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July 26. Ramble to the summit
of Mount Hoffman, eleven thousand feet high, the highest point in life's
journey my feet have yet touched. And what glorious landscapes are about me,
new plants, new animals, new crystals, and multitudes of new mountains far
higher than Hoffman, towering in glorious array along the axis of the range,
serene, majestic, snow-laden, sun-drenched, vast domes and ridges shining
below them, forests, lakes, and meadows in the hollows, the pure blue
bell-flower sky brooding them all, — a glory day of admission into a new
realm of wonders as if Nature had wooingly whispered, "Come higher." What
questions I asked, and how little I know of all the vast show, and how
eagerly, tremulously hopeful of some day knowing more, learning the meaning
of these divine symbols crowded together on this wondrous page.
Mount Hoffman is the highest
part of a ridge or spur about fourteen miles from the axis of the main
range, perhaps a remnant brought into relief and isolated by unequal
denudation. The southern slopes shed their waters into Yosemite Valley by
Tenaya and Dome Creeks, the northern in part into the Tuolumne River, but
mostly into the Merced by Yosemite Creek. The rock is mostly granite, with
some small piles and crests rising here and there in picturesque pillared
and castellated remnants of red metamorphic slates. Both the granite and
slates are divided by joints, making them separable into blocks like the
stones of artificial masonry, suggesting the Scripture "He hath builded the
mountains." Great banks of snow and ice are piled in hollows on the cool
precipitous north side forming the highest perennial sources of Yosemite
Creek. The southern slopes are much more gradual and accessible. Narrow
slot-like gorges extend across the summit at right angles, which look like
lanes, formed evidently by the erosion of less resisting beds. They are
usually called "devil's slides," though they He far above the region usually
haunted by the devil; for though we read that he once climbed an exceeding
high mountain, he cannot be much of a mountaineer, for his tracks are seldom
seen above the timber-line.
The broad gray summit is
barren and desolate-looking in general views, wasted by ages of gnawing
storms; but looking at the surface in detail, one finds it covered by
thousands and millions of charming plants with leaves and flowers so small
they form no mass of color visible at a distance of a few hundred yards.
Beds of azure daisies smile confidingly in moist hollows, and along the
banks of small rills, with several species of eriogonum, silky-leaved ivesia,
pentstemon, orthocarpus, and patches of Primula sufruticosa, a beautiful
shrubby species. Here also I found bryanthus, a charming heathwort covered
with purple flowers and dark green foliage like heather, and three trees new
to me — a hemlock and two pines. The hemlock (Tsuga Mertensiana) is the most
beautiful conifer I have ever seen; the branches and also the main axis
droop in a singularly graceful way, and the dense foliage covers the
delicate, sensitive, swaying branchlets all around. It is now in full bloom,
and the flowers, together with thousands of last season's cones still
clinging to the drooping sprays, display wonderful wealth of color, brown
and purple and blue. Gladly I climbed the first tree I found to revel in the
midst of it. How the touch of the flowers makes one's flesh tingle! The
pistillate are dark, rich purple, and almost translucent, the staminate
blue, — a vivid, pure tone of blue like the mountain sky, — the most
uncommonly beautiful of all the Sierra tree flowers I have seen. How
wonderful that, with all its delicate feminine grace and beauty of form and
dress and behavior, this lovely tree up here, exposed to the wildest blasts,
has already endured the storms of centuries of winters!
The two pines also are brave
storm-enduring trees, the mountain pine (Pinus monticola) and the dwarf pine
(Pinus albicaulis) . The mountain pine is closely related to the sugar pine,
though the cones are only about four to six inches long. The largest trees
are from five to six feet in diameter at four feet above the ground, the
bark rich brown. Only a few storm-beaten adventurers approach the summit of
the mountain. The dwarf or white-bark pine is the species that forms the
timberline, where it is so completely dwarfed that one may walk over the top
of a bed of it as over snow-pressed chaparral.
How boundless the day seems
as we revel in these storm-beaten sky gardens amid so vast a congregation of
onlooking mountains! Strange and admirable it is that the more savage and
chilly and storm-chafed the mountains, the finer the glow on their faces and
the finer the plants they bear. The myriads of flowers tingeing the
mountain-top do not seem to have grown out of the dry, rough gravel of
disintegration, but rather they appear as visitors, a cloud of witnesses to
Nature's love in what we in our timid ignorance and unbelief call howling
desert. The surface of the ground, so dull and forbidding at first sight,
besides being rich in plants, shines and sparkles with crystals: mica,
hornblende, feldspar, quartz, tourmaline. The radiance in some places is so
great as to be fairly dazzling, keen lance rays of every color flashing,
sparkling in glorious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave
beauty-work — every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a
mirror reflecting the Creator.
