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Page 12
Then followed a strange contrast. The glacial winter came on. The
sky that so often had been darkened with storms of cinders and ashes
and lighted by the glare of volcanic fires was filled with crystal
snow-flowers, which, loading the cooling mountain, gave birth to
glaciers that, uniting edge to edge, at length formed one grand
conical glacier--a down-crawling mantle of ice upon a fountain of
smouldering fire, crushing and grinding its brown, flinty lavas, and
thus degrading and remodeling the entire mountain from summit to base.
How much denudation and degradation has been effected we have no means
of determining, the porous, crumbling rocks being ill adapted for the
reception and preservation of glacial inscriptions.
The summit is now a mass of ruins, and all the finer striations have
been effaced from the flanks by post-glacial weathering, while the
irregularity of its lavas as regards susceptibility to erosion, and
the disturbance caused by inter- and post-glacial eruptions, have
obscured or obliterated those heavier characters of the glacial record
found so clearly inscribed upon the granite pages of the high Sierra
between latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes and 39 degrees. This much,
however, is plain: that the summit of the mountain was considerably
lowered, and the sides were deeply grooved and fluted while it was a
center of dispersal for the glaciers of the circumjacent region. And
when at length the glacial period began to draw near its close, the
ice mantle was gradually melted off around the base of the mountain,
and in receding and breaking up into its present fragmentary condition
the irregular heaps and rings of moraine matter were stored upon its
flanks on which the forests are growing. The glacial erosion of most
of the Shasta lavas gives rise to detritus composed of rough
subangular boulders of moderate size and porous gravel and sand, which
yields freely to the transporting power of running water. Several
centuries ago immense quantities of this lighter material were washed
down from the higher slopes by a flood of extraordinary magnitude,
caused probably by the sudden melting of the ice and snow during an
eruption, giving rise to the deposition of conspicuous delta-like beds
around the base. And it is upon these flood-beds of moraine soil,
thus suddenly and simultaneously laid down and joined edge to edge,
that the flowery chaparral is growing.
Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, Nature
accomplishes her beneficent designs--now a flood of fire, now a flood
of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an
outburst of organic life--forest and garden, with all their wealth of
fruit and flowers, the air stirred into one universal hum with
rejoicing insects, a milky way of wings and petals, girdling the
newborn mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating
against its sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees.
But with such grand displays as Nature is making here, how grand are
her reservations, bestowed only upon those who devotedly seek them!
Beneath the smooth and snowy surface the fountain fires are still
aglow, to blaze forth afresh at their appointed times. The glaciers,
looking so still and small at a distance, represented by the artist
with a patch of white paint laid on by a single stroke of his brush,
are still flowing onward, unhalting, with deep crystal currents,
sculpturing the mountain with stern, resistless energy. How many
caves and fountains that no eye has yet seen lie with all their fine
furniture deep down in the darkness, and how many shy wild creatures
are at home beneath the grateful lights and shadows of the woods,
rejoicing in their fullness of perfect life!
Standing on the edge of the Strawberry Meadows in the sun-days of
summer, not a foot or feather or leaf seems to stir; and the grand,
towering mountain with all its inhabitants appears in rest, calm as a
star. Yet how profound is the energy ever in action, and how great is
the multitude of claws and teeth, wings and eyes, wide awake and at
work and shining! Going into the blessed wilderness, the blood of the
plants throbbing beneath the life-giving sunshine seems to be heard
and felt; plant growth goes on before our eyes, and every tree and
bush and flower is seen as a hive of restless industry. The deeps of
the sky are mottled with singing wings of every color and tone--clouds
of brilliant chrysididae dancing and swirling in joyous rhythm,
golden-barred vespidae, butterflies, grating cicadas and jolly
rattling grasshoppers--fairly enameling the light, and shaking all the
air into music. Happy fellows they are, every one of them, blowing
tiny pipe and trumpet, plodding and prancing, at work or at play.
Though winter holds the summit, Shasta in summer is mostly a massy,
bossy mound of flowers colored like the alpenglow that flushes the
snow. There are miles of wild roses, pink bells of huckleberry and
sweet manzanita, every bell a honey-cup, plants that tell of the north
and of the south; tall nodding lilies, the crimson sarcodes,
rhododendron, cassiope, and blessed linnaea; phlox, calycanthus, plum,
cherry, crataegus, spiraea, mints, and clovers in endless variety;
ivesia, larkspur, and columbine; golden aplopappus, linosyris[5],
bahia, wyethia, arnica, brodiaea, etc.,--making sheets and beds of
light edgings of bloom in lavish abundance for the myriads of the air
dependent on their bounty.
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