From The Van Bremer Ranch The Way To The Lava Beds Leads Down The
Bremer Meadows Past Many A Smooth
Grassy knoll and jutting cliff,
along the shore of Lower Klamath Lake, and thence across a few miles
of sage
Plain to the brow of the wall-like bluff of lava four hundred
and fifty feet above Tule Lake. Here you are looking southeastward,
and the Modoc landscape, which at once takes possession of you, lies
revealed in front. It is composed of three principal parts; on your
left lies the bright expanse of Tule Lake, on your right an evergreen
forest, and between the two are the black Lava Beds.
When I first stood there, one bright day before sundown, the lake was
fairly blooming in purple light, and was so responsive to the sky in
both calmness and color it seemed itself a sky. No mountain shore
hides its loveliness. It lies wide open for many a mile, veiled in no
mystery but the mystery of light. The forest also was flooded with
sun-purple, not a spire moving, and Mount Shasta was seen towering
above it rejoicing in the ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. But
neither the glorified woods on the one hand, nor the lake on the
other, could at first hold the eye. That dark mysterious lava plain
between them compelled attention. Here you trace yawning fissures,
there clusters of somber pits; now you mark where the lava is bent and
corrugated in swelling ridges and domes, again where it breaks into a
rough mass of loose blocks.
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