From garden to garden, ridge
to ridge, I drifted enchanted, now on my knees gazing into the face of a
daisy, now climbing again and again among the purple and azure flowers of
the hemlocks, now down into the treasuries of the snow, or gazing afar over
domes and peaks, lakes and woods, and the billowy glaciated fields of the
upper Tuolumne, and trying to sketch them. In the midst of such beauty,
pierced with its rays, one's body is all one tingling palate. Who wouldn't
be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing.
The largest of the many
glacier lakes in sight, and the one with the finest shore scenery, is Tenaya,
about a mile long, with an imposing mountain dipping its feet into it on the
south side, Cathedral Peak a few miles above its head, many smooth swelling
rock-waves and domes on the north, and in the distance southward a multitude
of snowy peaks, the fountain-heads of rivers. Lake Hoffman lies shimmering
beneath my feet, mountain pines around its shining rim. To the northward the
picturesque basin of Yosemite Creek glitters with lakelets and pools; but
the eye is soon drawn away from these bright mirror wells, however
attractive, to revel in the glorious congregation of peaks on the axis of
the range in their robes of snow and light.
Carlo caught an unfortunate
woodchuck when it was running from a grassy spot to its boulder-pile home --
one of the hardiest of the mountain animals. I tried hard to save him, but
in vain. After telling Carlo that he must be careful not to kill anything, I
caught sight, for the first time, of the curious pika, or little chief hare,
that cuts large quantities of lupines and other plants and lays them out to
dry in the sun for hay, which it stores in underground barns to last through
the long, snowy winter. Coming upon these plants freshly cut and lying in
handfuls here and there on the rocks has a startling effect of busy life on
the lonely mountain-top. These little haymakers, endowed with brain stuff
something like our own, — God up here looking after them, - what lessons
they teach, how they widen our sympathy!
An eagle soaring above a
sheer cliff, where I suppose its nest is, makes another striking show of
life, and helps to bring to mind the other people of the so-called solitude
— deer in the forest caring for their young; the strong, well-clad, well-fed
bears; the lively throng of squirrels; the blessed birds, great and small,
stirring and sweetening the groves; and the clouds of happy insects filling
the sky with joyous hum as part and parcel of the down-pouring sunshine. All
these come to mind, as well as the plant people, and the glad streams
singing their way to the sea. But most impressive of all is the vast glowing
countenance of the wilderness in awful, infinite repose.
Toward sunset, enjoyed a fine
run to camp, down the long south slopes, across ridges and ravines, gardens
and avalanche gaps, through the firs and chaparral, enjoying wild excitement
and excess of strength, and so ends a day that will never end.
July 27. Up and away to Lake
Tenaya, - another big day, enough for a lifetime. The rocks, the air,
everything speaking with audible voice or silent; joyful, wonderful,
enchanting, banishing weariness and sense of time. No longing for anything
now or hereafter as we go home into the mountain's heart. The level sunbeams
are touching the fir-tops, every leaf shining with dew. Am holding an
easterly course, the deep canon of Tenaya Creek on the right hand, Mount
Hoffman on the left, and the lake straight ahead about ten miles distant,
the summit of Mount Hoffman about three thousand feet above me, Tenaya Creek
four thousand feet below and separated from the shallow, irregular valley,
along which most of the way lies, by smooth domes and wave-ridges. Many
mossy emerald bogs, meadows, and gardens in rocky hollows to wade and
saunter through — and what fine plants they give me, what joyful streams I
have to cross, and how many views are displayed of the Hoffman and Cathderal
Peak masonry, and what a wondrous breadth of shining granite pavement to
walk over for the first time about the shores of the lake! On I sauntered in
freedom complete; body without weight as far as I was aware; now wading
through starry parnassia bogs, now through gardens shoulder deep in larkspur
and lilies, grasses and rushes, shaking off showers of dew; crossing piles
of crystalline moraine boulders, bright mirror pavements, and cool, cheery
streams going to Yosemite; crossing bryanthus carpets and the scoured
pathways of avalanches, and thickets of snow-pressed ceanothus; then down a
broad, majestic stairway into the ice-sculptured lake-basin.
