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 apples; 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 ...
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