The Play Of
Colors, From The First Touches Of The Morning Sun On The Summit, Down
The Snowfields And The Ice And Lava Until The Forests Are Aglow, Is A
Never-Ending Delight, The Rosy Lava And The Fine Flushings Of The Snow
Being Ineffably Lovely.
Thus one saunters on and on in the glorious
radiance in utter peace and forgetfulness of time.
Yet, strange to say, there are days even here somewhat dull-looking,
when the mountain seem uncommunicative, sending out no appreciable
invitation, as if not at home. At such time its height seems much
less, as if, crouching and weary, it were taking rest. But Shasta is
always at home to those who love her, and is ever in a thrill of
enthusiastic activity - burning fires within, grinding glaciers
without, and fountains ever flowing. Every crystal dances responsive
to the touches of the sun, and currents of sap in the growing cells of
all the vegetation are ever in a vital whirl and rush, and though many
feet and wings are folded, how many are astir! And the wandering
winds, how busy they are, and what a breadth of sound and motion they
make, glinting and bubbling about the crags of the summit, sifting
through the woods, feeling their way from grove to grove, ruffling the
loose hair on the shoulders of the bears, fanning and rocking young
birds in their cradles, making a trumpet of every corolla, and
carrying their fragrance around the world.
In unsettled weather, when storms are growing, the mountain looms
immensely higher, and its miles of height become apparent to all,
especially in the gloom of the gathering clouds, or when the storm is
done and they are rolling away, torn on the edges and melting while in
the sunshine. Slight rainstorms are likely to be encountered in a
trip round the mountain, but one may easily find shelter beneath well-thatched trees that shed the rain like a roof. Then the shining of
the wet leaves is delightful, and the steamy fragrance, and the burst
of bird song from a multitude of thrushes and finches and warblers
that have nests in the chaparral.
The nights, too, are delightful, watching with Shasta beneath the
great starry done. A thousand thousand voices are heard, but so
finely blended they seem a part of the night itself, and make a deeper
silence. And how grandly do the great logs and branches of your
campfire give forth the heat and light that during their long century-lives they have so slowly gathered from the sun, storing it away in
beautiful dotted cells and beads of amber gum! The neighboring trees
look into the charmed circle as if the noon of another day had come,
familiar flowers and grasses that chance to be near seem far more
beautiful and impressive than by day, and as the dead trees give forth
their light all the other riches of their lives seem to be set free
and with the rejoicing flames rise again to the sky. In setting out
from Strawberry Valley, by bearing off to the northwestward a few
miles you may see
"...beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads,
And [bless] the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers."
This is one of the few places in California where the charming linnaea
is found, though it is common to the northward through Oregon and
Washington. Here, too, you may find the curious but unlovable
darlingtonia, a carnivorous plant that devours bumblebees,
grasshoppers, ants, moths, and other insects, with insatiable
appetite. In approaching it, its suspicious-looking yellow-spotted
hood and watchful attitude will be likely to make you go cautiously
through the bog where it stands, as if you were approaching a
dangerous snake. It also occurs in a bog near Sothern's Station on
the stage road, where I first saw it, and in other similar bogs
throughout the mountains hereabouts.
The "Big Spring" of the Sacramento is about a mile and a half above
Sisson's, issuing from the base of a drift-covered hill. It is lined
with emerald algae and mosses, and shaded with alder, willow, and
thorn bushes, which give it a fine setting. Its waters, apparently
unaffected by flood or drouth, heat or cold, fall at once into white
rapids with a rush and dash, as if glad to escape from the darkness to
begin their wild course down the canyon to the plain.
Muir's Peak, a few miles to the north of the spring, rises about three
thousand feet above the plain on which it stands, and is easily
climbed. The view is very fine and well repays the slight walk to its
summit, from which much of your way about the mountain may be studied
and chosen. The view obtained of the Whitney Glacier should tempt you
to visit it, since it is the largest of the Shasta glaciers and its
lower portion abounds in beautiful and interesting cascades and
crevasses. It is three or four miles long and terminates at an
elevation of about nine thousand five hundred feet above sea level, in
moraine-sprinkled ice cliffs sixty feet high. The long gray slopes
leading up to the glacier seem remarkably smooth and unbroken. They
are much interrupted, nevertheless, with abrupt, jagged precipitous
gorges, which though offering instructive sections of the lavas for
examination, would better be shunned by most people. This may be done
by keeping well down on the base until fronting the glacier before
beginning the ascent.
The gorge through which the glacier is drained is raw-looking, deep
and narrow, and indescribably jagged. The walls in many places
overhang; in others they are beveled, loose, and shifting where the
channel has been eroded by cinders, ashes, strata of firm lavas, and
glacial drift, telling of many a change from frost to fire and their
attendant floods of mud and water.
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