The snow on the high
mountains is melting fast, and the streams are singing bank-full, swaying
softly through the level meadows and bogs, quivering with sun-spangles,
swirling in pot-holes, resting in deep pools, leaping, shouting in wild,
exulting energy over rough boulder dams, joyful, beautiful in all their
forms. No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or
dull, or any trace of what in manufactories is called rubbish or waste;
everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons. This
quick, inevitable interest attaching to everything seems marvelous until the
hand of God becomes visible; then it seems reasonable that what interests
Him may well interest us. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we
find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like
our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping
to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature
as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the
farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains — beginning
places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.
I found three kinds of
meadows: (1) Those contained in basins not yet filled with earth enough to
make a dry surface. They are planted with several species of carex, and have
their margins diversified with robust flowering plants such as veratrum,
larkspur, lupine, etc. (2) Those contained in the same sort of basins, once
lakes like the first, but so situated in relation to the streams that flow
through them and beds of transportable sand, gravel, etc., that they are now
high and dry and well drained. This dry condition and corresponding
difference in their vegetation may be caused by no superiority of position,
or power of transporting filling material in the streams that belong to
them, but simply by the basin being shallow and therefore sooner filled.
They are planted With grasses, mostly fine, silky, and rather short-leaved,
Calamagrostis and Agrostis being the principal genera. They form
delightfully smooth, level sods in which one finds two or three species of
gentian and as many of purple and yellow orthocarpus, violet, vaccinium,
kalmia, bryanthus, and lonicera. (3) Meadows hanging on ridge and mountain S
slopes, not in basins at all, but made and held in place by masses of
boulders and fallen trees, which, forming dams one above another in close
succession on small, outspread, channelless streams, have collected soil
enough, for the growth of grasses, carices, and many flowering plants, and
being kept well watered, without being subject to currents sufficiently
strong to carry them away, a hanging or sloping meadow is the result. Their
surfaces are seldom so smooth as the others, being roughened more or less by
the projecting tops of the dam rocks or logs; but at a little distance this
roughness is not noticed, and the effect is very striking — bright green,
fluent, down-sweeping flowery ribbons on gray slopes. The broad shallow
streams these meadows belong to are mostly derived from banks of snow and
because the soil is well drained in some places, while in others the dam
rocks are packed close and caulked with bits of wood and leaves, making
boggy patches; the vegetation, of course, is correspondingly varied. I saw
patches of willow, bryanthus, and a fine show of lilies on some of them, not
forming a margin, but scattered about among the carex and grass. Most of
these meadows are now in their prime. How wonderful must be the temper of
the elastic leaves of grasses and sedges to make curves so perfect and fine.
Tempered a little harder, they would stand erect, stiff and bristly, like
strips of metal; a little softer, and every leaf would lie flat. And what
fine painting and tinting there is on the glumes and pales, stamens and
feathery pistils. Butterflies colored like the flowers waver above them in
wonderful profusion, and many other beautiful winged people, numbered and
known and loved only by the Lord, are waltzing together high over head,
seemingly in pure play and hilarious enjoyment of their little sparks of
life. How wonderful they are! How do they get a living, and endure the
weather? How are their little bodies, with muscles, nerves, organs, kept
warm and jolly in such admirable exuberant health? Regarded only as
mechanical inventions, how wonderful they are! Compared with these, Godlike
man's greatest machines are as nothing.
Most of the sandy gardens on
moraines are in prime beauty like the meadows, though some on the north
sides of rocks and beneath groves of sapling pines have not yet bloomed. On
sunny sheets of crystal soil along the slopes of the Hoffman Mountains, I
saw extensive patches of ivesia and purple gilia with scarce a green leaf,
making fine clouds of color. Ribes bushes, vaccinium, and kalmia, now in
flower, make beautiful rugs and borders along the banks of the streams.
Shaggy beds of dwarf oak (Quercus chrysolepis, var. vaccinifolia) over which
one may walk are common on rocky moraines, yet this is the same species as
the large live oak seen near Brown's Flat. The most beautiful of the shrubs
is the purple-flowered bryanthus, here making glorious carpets at an
elevation of nine thousand feet.
