We Had Been So Long Without Food That We Cared But Little About
Eating, But We Eagerly Drank The Coffee He Prepared For Us.
Our feet
were frozen, and thawing them was painful, and had to be done very
slowly by keeping them buried in soft snow for several hours, which
avoided permanent damage.
Five thousand feet below the summit we
found only three inches of new snow, and at the base of the mountain
only a slight shower of rain had fallen, showing how local our storm
had been, notwithstanding its terrific fury. Our feet were wrapped in
sacking, and we were soon mounted and on our way down into the thick
sunshine - "God's Country," as Sisson calls the Chaparral Zone. In two
hours' ride the last snowbank was left behind. Violets appeared along
the edges of the trail, and the chaparral was coming into bloom, with
young lilies and larkspurs about the open places in rich profusion.
How beautiful seemed the golden sunbeams streaming through the woods
between the warm brown boles of the cedars and pines! All my friends
among the birds and plants seemed like OLD friends, and we felt like
speaking to every one of them as we passed, as if we had been a long
time away in some far, strange country.
In the afternoon we reached Strawberry Valley and fell asleep. Next
morning we seemed to have risen from the dead. My bedroom was flooded
with sunshine, and from the window I saw the great white Shasta cone
clad in forests and clouds and bearing them loftily in the sky.
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