 Section 15, the last section of My First Summer in the Sierra. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir, read by Adrian Pretzelis. Section 15. September 6. Still another perfectly cloudless day. Purple evening and morning. All the middle hours, one mass of pure, serene sunshine. Soon after sunrise the air grew warm and there was no wind. One naturally halted to see what nature intended to do. There is a suggestion of real Indian summer in the hushed, brooding, faintly hazy weather. The yellow atmosphere, though thin, is still plainly of the same general character as that of eastern Indian summer. The particular mellowness is perhaps, in part, caused by myriads of ripe spores adrift in the sky. Mr Delaney now keeps up a solemn talk about the need of getting away from these high mountains, telling sad stories of flocks that perished in storms that broke suddenly into the midst of fine, innocent weather like this we are now enjoying. In no case, said he, will I venture to stay so high and far back in the mountains as we now are later than the middle of this month, no matter how warm and sunny it may be. He would move the flock slowly at first, a few miles a day, until the Yosemite Creek Basin was reached and crossed. Then, while lingering in the heavy pine woods, should the weather threaten, he could hurry down to the foothills where the snow never falls deep enough to smother a sheep. Of course, I am anxious to see as much of the wilderness as possible in the few days left to me, and I say again, may the good time come when I can stay as long as I like with plenty of bread, far and free from trampling flocks, though I may well be thankful for this generous, foodful, inspiring summer. Anyhow, we never know where we must go, nor what guides we are to get. Men, storms, guardian angels, or sheep. Perhaps almost everybody in the least natural is guided more than he is ever aware of. All the wilderness seems to be full of tricks and plans to drive and draw us up into God's light. Have been busy planning and baking bread for at least one more good, wild excursion among the high peaks, and surely none, however hopefully aiming at fortune or fame, ever felt so gloriously happily excited by the outlook. September 7. Left camp at Daybreak, and made direct for Cathedral Peak, intending to strike eastward and southward from that point among the peaks and ridges at the heads of the Tuolumne, Massad, and San Joaquin rivers. Down through the pine woods I made my way across the Tuolumne River and Meadows, and up the heavily timbered slope, forming the south boundary of the Upper Tuolumne Basin, the east side of Cathedral Peak, and up to its topmost spire, which I reached at noon, having loitered by the way to study the fine trees, two-leaved pine, mountain pine, albicolus pine, silver fir, and the most charming, most graceful of all the evergreens, the mountain hemlock. High, cool, late-flowering meadows also detained me, and lakelets, and avalanche tracks, and huge quarries of moraine rocks above the forests. All the way up from the Big Meadows to the base of the Cathedral, the ground is covered with moraine material, the left lateral moraine of the great glacier that must have completely filled this Upper Tuolumne Basin. Higher, there are several small terminal moraines of residual glaciers shoved forward at right angles against the grand, simple, lateral of the main Tuolumne glacier. A fine place to study mountain sculpture and soil making. The view from the Cathedral spires is very fine and telling in every direction. Immeasurable peaks, ridges, domes, meadows, lakes, and woods, the forests extending in long, curving lines and broad fields wherever the glaciers have left soil for them to grow on, while the sides of the highest mountains show a straggling dwarf growth clinging to rifts in the rocks, apparently independent of soil. The dark, heath-like growth on the Cathedral roof I found to be dwarf, snow-pressed, albiculous pine, about three or four feet high, but very old-looking. Many of them are bearing cones, and the noisy Clark Crow is eating the seeds using his long bill like a woodpecker in digging them out of the cones. A good many flowers are still in bloom about the base of the peak and even on the roof among the little pines, especially a woody, yellow-flowered erigonum and a handsome aster. The body of the Cathedral is nearly square and the roof slopes are wonderfully regular and symmetrical, the ridge trending north-east and south-west. This direction has apparently been determined by the structure joints in the granite. The gable on the north-east end is magnificent in size and simplicity, and at its base there is a big snowbank protected by the shadow of the building. The front is adorned with many pinnacles and a tall spire of curious workmanship. Here too the joints in the rock are seen to have played an important part in determining their forms and size and general arrangement. The cathedral is said to be about 11,000 feet above the sea, but the height of the building itself above the level of the ridge it stands on is about 1,500 feet. A mile or so to the westward there is a handsome lake and the glacier-polished granite about it is shining so brightly it is not easy in some places to trace the line between the rock and water, both shining alike. Of this lake, with its silvery basin and bits of meadow and groves, I have a fine view from the spires. Also of Lake Tenaya, clouds rest, and the