The principal tree for the
first mile or two from camp is the magnificent silver fir, which reaches
perfection here both in size and form of individual trees, and in the mode
of grouping in groves with open spaces between. So trim and tasteful are
these silvery, spiry groves one would fancy they must have been placed in
position by some master landscape gardener, their regularity seeming almost
conventional. But Nature is the only gardener able to do work so fine. A few
noble specimens two hundred feet high occupy central positions in the groups
with younger trees around them; and outside of these another circle of yet
smaller ones, the whole arranged like tastefully symmetrical bouquets, every
tree fitting nicely the place assigned to it as if made especially for it;
small roses and eriogonums are usually found blooming on the open spaces
about the groves, forming charming pleasure grounds. Higher, the firs
gradually become smaller and less perfect, many showing double summits,
indicating storm stress. Still, where good moraine soil is found, even on
the rim of the lake-basin, specimens one hundred and fifty feet in height
and five feet in diameter occur nearly nine thousand feet above the sea. The
saplings, I find, are mostly bent with the crushing weight of the winter
snow, which at this elevation must be at least eight or ten feet deep,
judging by marks on the trees; and this depth of compacted snow is heavy
enough to bend and bury young trees twenty or thirty feet in height and hold
them down for four or five months. Some are broken; the others spring up
when the snow melts and at length attain a size that enables them to
withstand the snow pressure. Yet even in trees five feet thick the traces of
this early discipline are still plainly to be seen in their curved insteps,
and frequently in old dried saplings protruding from the trunk, partially
overgrown by the new axis developed from a branch below the break. Yet
through all this stress the forest is maintained in marvelous beauty.
Beyond the silver firs I find
the two-leaved pine (Pinus contorta, var. Murrayana) forms the bulk of the
forest up to an elevation of ten thousand feet or more — the highest
timber-belt of the Sierra. I saw a specimen nearly five feet in diameter
growing on deep, well-watered soil at an elevation of about nine thousand
feet. The form of this species varies very much with position, exposure,
soil, etc. On stream-banks, where it is closely planted, it is very slender;
some specimens seventy-five feet high do not exceed five inches in diameter
at the ground, but the ordinary form, as far as I have seen, is well
proportioned. The average diameter when full grown at this elevation is
about twelve or fourteen inches, height forty or fifty feet, the straggling
branches bent up at the end, the bark thin and bedraggled with amber-colored
resin. The pistillate flowers form little crimson rosettes a fourth of an
inch in diameter on the ends of the branchlets, mostly hidden in the
leaf-tassels; the staminate are about three eighths of an inch in diameter,
sulphur-yellow, in showy clusters, giving a remarkably rich effect — a
brave, hardy mountaineer pine, growing cheerily on rough beds of avalanche
boulders and joints of rock pavements, as well as in fertile hollows,
standing up to the waist in snow every winter for centuries, facing a
thousand storms and blooming every year in colors as bright as those worn by
the sun-drenched trees of the tropics.
A still hardier mountaineer
is the Sierra juniper (Juniperus occidentalis), growing mostly on domes and
ridges and glacier pavements. A thickset, sturdy, picturesque highlander,
seemingly content to live for more than a score of centuries on sunshine and
snow; a truly wonderful fellow, dogged endurance expressed in every feature,
lasting about as long as the granite he stands on. Some are nearly as broad
as high. I saw one on the shore of the lake nearly ten feet in diameter, and
many six to eight feet. The bark, cinnamon-colored, flakes off in long
ribbon-like strips with a satiny luster. Surely the most enduring of all
tree mountaineers, it never seems to die a natural death, or even to fall
after it has been killed. If protected from accidents, it would perhaps be
immortal. I saw some that had withstood an avalanche from snowy Mount
Hoffman cheerily putting out new branches, as if repeating, like Grip,
"Never say die." Some were simply standing on the pavement where no fissure
more than half an inch wide offered a hold for its roots. The common height
for these rock-dwellers is from ten to twenty feet; most of the old ones
have broken tops, and are mere stumps, with a few tufted branches, forming
picturesque brown pillars on bare pavements, with plenty of elbow-room and a
clear view in every direction. On good moraine soil it reaches a height of
from forty to sixty feet, with dense gray foliage. The rings of the trunk
are very thin, eighty to an inch of diameter in some specimens I examined.
Those ten feet in diameter must be very old — thousands of years. Wish I
could live, like these junipers, on sunshine and snow, and stand beside them
on the shore of Lake Tenaya for a thousand years. How much I should see, and
how delightful it would be! Everything in the mountains would find me and
come to me, and everything from the heavens like light.
