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Page 23
Half an hour later we heard Sisson shouting down among the firs,
coming with horses to take us to the hotel. After breaking a trail
through the snow as far as possible he had tied his animals and walked
up. 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.
Everything seemed full and radiant with the freshness and beauty and
enthusiasm of youth. Sisson's children came in with flowers and
covered my bed, and the storm on the mountaintop banished like a
dream.
V
Shasta Rambles and Modoc Memories
Arctic beauty and desolation, with their blessings and dangers, all
may be found here, to test the endurance and skill of adventurous
climbers; but far better than climbing the mountain is going around
its warm, fertile base, enjoying its bounties like a bee circling
around a bank of flowers. The distance is about a hundred miles, and
will take some of the time we hear so much about--a week or two--but
the benefits will compensate for any number of weeks. Perhaps the
profession of doing good may be full, but every body should be kind at
least to himself. Take a course of good water and air, and in the
eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no
harm will befall you. Some have strange, morbid fears as soon as they
find themselves with Nature, even in the kindest and wildest of her
solitudes, like very sick children afraid of their mother--as if God
were dead and the devil were king.
One may make the trip on horseback, or in a carriage, even; for a good
level road may be found all the way round, by Shasta Valley, Sheep
Rock, Elk Flat, Huckleberry Valley, Squaw Valley, following for a
considerable portion of the way the old Emigrant Road, which lies
along the east disk of the mountain, and is deeply worn by the wagons
of the early gold-seekers, many of whom chose this northern route as
perhaps being safer and easier, the pass here being only about six
thousand feet above sea level. But it is far better to go afoot.
Then you are free to make wide waverings and zigzags away from the
roads to visit the great fountain streams of the rivers, the glaciers
also, and the wildest retreats in the primeval forests, where the best
plants and animals dwell, and where many a flower-bell will ring
against your knees, and friendly trees will reach out their fronded
branches and touch you as you pass. One blanket will be enough to
carry, or you may forego the pleasure and burden altogether, as wood
for fires is everywhere abundant. Only a little food will be
required. Berries and plums abound in season, and quail and grouse
and deer--the magnificent shaggy mule deer as well as the common
species.
As you sweep around so grand a center, the mountain itself seems to
turn, displaying its riches like the revolving pyramids in jewelers'
windows. One glacier after another comes into view, and the outlines
of the mountain are ever changing, though all the way around, from
whatever point of view, the form is maintained of a grand, simple cone
with a gently sloping base and rugged, crumbling ridges separating the
glaciers and the snowfields more or less completely. The play of
colors, from the first touches of the morning sun on the summit, down
the snowfields and the ice and lava until the forests are aglow, is a
never-ending delight, the rosy lava and the fine flushings of the snow
being ineffably lovely. Thus one saunters on and on in the glorious
radiance in utter peace and forgetfulness of time.
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