel islands. Then the deep sapphire of
the Pacific, fringed with the soft, unchanging white
of the surf and the yellow of the shore. Then the
town like a little map, and the lush greens of the
wide meadows, the fruit-groves, the lesser ranges-all vivid, fertile, brilliant, and pulsating with vitality.
You filled your senses with it, steeped them in the
beauty of it. And at once, by a mere turn of the
eyes, from the almost crude insistence of the bright
primary color of life, you faced the tenuous azures
of distance, the delicate mauves and amethysts, the
lilacs and saffrons of the arid country.
This was the wonder we never tired of seeing for
ourselves, of showing to others. And often,
academically, perhaps a little wistfully, as one talks of
something to be dreamed of but never enjoyed, we
spoke of how fine it would be to ride down into that
land of mystery and enchantment, to penetrate one
after another the canons dimly outlined in the shadows
cast by the westering sun, to cross the mountains
lying outspread in easy grasp of the eye, to gain the
distant blue Ridge, and see with our own eyes what
lay beyond.
For to its other attractions the prospect added that
of impossibility, of unattainableness. These rides of
ours were day rides. We had to get home by nightfall.
Our horses had to be fed, ourselves to be housed.
We had not time to continue on down the other side
whither the trail led. At the very and literal brink
of achievement we were forced to turn back.
Gradually the idea possessed us. We promised
ourselves that some day we would explore. In our
after-dinner smokes we spoke of it. Occasionally,
from some hunter or forest-ranger, we gained little
items of information, we learned the fascination of
musical names--Mono Canon, Patrera Don Victor,
Lloma Paloma, Patrera Madulce, Cuyamas, became
familiar to us as syllables. We desired mightily to
body them forth to ourselves as facts. The extent
of our mental vision expanded. We heard of other
mountains far beyond these farthest--mountains
whose almost unexplored vastnesses contained great
forests, mighty valleys, strong water-courses, beautiful
hanging-meadows, deep canons of granite, eternal
snows,--mountains so extended, so wonderful, that
their secrets offered whole summers of solitary
exploration. We came to feel their marvel, we came
to respect the inferno of the Desert that hemmed
them in. Shortly we graduated from the indefiniteness
of railroad maps to the intricacies of geological
survey charts. The fever was on us. We must go.
A dozen of us desired. Three of us went; and
of the manner of our going, and what you must
know who would do likewise, I shall try here to
tell.
II
ON EQUIPMENT
If you would travel far in the great mountains
where the trails are few and bad, you will need
a certain unique experience and skill. Before you
dare venture forth without a guide, you must be able
to do a number of things, and to do them well.
First and foremost of all, you must be possessed
of that strange sixth sense best described as the sense
of direction. By it you always know about where
you are. It is to some degree a memory for backtracks and landmarks, but to a greater extent an
instinct for the lay of the country, for relative
bearings, by which you are able to make your way
across-lots back to your starting-place. It is not an
uncommon faculty, yet some lack it utterly. If you
are one of the latter class, do not venture, for you
will get lost as sure as shooting, and being lost in
the mountains is no joke.
Some men possess it; others do not. The distinction
seems to be almost arbitrary. It can be largely
developed, but only in those with whom original
endowment of the faculty makes development possible.
No matter how long a direction-blind man
frequents the wilderness, he is never sure of ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Go to the beginning of the document
Go to previous page
Go to next page
Go to the end of document
