The Shape Of A New Mountain Is Roughly Pyramidal, Running Out
Into Long Shark-Finned Ridges That Interfere And Merge Into Other
Thunder-Splintered Sierras.
You get the saw-tooth effect from a
distance, but the near-by granite bulk glitters with the terrible
keen polish of old glacial ages.
I say terrible; so it seems.
When those glossy domes swim into the alpenglow, wet after rain,
you conceive how long and imperturbable are the purposes of God.
Never believe what you are told, that midsummer is the best
time to go up the streets of the mountain--well--perhaps for the
merely idle or sportsmanly or scientific; but for seeing and
understanding, the best time is when you have the longest leave to
stay. And here is a hint if you would attempt the stateliest
approaches; travel light, and as much as possible live off the
land. Mulligatawny soup and tinned lobster will not bring you the
favor of the woodlanders.
Every canon commends itself for some particular pleasantness;
this for pines, another for trout, one for pure bleak beauty of
granite buttresses, one for its far-flung irised falls; and as I
say, though some are easier going, leads each to the cloud
shouldering citadel. First, near the canon mouth you get the
low-heading full-branched, one-leaf pines. That is the sort of
tree to know at sight, for the globose, resin-dripping cones
have palatable, nourishing kernels, the main harvest of the
Paiutes. That perhaps accounts for their growing accommodatingly
below the limit of deep snows, grouped sombrely on the valleyward
slopes.
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