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However, not all the adventures and joys of mountaineering are on or even near the summits. Camp and trail must often be at lower levels, although still truly in the mountains. The trails must lead from wild pasture to pasture'meadows,' the mountaineer always calls them; for the pack-animals and riding ones must have good feed each night, to enable them to meet the demands made on them each day. The camps must be made near good water,

a dry camp is a sad thing, - but where there is mountain meadow there is water: there would not be meadow without it. Many of these meadows lie on the successive levels reached in moving up or down the glacial gorges. In the upper cirques and gorge-reaches these successive levels carry lakes — wonderful green-blue sheets of cold water set on the wildest and bleakest of rock scenery; lower down there are wet meadows and still lower dryer ones, or bits of forest, but different from the great continuous forest of the mountainflanks. These meadows are often riotous color-patches, flecked and splashed with a score of kinds of mountain flowers. A stream wanders through them, or, if they are not too level, hurries along with much music. Of course, one can camp in smaller areas, in cañon-bottom, or even on fairly steep mountainsides. One can usually find a few little level spots for the sleeping-bags and fire-irons, or, if necessary, a little terracing work with the spade will make the needed flatness. For you must lie fairly level if you are to sleep at all. Fir branches, old pineneedles, or heaps of bracken help to soften the bed-spots; but you soon get used to the uncovered ground. You manage to fit yourself to its uneven

nesses.

Besides meadow and water and a bit of level ground, a good outlook is necessary for the best kind of mountain

camp. Long views down great cañons, or across them to high peaks, or just straight up along the towering body of wonderful trees, are worth attending to, even for one-night camps. The trees of the Sierras are, of course, alone worth going into the mountains to see. The huge, dinosaur-like bulk of the true 'big trees,' the sequoias, and the straight towering sugar-pines, incense cedar, yellow pine, and red fir, make the Sierran forests incomparable. How John Muir loved these trees and lived companion-wise with them! Mountain sculpture, the work of ice, and the great straight trees, were his first interests in the Sierra Nevada.

There is something so different, so remindful of older earth days, when fauna and flora were strange, in the sequoias, those relics of forests that are gone, that they impress me uncomfortably. They do not seem to belong to this time. They can have no companionship with the pines and firs and cedars, which live so congenially together. Their day is past; they must feel sad to linger on.

The trails seem to run most deviously, but mostly they run wisely. They must avoid too bad places and too much steepness; but they must get on, and if the objective is high, they must sometimes climb even steeply, zigzagging up, and they must not go too far around, even if they have to take to rough places or skirt dangerously along clifffaces. They are most delightful when traversing the forests, for then they are cool and springy underfoot. They are most impressive when they run along the sides of great cañons or on cliffy mountain-flanks. They seem to accomplish most when they carry you over high passes. The way up may be very steep and rough, and the way down long and hard on the knees, but the actual crossing of the pass is a triumph. You see both ways down into

great watersheds; one may have a very different aspect from the other. You see innumerable near and distant peaks. At your feet are wonderful little green glacial lakes, cupped in the great cirques. The surpassing trail-triumph is to put yourself and pack-animals over a 'new' high pass, that is, to be the first to cross it with pack-train.

We did this last summer in trying to get out of the Kings River watershed into that of the Kern by a shorter way than the usual ones. Some Sierra Club men, making knapsack trips around the headwaters of Roaring River on one side of the Great Western Divide, and the Kern-Kaweah on the other, had suggested in the Sierra Club Bulletin that it might be possible to cross the Divide with animals through a notch in it about 12,000 feet high, a short distance south of Milestone Peak. Sheep men with their flocks had undoubtedly occasionally used this pass, for there were indications of sheeptrails leading up to it on both sides. But sheep are more agile than mules and horses carrying packs of a hundred pounds and more. However, we had a sturdy lot of animals, with two packers in charge, willing and even anxious to make a venture. So we worked up without a trail, and with considerable difficulty, out of Cloudy Cañon, to a high level camp (10,500 feet) by the side of a beautiful glacial lake not indicated on the Geological Survey maps, and hence unnamed and officially unknown.

Part of one day was given to spying out a possible way up to the pass, and 'making trail' to the extent of indicating by stone ducks the most feasible way to be followed, and throwing some stones out of the way, and strengthening loose and bad places by piling up rocks by their sides. The next day, with one man in front to guide and the others scattered among the pack-animals to lead and urge, we started up

slowly, and, with much care and many stoppings to work further at dangerous bits of trail, we won our way to the summit. We were rightfully very proud, and left a record of the winning of the pass in a stone cairn at the top. What needs now to be done is for Forest Service men, or National Park men (if the proposed lines of the new Roosevelt National Park are finally adopted), to make that a really available pass. Then Kern Cañon can be reached from Kings Cañon or vice versa - in two days less time, and by a much more interesting trail, than now.

It is remarkable how effectively even the unexercised human body responds to the call of the trail to cover miles and make altitude. A distance that would be an exhausting walk on a smooth roadway becomes only a fraction of a day's inspiriting jaunt up and down over steep mountain trails. Lungs and heart and muscles seem to meet the need on call. You wonder at yourself as you count up in the evening, after dinner, how far you have come and how high you have climbed. I can't explain it; it is one of the pleasant secrets of the mountains.

But this paper, like the mountain trail, must reach its end. Its objective is simply one of suggestion. If you are surfeited with swift motor-riding; or tired of endless golf; or impatient with having the world too much with you, take a dose of American mountaineering. Go where the highest mountains are, the greatest cañons, the biggest trees. Get a camp cook, though you will want to be trying your own hand at his game all the time, his game all the time, - an experienced packer, and a train of mountain-wise pack-animals, sleeping-bag, camp-supplies, and a sheaf of U.S. Geological Survey contour maps, - 'quadrangles,' they call them, - and take to the trail. Once out, you will not come back until you have to. And you will go again.

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III

THE SNOWY NIGHT

Let us be happy to-night

It snows.

See where the hemlocks glimmer white

In the dusk and the snow and the half moonlight; They never stir as their burden grows.

And you - O lovely and pale and near —
Loosen the bond of your maiden will;
Fall on my heart like the falling snows,
And I will be still as the trees are still.

IV

Suddenly, up through the forest gloaming,
A partridge rose, and that urgent whirring

Startled our breath and checked our roaming;

We stood and were still where the leaves were stirring.

So from the place of my deepest grieving

Memory starts on a wing so thrilling,

I stand in the dusk of my self-deceiving,
Struck to the heart with a pang that is killing.

V

In the street where you went away,

In the air that is still and gray,

Like golden fish in a stream

The leaves of the maple gleam;

And down in a place apart,

In the dark and the deep of my heart,

You shine in the pool of my grief

Like a fallen golden leaf.

VI

I saw you as you passed
A hundred times before;
O come you in at last
And close the open door.

O close the door and mark

How deep a night is this;

And light our common dark

With the candle of your kiss.

THE EDUCATED PERSON

BY EDWARD YEOMANS

BECAUSE you believe in a good cause, said Dr. Johnson, is no reason why you should feel called upon to defend it, for by your manner of defense you may do your cause much harm. This, however, is a case where, in multitude of counsel, there may be some wisdom. Some kind of answer may evolve from the discussion of the above topic, which will be better than a pontifical statement from a person who has no doubt at all about his qualification to give an irrefutable opinion, like the old Doctor himself.

And if nothing does emerge; if there is no precipitate which you can filter out from the cubic contents of words, and weigh; and if that precipitate is not some kind of yeast which, added to the present educational dough, will help it to rise, then let us admit that something ex cathedra is needed.

This contributor pretends to no ex

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