The lake was named for one of
the chiefs of the Yosemite tribe. Old Tenaya is said to have been a good
Indian to his tribe. When a company of soldiers followed his band into
Yosemite to punish them for cattle-stealing and other crimes, they fled to
this lake by a trail that leads out of the upper end of the valley, early in
the spring, while the snow was still deep; but being pursued, they lost
heart and surrendered. A fine monument the old man has in this bright lake,
and likely to last a long time, though lakes die as well as Indians, being
gradually filled with detritus carried in by the feeding streams, and to
some extent also by snow avalanches and rain and wind. A considerable
portion of the Tenaya basin is already changed into a forested flat and
meadow at the upper end, where the main tributary enters from Cathedral
Peak. Two other tributaries come from the Hoffman Range. The outlet flows
westward through Tenaya Canon to join the Merced River in Yosemite. Scarce a
handful of loose soil is to be seen on the north shore. All is bare, shining
granite, suggesting the Indian name of the lake, Pywiack, meaning shining
rock. The basin seems to have been slowly excavated by the ancient glaciers,
a marvelous work requiring countless thousands of years. On the south side
an imposing mountain rises from the water's edge to a height of three
thousand feet or more, feathered with hemlock and pine; and huge shining
domes on the east, over the tops of which the grinding, wasting, molding
glacier must have swept as the wind does to-day.
July 28. No cloud mountains,
only curly currus wisps scarce perceptible, and the want of thunder to
strike the noon hour seems strange, as if the Sierra clock had stopped. Have
been studying the magnifica fir — measured one near two hundred and forty
feet high, the tallest I have yet seen. This species is the most symmetrical
of all conifers, but though gigantic in size it seldom lives more than four
or five hundred years. Most of the trees die from the attacks of a fungus at
the age of two or three centuries. This dry-rot fungus perhaps enters the
trunk by way of the stumps of limbs broken off by the snow that loads the
broad palmate branches. The younger specimens are marvels of symmetry,
straight and erect as a plumb-line, their branches in regular level whorls
of five mostly, each branch as exact in its divisions as a fern frond, and
thickly covered by the leaves, making a rich plush over all the tree,
excepting only the trunk and a small portion of the main limbs. The leaves
turn upward, especially on the branchlets, and are stiff and sharp, pointed
on all the upper portion of the tree. They remain on the tree about eight or
ten years, and as the growth is rapid it is not rare to find the leaves
still in place on the upper part of the axis where it is three to four
inches in diameter, wide apart of course, and their spiral arrangement
beautifully displayed. The leaf-scars are conspicuous for twenty years or
more, but there is a good deal of variation in different trees as to the
thickness and sharpness of the leaves.
After the excursion to Mount
Hoffman I had seen a complete cross-section of the Sierra forest, and I find
that Abies magnifica is the most symmetrical tree of all the noble
coniferous company. The cones are grand affairs, superb in form, size, and
color, cylindrical, stand erect on the upper branches like casks, and are
from five to eight inches in length by three or four in diameter, greenish
gray, and covered with fine down which has a silvery luster in the sunshine,
and their brilliance is augmented by beads of transparent balsam which seems
to have been poured over each cone, bringing to mind the old ceremonies of
anointing with oil. If possible, the inside of the cone is more beautiful
than the outside; the scales, bracts, and seed wings are tinted with the
loveliest rosy purple with a bright lustrous iridescence; the seeds, three
fourths of an inch long, are dark brown. When the cones are ripe the scales
and bracts fall off, setting the seeds free to fly to their predestined
places, while the dead spike-like axes are left on the branches for many
years to mark the positions of the vanished cones, excepting those cut off
when green by the Douglas squirrel. How he gets his teeth under the broad
bases of the sessile cones, I don't know. Climbing these trees on a sunny
day to visit the growing cones and to gaze over the tops of the forest is
one of my best enjoyments.
July 29. Bright, cool,
exhilarating. Clouds about .05. Another glorious day of rambling, sketching,
and universal enjoyment.
July 30. Clouds .20, but the
regular shower did not reach us, though thunder was heard a few miles off
striking the noon hour. Ants, flies, and mosquitoes seem to enjoy this fine
climate. A few house-flies have discovered our camp. The Sierra mosquitoes
are courageous and of good size, some of them measuring nearly an inch from
tip of sting to tip of folded wings. Though less abundant than in most
wildernesses, they occasionally make quite a hum and stir, and pay but
little attention to time or place. They sting anywhere, any time of day,
wherever they can find anything worth while, until they are themselves stung
by frost. The large, jet-black ants are only ticklish and troublesome when
one is lying down under the trees. Noticed a borer drilling a silver fir.
