Here I
Slackened Pace, For I Drank The Spicy, Resiny Wind, And Beneath The
Arms Of This Noble Tree I Felt That I Was Safely Home.
Never did pine
trees seem so dear.
How sweet was their breath and their song, and
how grandly they winnowed the sky! I tingled my fingers among their
tassels, and rustled my feet among their brown needles and burrs, and
was exhilarated and joyful beyond all I can write.
When I reached Yosemite, all the rocks seemed talkative, and more
telling and lovable than ever. They are dear friends, and seemed to
have warm blood gushing through their granite flesh; and I love them
with a love intensified by long and close companionship. After I had
bathed in the bright river, sauntered over the meadows, conversed with
the domes, and played with the pines, I still felt blurred and weary,
as if tainted in some way with the sky of your streets. I determined,
therefore, to run out for a while to say my prayers in the higher
mountain temples. "The days are sunful," I said, "and, though now
winter, no great danger need be encountered, and no sudden storm will
block my return, if I am watchful."
The morning after this decision, I started up the canyon of Tenaya,
caring little about the quantity of bread I carried; for, I thought, a
fast and a storm and a difficult canyon were just the medicine I
needed. When I passed Mirror Lake, I scarcely noticed it, for I was
absorbed in the great Tissiack - her crown a mile away in the hushed
azure; her purple granite drapery flowing in soft and graceful folds
down to my feet, embroidered gloriously around with deep, shadowy
forest. I have gazed on Tissiack a thousand times - in days of solemn
storms, and when her form shone divine with the jewelry of winter, or
was veiled in living clouds; and I have heard her voice of winds, and
snowy, tuneful waters when floods were falling; yet never did her soul
reveal itself more impressively than now. I hung about her skirts,
lingering timidly, until the higher mountains and glaciers compelled
me to push up the canyon.
This canyon is accessible only to mountaineers, and I was anxious to
carry my barometer and clinometer through it, to obtain sections and
altitudes, so I chose it as the most attractive highway. After I had
passed the tall groves that stretch a mile above Mirror Lake, and
scrambled around the Tenaya Fall, which is just at the head of the
lake groves, I crept through the dense and spiny chaparral that
plushes the roots of the mountains here for miles in warm green, and
was ascending a precipitous rock front, smoothed by glacial action,
when I suddenly fell - for the first time since I touched foot to
Sierra rocks. After several somersaults, I became insensible from the
shock, and when consciousness returned I found myself wedged among
short, stiff bushes, trembling as if cold, not injured in the
slightest.
Judging by the sun, I could not have been insensible very long;
probably not a minute, possibly an hour; and I could not remember what
made me fall, or where I had fallen from; but I saw that if I had
rolled a little further, my mountain climbing would have been
finished, for just beyond the bushes the canyon wall steepened and I
might have fallen to the bottom. "There," said I, addressing my feet,
to whose separate skill I had learned to trust night and day on any
mountain, "that is what you get by intercourse with stupid town
stairs, and dead pavements." I felt degraded and worthless. I had
not yet reached the most difficult portion of the canyon, but I
determined to guide my humbled body over the most nerve-trying places
I could find; for I was now awake, and felt confident that the last of
the town fog had been shaken from both head and feet.
I camped at the mouth of a narrow gorge which is cut into the bottom
of the main canyon, determined to take earnest exercise next day. No
plushy boughs did my ill-behaved bones enjoy that night, nor did my
bumped head get a spicy cedar plume pillow mixed with flowers. I
slept on a naked boulder, and when I awoke all my nervous trembling
was gone.
The gorged portion of the canyon, in which I spent all the next day,
is about a mile and a half in length; and I passed the time in tracing
the action of the forces that determined this peculiar bottom gorge,
which is an abrupt, ragged-walled, narrow-throated canyon, formed in
the bottom of the wide-mouthed, smooth, and beveled main canyon. I
will not stop now to tell you more; some day you may see it, like a
shadowy line, from Cloud's Rest. In high water, the stream occupies
all the bottom of the gorge, surging and chafing in glorious power
from wall to wall. But the sound of the grinding was low as I entered
the gorge, scarcely hoping to be able to pass through its entire
length. By cool efforts, along glassy, ice-worn slopes, I reached the
upper end in a little over a day, but was compelled to pass the second
night in the gorge, and in the moonlight I wrote you this short
pencil-letter in my notebook: -
The moon is looking down into the canyon, and how marvelously the
great rocks kindle to her light! Every dome, and brow, and
swelling boss touched by her white rays, glows as if lighted with
snow. I am now only a mile from last night's camp; and have been
climbing and sketching all day in this difficult but instructive
gorge. It is formed in the bottom of the main canyon, among the
roots of Cloud's Rest. It begins at the filled-up lake basin where
I camped last night, and ends a few hundred yards above, in another
basin of the same kind.
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