south dome of Yosemite, Mount Star King, Mount Hoffman, the Mesed Peaks, and the vast multitude of snowy fountain peaks extending far north and south along the axis of the range. No feature, however, of all the noble landscape as seen from here seems more wonderful than the cathedral itself. A temple displaying nature's best masonry and sermons in stones. How often I have gazed at it from the tops of hills and ridges and threw openings in the forests in my many short excursions, devoutly wondering, admiring, longing. This, I may say, is the first time I have been at church in California, led here at last every door graciously opened for the poor lonely worshipper. In our best times everything turns into religion. All the world seems like a church, and the mountains alters, and low. Here, at last, in front of the cathedral, is Blessed Cassiope, ringing her thousands of sweet-toned bells, the sweetest church music I ever enjoyed. Listening, admiring, till late in the afternoon, I compelled myself to hasten away, eastward, back of rough, sharp, spirey, splintery peaks, all of them granite, like the cathedral, sparkling with crystals, feldspar, quartz, hornblend, mica, tourmaline. Had a rather difficult walk and creep across an immense snow and ice cliff, which gradually increased in steepness as I advanced, until it was almost impossible. Slipped on a dangerous place, but managed to stop by digging my heels into the thawing surface, just on the brink of a yawning ice gulf. Camped beside a little pool and a group of crinkled dwarf pines, and as I sit by the fire, trying to write notes, the shallow pool seems fathomless with the infinite, starry heavens in it, while the unlooking rocks and trees, tiny shrubs and daisies and sedges brought forward into the fire-glow, seem full of thought as if about to speak aloud and tell all their wild stories. A marvellously impressive meeting in which everyone has something worthwhile to tell, and beyond the fire-beams, out in the solemn darkness, how impressive is the music of a choir of rills seeing their way down from the snow to the river. And when we call to mind that thousands of these rejoicing rills are assembled in each one of the main streams, we wonder the less that our Sierra rivers are songful all the way to the sea. About sundown, sort of lock of done grayish sparrows going to roost in crevices of a crag above the big snow field. Charming little mountaineers. Found a species of sedge in flower within eight or ten feet of a snow bank. Judging by the looks of the ground, it can hardly been out in the sunshine much longer than a week, and is likely to be buried again in fresh snow in a month or so. Thus making a winter about ten months long, while spring, summer and autumn are crowded and hurried into two months. How delightful it is to be alone here. How wild everything is. Wild as the sky, and as pure. Never shall I forget this big, divine day. The cathedral and its thousands of Cassiope bells, and the landscapes around them, and this camp in the gray crags above the woods with its stars and streams and snow. September 8. Day of climbing, scrambling, sliding on the peaks around the highest sources of the twolomny and mis-said. Climbed three of the most commanding of the mountains, whose names I don't know. Across streams and huge beds of ice and snow, more than I could keep count of. Neither could I keep count of the lakes scattered on table-lands in the cirks of the peaks, and in chains of the canyons, linked together by the streams, a tremendously wild, grey wilderness of hacked, shattered crags, ridges and peaks, a few clouds drifting over and through the midst of them, as if looking for work. In general views, all the immense round landscape seems raw and lifeless as a quarry, yet the most charming flowers were found rejoicing in countless nooks and garden-like patches everywhere. I must have done three or four days climbing work in this one. Limbs perfectly tireless, until I descended into the main upper twolomny valley at the foot of Mount Laial. The camp still eight or ten miles distant. Going up through the pine woods, past the soda-springs-dome in the dark, where there is much fallen timber, and when all the excitement of seeing things was wanting, I was tired. Arrived at the main camp at nine o'clock, and soon was sleeping sound as death. September nine. Wearingness rested away, and I feel eager and ready for another excursion, a month or two long, in the same wonderful wilderness. Now, however, I must turn toward the lowlands, praying and hoping heaven will shove me back again. The most telling thing learned in these mountain excursions is the influence of cleavage joints on the features sculptured from the general mass of the range. Evidently, the denudation has been enormous, while the inevitable outcome is subtle, balanced beauty. Comprehended in general views, the features of the wildest landscape seem to be as harmoniously related as the features of a human face. Indeed, they look human and radiate a spiritual beauty, divine throughout, ever covered and concealed by rock and snow. Mr. Delaney has hardly had time to ask me how I enjoyed my trip, though he has facilitated and encouraged my plans all summer and declares I'll be famous some day, a kind guest that seems strange and incredible to a wandering wilderness lover with never a thought or dream of fame, while humbly trying to trace and learn and enjoy nature's lessons. The camp staff is now