Ovipositor about an inch and a half in length, polished and straight like a
needle. When not in use, it is folded back in a sheath, which extends
straight behind like the legs of a crane in flying. This drilling, I
suppose, is to save nest building, and the after care of feeding the young.
Who would guess that in the brain of a fly so much knowledge could find
lodgment? How do they know that their eggs will hatch in such holes, or,
after they hatch, that the soft, helpless grubs will find the right sort of
nourishment in silver fir sap? This domestic arrangement calls to mind the
curious family of gallilies. Each species seems to know what kind of plant
will respond to the irritation or stimulus of the puncture it makes and the
eggs it lays, in forming a growth that not only answers for a nest and home
but also provides food for the young. Probably these gallflies make mistakes
at times, like anybody else; but when they do, there is simply a failure of
that particular brood, while enough to perpetuate the species do find the
proper plants and nourishment. Many mistakes of this kind might be made
without being discovered by us. Once a pair of wrens made the mistake of
building a nest in the sleeve of a workman's coat, which was called for at
sundown, much to the consternation and discomfiture of the birds. Still the
marvel remains that any of the children of such small people as gnats and
mosquitoes should escape their own and their parents' mistakes, as well as
the vicissitudes of the weather and hosts of enemies, and come forth in full
vigor and perfection to enjoy the sunny world. When we think of the small
creatures that are visible, we are led to think of many that are smaller
still and lead us on and on into infinite mystery.
July 31. Another glorious
day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue; indeed the
body seems one palate, and tingles equally throughout. Cloudiness about .b5,
but our ordinary shower has not yet reached us, though I hear thunder in the
distance.
The cheery little chipmunk,
so common about Brown's Flat, is common here also, and perhaps other
species. In their light, airy habits they recall the familiar species of the
Eastern States, which we admired in the oak openings of Wisconsin as they
skimmed along the zigzag rail fences. These Sierra chipmunks are more
arboreal and squirrel-like. I first noticed them on the lower edge of the
coniferous belt, where the Sabine and yellow pines meet, — exceedingly
interesting little fellows, full of odd, funny ways, and without being true
squirrels, have most of their acomplishments without their aggressive
quarrelsomeness. I never weary watching them as they frisk about in the
bushes gathering seeds and berries, like song sparrows poising daintily on
slender twigs, and making even less stir than most birds of the same size.
Few of the Sierra animals interest me more; they are so able, gentle,
confiding, and beautiful, they take one's heart, and get themselves adopted
as darlings. Though weighing hardly more than field mice, they are laborious
collectors of seeds, nuts, and cones, and are therefore well fed, but never
in the least swollen with fat or lazily full. On the contrary, of their
frisky, birdlike liveliness there is no end. They have a great variety of
notes corresponding with their movements, some sweet and liquid, like water
dripping with tinkling sounds into pools. They seem dearly to love teasing a
dog, coming frequently almost within reach, then frisking away with lively
chipping, like sparrows, beating time to their music with their tails, which
at each chip describe half circles from side to side. Not even the Douglas
squirrel is surer-footed or more fearless. I have seen them running about on
sheer precipices of the Yosemite walls seemingly holding on with as little
effort as flies, and as unconscious of danger, where, if the slightest slip
were made, they would have fallen two or three thousand feet. How fine it
would be could we mountaineers climb these tremendous cliffs with the same
sure grip! The venture I made the other day for a view of the Yosemite Fall,
and which tried my nerves so sorely, this little Tamias would have made for
an ear of grass.
The woodchuck (Arctomys monax)
of the bleak mountain-tops is a very different sort of mountaineer — the
most bovine of rodents, a heavy eater, fat, aldermanic in bulk and fairly
bloated, in his high pastures, like a cow in a clover field. One woodchuck
would outweigh a hundred chipmunks, and yet he is by no means a dull animal.
