From Thence Home Was But A Saunter
In The Moonlight.
After resting one day, and the weather continuing calm, I ran up over
the left shoulder of South Dome
And down in front of its grand split
face to make some measurements, completed my work, climbed to the
right shoulder, struck off along the ridge for Cloud's Rest, and
reached the topmost heave of her sunny wave in ample time to see the
sunset.
Cloud's Rest is a thousand feet higher than Tissiack. It is a
wavelike crest upon a ridge, which begins at Yosemite with Tissiack,
and runs continuously eastward to the thicket of peaks and crests
around Lake Tenaya. This lofty granite wall is bent this way and that
by the restless and weariless action of glaciers just as if it had
been made of dough. But the grand circumference of mountains and
forests are coming from far and near, densing into one close
assemblage; for the sun, their god and father, with love ineffable, is
glowing a sunset farewell. Not one of all the assembled rocks or
trees seemed remote. How impressively their faces shone with
responsive love!
I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made
me strong. Down through the junipers; down through the firs; now in
jet shadows, now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare,
clanking rocks; past the huge ghost of South Dome rising weird through
the firs; past the glorious fall of Nevada, the groves of Illilouette;
through the pines of the valley; beneath the bright crystal sky
blazing with stars. All of this mountain wealth in one day! - one of
the rich ripe days that enlarge one's life; so much of the sun upon
one side of it, so much of the moon and stars on the other.
III
Summer Days at Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta rises in solitary grandeur from the edge of a
comparatively low and lightly sculptured lava plain near the northern
extremity of the Sierra, and maintains a far more impressive and
commanding individuality than any other mountain within the limits of
California. Go where you may, within a radius of from fifty to a
hundred miles or more, there stands before you the colossal cone of
Shasta, clad in ice and snow, the one grand unmistakable landmark - the
pole star of the landscape. Far to the southward Mount Whitney lifts
its granite summit four or five hundred feet higher than Shasta, but
it is nearly snowless during the late summer, and is so feebly
individualized that the traveler may search for it in vain among the
many rival peaks crowded along the axis of the range to north and
south of it, which all alike are crumbling residual masses brought
into relief in the degradation of the general mass of the range. The
highest point on Mount Shasta, as determined by the State Geological
Survey, is 14,440 feet above mean tide. That of Whitney, computed
from fewer observations, is about 14,900 feet. But inasmuch as the
average elevation of the plain out of which Shasta rises is only about
four thousand feet above the sea, while the actual base of the peak of
Mount Whitney lies at an elevation of eleven thousand feet, the
individual height of the former is about two and a half times as great
as that of the latter.
Approaching Shasta from the south, one obtains glimpses of its snowy
cone here and there through the trees from the tops of hills and
ridges; but it is not until Strawberry Valley is reached, where there
is a grand out-opening of the forests, that Shasta is seen in all its
glory. From base to crown clearly revealed with its wealth of woods
and waters and fountain snow, rejoicing in the bright mountain sky,
and radiating beauty on all the subject landscape like a sun.
Standing in a fringing thicket of purple spiraea in the immediate
foreground is a smooth expanse of green meadow with its meandering
stream, one of the smaller affluents of the Sacramento; then a zone of
dark, close forest, its countless spires of pine and fir rising above
one another on the swelling base of the mountain in glorious array;
and, over all, the great white cone sweeping far into the thin, keen
sky - meadow, forest, and grand icy summit harmoniously blending and
making one sublime picture evenly balanced.
The main lines of the landscape are immensely bold and simple, and so
regular that it needs all its shaggy wealth of woods and chaparral and
its finely tinted ice and snow and brown jutting crags to keep it from
looking conventional. In general views of the mountain three distinct
zones may be readily defined. The first, which may be called the
Chaparral Zone, extends around the base in a magnificent sweep nearly
a hundred miles in length on its lower edge, and with a breadth of
about seven miles. It is a dense growth of chaparral from three to
six or eight feet high, composed chiefly of manzanita, cherry,
chincapin, and several species of ceanothus, called deerbrush by the
hunters, forming, when in full bloom, one of the most glorious
flowerbeds conceivable. The continuity of this flowery zone is
interrupted here and there, especially on the south side of the
mountain, by wide swaths of coniferous trees, chiefly the sugar and
yellow pines, Douglas spruce, silver fir, and incense cedar, many
specimens of which are two hundred feet high and five to seven feet in
diameter. Goldenrods, asters, gilias, lilies, and lupines, with many
other less conspicuous plants, occur in warm sheltered openings in
these lower woods, making charming gardens of wildness where bees and
butterflies are at home and many a shy bird and squirrel.
The next higher is the Fir Zone, made up almost exclusively of two
species of silver fir. It is from two to three miles wide, has an
average elevation above the sea of some six thousand feet on its lower
edge and eight thousand on its upper, and is the most regular and best
defined of the three.
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