packed on the horses and the flock is headed for the home ranch. Away we go, down through the pines, leaving the lovely lawn where we have camped so long. I wonder if I'll ever see it again. The sod is so tough and close it is scarcely at all injured by the sheep. Fortunately they are not fond of silky glacier meadow-grass. The day is perfectly clear, not a cloud or the faintest hint of a cloud is visible, and there is no wind. I wonder if in all the world, at a height of 9,000 feet, weather so steadily, faithfully calm and bright and hospitable, may anywhere else be found. We are going away fearing destructive storms, though it is difficult to conceive whether change is so great. Though the water is now low in the river, the usual difficulty occurred in getting the flock across it. Every sheep seemed to be invincibly determined to die any sort of dry death rather than wet its feet. Carlo has learned the sheep business as perfectly as the best shepherd and it is interesting to watch his intelligent efforts to push or frighten the silly creatures into the water. They had to be fairly crowded and shoved over the bank, and when at last one crossed it because it could not push its way back, the whole flock suddenly plunged in, headlong together, as if the river was the only desirable part of the world. Aside from mere money profit, one would rather herd wolves than sheep. As soon as they clambered up the opposite bank, they began buying and feeding as if nothing unusual had happened. We crossed the meadows and drove slowly up the south rim of the valley through the same woods I had passed on my way to Cathedral Peak and camp for the night by the side of a small pond on the top of a big lateral moraine. September 4 In the morning at daybreak, not one of the 2,000 sheep was in sight. Examining the tracks, we discovered that they had been scattered, perhaps by a bear. In a few hours all were found and gathered into one flock again, had a fine view of a deer, how graceful and perfect in every way it seemed, as compared with the silly, dusty, tousled sheep. From the high ground hereabouts had another grand view to the northward, a heavy, swelling sea of domes and round-back ridges fringed with pines and bounded by innumerable, sharp-pointed peaks, grey and barren looking, though so full of beautiful life. Another day of the calm, cloudless kind, purple in the morning and evening. The evening glow has been very marked for the last two or three weeks, perhaps the zodiacal light. September 11 Cloudless Slight frost Calm Fairly started downhill and now are camped at the western meadows of Lake Tenaya, a charming place. Lake smooth as glass, mirroring its miles of glacier-polished pavements and bold mountain walls. Find Aster still in flower. Here is about the upper limit of the dwarf form of the gold-cup oak, 8,000 feet above sea level, about 2,000 feet higher than the California black oak, Quercus californicus. Lovely evening. The lake reflections after dark, marvellously impressive. September 12 Cloudless day, all pure sun gold. Among the magnificent silver furs once more, within two miles of the brink of Yosemite, at the famous Portuguese Bear Camp, Chaparral of gold-cup oak, Manzanita and Sianothus, abundant hereabouts, wanting about the Tuolumni meadows, though the elevation is but little higher there. The two-leaved pine, though far more abundant about the Tuolumni meadow region, reaches its greatest size on stream-sides hereabouts and around meadows that are rather boggy. All the best dry ground is taken by the magnificent silver fir, which here reaches its greatest size and forms a well-defined belt. A glorious tree have fine bed of its boughs tonight. September 13 Camp this evening at Yosemite Creek, close to the stream, on a little sand-flat nearer old campground. The vegetation is already brown and yellow and dry. The creek almost dry also. The slender form of the two-leaved pine on its bank-ears I think, the handsomest I have anywhere seen. It might easily past at first sight for a distinct species, though surely only a variety, mariana, due to crowded and rapid growth on a good soil. The yellow pine is as variable, or perhaps more so. The form here and a thousand feet higher on a crumbling rocks is broad branching, with closely furrowed, reddish bark, large cones and long leaves. It is one of the hardiest of pines and has wonderful vitality. The tassels of long, stout needles shining silvery in the sun when the wind is blowing them all in the same direction is one of the most splendid spectacles these glorious Sierra forests have to show. This variety of Pinus ponderosa is regarded as a distinct species, Pinus Jeffray by some botanists. The basin of this famous Yosemite stream is extremely rocky, seems fairly to be paved with domes like a street with big cobblestones. I wonder if I shall ever be allowed to explore it. It draws me so strongly I would make any sacrifice to try to read its lessons. I thank God for this glimpse of it. The charms of these mountains are beyond all common reason, unexplainable and mysterious as life itself. September 14. Nearly all day in a magnificent fur forest the top branches laden with superb erect grey cones shining with beads of pure balsam. The squirrels are cutting them off at a great rate. Bump, bump, I hear them falling soon to be gathered and stored for winter bread. Those that chance to be left by the industrious harvesters drop the scales and bracts when fully ripe and