This, Surely, Is
Not The Best Way Of Going To The Mountains, Yet It Is Better Than
Staying Below.
Many still small voices will not be heard in the noisy
rush and din, suggestive of going to the
Sky in a chariot of fire or a
whirlwind, as one is shot to the Shasta mark in a booming palace-car
cartridge; up the rocky canyon, skimming the foaming river, above the
level reaches, above the dashing spray - fine exhilarating translation,
yet a pity to go so fast in a blur, where so much might be seen and
enjoyed.
The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but
of men. Therefore we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going
to the mountains is going home. Yet how many are doomed to toil in
town shadows while the white mountains beckon all along the horizon!
Up the canyon to Shasta would be a cure for all care. But many on
arrival seem at a loss to know what to do with themselves, and seek
shelter in the hotel, as if that were the Shasta they had come for.
Others never leave the rail, content with the window views, and cling
to the comforts of the sleeping car like blind mice to their mothers.
Many are sick and have been dragged to the healing wilderness
unwillingly for body-good alone. Were the parts of the human machine
detachable like Yankee inventions, how strange would be the gatherings
on the mountains of pieces of people out of repair!
How sadly unlike the whole-hearted ongoing of the seeker after gold is
this partial, compulsory mountaineering! - as if the mountain
treasuries contained nothing better than gold! Up the mountains they
go, high-heeled and high-hatted, laden like Christian with
mortifications and mortgages of divers sorts and degrees, some
suffering from the sting of bad bargains, others exulting in good
ones; hunters and fishermen with gun and rod and leggins; blythe and
jolly troubadours to whom all Shasta is romance; poets singing their
prayers; the weak and the strong, unable or unwilling to bear mental
taxation. But, whatever the motive, all will be in some measure
benefited. None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however
imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister will not preach a
perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and
the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly
displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer.
Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere
business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.
Possibly a branch railroad may some time be built to the summit of
Mount Shasta like the road on Mount Washington. In the mean time
tourists are dropped at Sisson's, about twelve miles from the summit,
whence as headquarters they radiate in every direction to the so-called "points of interest"; sauntering about the flowery fringes of
the Strawberry Meadows, bathing in the balm of the woods, scrambling,
fishing, hunting; riding about Castle Lake, the McCloud River, Soda
Springs, Big Spring, deer pastures, and elsewhere.
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