In the midst of what we regard as storm-beaten desolation he pipes and
whistles right cheerily, and enjoys long life in his skyland homes. His
burrow is made in disintegrated rocks or beneath large boulders. Coming out
of his den in the cold hoarfrost mornings, he takes a sun-bath on some
favorite flat-topped rock, then goes to breakfast in garden hollows, eats
grass and flowers until comfortably swollen, then goes a-visiting to fight
and play. How long a woodchuck lives in this bracing air I don't know, but
some of them are rusty and gray like lichen-covered boulders.
August 1. A grand cloudland
and five-minute shower, refreshing the blessed wilderness, already so
fragrant and fresh, steeping the black meadow mold and dead leaves like tea.
The waycup, of flicker, so
familiar to every boy in the old Middle West States, is one of the most
common of the wood-peckers hereabouts, and makes one feel at home. I can see
no difference in plumage or habits from the Eastern species, though the
climate here is so different, — a fine, brave, confiding, beautiful bird.
The robin, too, is here, with all his familiar notes and gestures, tripping
daintily on open garden spots and high meadows. Over all America he seems to
be at home, moving from the plains to the mountains and from north to south,
back and forth, up and down, with the march of the seasons and food supply.
How admirable the constitution and temper of this brave singer, keeping in
cheery health over so vast and varied a range! Oftentimes, as I wander
through these solemn woods, awestricken and silent, I hear the reassuring
voice of this fellow wanderer ringing out, sweet and clear, "Fear not! fear
not!"
The mountain quail (Oreortyx
ricta) I often meet in my walks — a small brown partridge with a very long,
slender, ornamental crest worn jauntily like a feather in a boy's cap,
giving it a very marked appearance. This species is considerably larger than
the valley quail, so common on the hot foothills. They seldom alight in
trees, but love to wander in flocks of from five or six to twenty through
the ceanothus and manzanita thickets and over open, dry meadows and rocks of
the ridges where the forest is less dense or wanting, uttering a low
clucking sound to enable them to keep together. When disturbed they rise
with a strong birr of wing-beats, and scatter as if exploded to a distance
of a quarter of a mile or so. After the danger is past they call one another
together with a loud piping note -- Nature's beautiful mountain chickens. I
have not yet found their nests. The young of this season are already hatched
and away — new broods of happy wanderers half as large as their parents. I
wonder how they live through the long winters, when the ground is
snow-covered ten feet deep. They must go down towards the lower edge of the
forest, like the deer, though I have not heard of them there.
The blue, or dusky, grouse is
also common here. They like the deepest and closest fir woods, and when
disturbed, burst from the branches of the trees with a strong, loud whir of
wing-beats, and vanish in a wavering, silent slide, without moving a feather
— a stout, beautiful bird about the size of the prairie chicken of the old
west, spending most of the time in the trees, excepting the breeding season,
when it keeps to the ground. The young are now able to fly. When scattered
by man or dog, they keep still until the danger is supposed to be passed,
then the mother calls them together. The chicks can hear the call a distance
of several hundred yards, though it is not loud. Should the young be unable
to fly, the mother feigns desperate lameness or death to draw one away,
throwing herself at one's feet within two or three yards, rolling over on
her back, kicking and gasping, so as to deceive man or beast. They are said
to stay all the year in the woods hereabouts, taking shelter in dense tufted
branches of fir and yellow pine during snowstorms, and feeding on the young
buds of these trees. Their legs are feathered down to their toes, and I have
never heard of their suffering in any sort of weather. Able to live on pine
and fir buds, they are forever independent in the matter of food, which
troubles so many of us and controls our movements. Gladly, if I could, I
would live forever on pine buds, however full of turpentine and pitch, for
the sake of this grand independence. Just to think of our sufferings last
month merely for grist-mill flour. Man seems to have more difficulty in
gaining food than any other of the Lord's creatures. For many in towns it is
a consuming, lifelong struggle; for others, the danger of coming to want is
so great, the deadly habit of endless hoarding for the future is formed,
which smothers all real life, and is continued long after every reasonable
need has been over-supplied.
On Mount Hoffman I saw a
curious dove-colored bird that seemed half woodpecker, half magpie, or crow.
It screams something like a crow, but flies like a woodpecker, and has a
long, straight bill, with which I saw it opening the cones of the mountain
and white-barked pines. It seems to keep to the heights, though no doubt it
comes down for shelter during winter, if not for food. So far as food is
concerned, these bird-mountaineers, I guess, can glean nuts enough, even in
winter, from the different kinds of conifers; for always there are a few
that have been unable to fly out of the cones and remain for hungry winter
gleaners. |