it is fine to see the purple winged seeds flying in swirling, merry looking flocks seeking their fortunes. The bowl and dead limbs of nearly every tree in the main forest are ornamented by conspicuous tufts and strips of a yellow lichen camped for the night at Cascade Creek near the mono trail crossing. Manzanita berries now ripe, cloudless, cloudiness today about point one zero. The sunset very rich, flaming purple and crimson showing gloriously through the aisles of the woods. September 15. The weather pure gold, cloudiness about point zero five. White cirrus flecks and pencilings around the horizon. Move two or three miles and camp at Tamarack Flat. Wandering in the woods here back of the pines which bound the meadows I found very noble specimens of the magnificent silver fur, the tallest about 240 feet high and five in diameter, four feet from the ground. September 16. Crawled slowly four or five miles today through the glorious forest to Crane Flat where we are camped for the night. The forests we so admired in summer seem still more beautiful and sublime in this mellow autumn light. Lovely starry night. The tall spiring treetops relieved in jet black against the sky. I linger by the fire, loathe to go to bed. September 17. Left camp early. Ran over the twalumny divide and down a few miles to a grove of sequoias that I had heard of directed by the dawn. They occupy an area of perhaps less than a hundred acres. Some of the trees are noble, colossal old giants. Surrounded by magnificent sugar pines and Douglas spruces. The perfect specimens, not burned or broken, are singularly regular and symmetrical, though not at all conventional, showing infinite variety in general unity and harmony. The noble shafts with rich, purplish-brown fluted bark, free of limbs for 150 feet or so, ornamented here and there leafy rosettes. Main branches of the oldest trees, very large, crooked and rugged, zigzagging swiftly outward, seemingly lawless, yet unexpectedly stopping just at the right distance from the trunk and dissolving in dense, bossy masses of branchlets, thus making a regular, though greatly varied, outline a cylinder of leafy, out bulging spray masses, terminating in a noble dome that may be recognised while yet far off, upheaved against the sky, above the dark bed of pines and furs and spruces. The king of all conifers, not only in size, but in sublime majesty of behaviour and port. I found a black charred stump about 30 feet in diameter and 80 or 90 feet high. A venerable, impressive old monument of a tree that in its prime may have been the monarch of the grove. Seedlings and saplings growing up here and there, thrifty and hopeful, giving no hint of the dying out of the species. Not any unfavourable change of climate, but only fire threatens the existence of these noblest of gods' trees. Sorry, I was not able to get account of the old monument's annual rings. Camp this evening at Hazel Green, on the broad back of the dividing ridge near the old campground when we were on the way up the mountains in the spring. This ridge has the finest sugar pine groves and finest manzanita and cienothus thickets I have yet found on all this wonderful summer journey. Made a long descent on the south side of the divide to Browns Flat, the grand forests now left above us, though the sugar pine still flourishes fairly well and with the yellow pine, libisedrus and Douglas spruce makes forests that would be considered most wonderful in any other part of the world. The Indians here with great concern pointed to an old garden patch on the flat and told us to keep away from it. Perhaps some of their tribe are buried there. September 19 Camp this evening at Smith's Mill on the first broad mountain bench or plateau reached in ascending the range where pines grow large enough for good lumber. Here wheat, apples, peaches and grapes grow and we were treated to wine and apples. The wine I didn't like but Mr. Delaney and the Indian driver and the shepherd seemed to think the staff divine. Compared to sparkling Sierra water fresh from the heavens it seemed a dull muddy stupid drink. But the apples best of fruits, how delicious they were, fit for gods or men. On the way down from Browns Flat we stopped at Bower Cave and I spent an hour in it, one of the most novel and interesting of all nature's underground mansions. Plenty of sunlight pours into it through the leaves of the four maple trees growing in its mouth, illuminating its clear, calm pool and marble chambers. A charming place, ravishingly beautiful, the accessible parts of the walls sadly disfigured with the names of vandals. September 20 The weather still golden and calm but hot. We are now in the foothills where all the conifers are left behind except the grey Sabine pine. Camped at the Dutch boys' ranch where there are extensive barley fields now showing nothing save dusty stubble. September 21 A terrible, hot, dusty sunburned day and as nothing was to be gained by loitering where the flock could find nothing to eat save thorny twigs and chaparral. We made a long drive and before sundown reached the home ranch on the yellow San Joaquin plain. September 22 The sheep were let out of the corral one by one this morning and counted and, strange to say, after all their long and venturous wanderings in bewildering rocks and brush and streams scattered by bears and by azalea, calmyr, alkali, all are accounted for. Of the two thousand and fifty that left the corral in the spring lean and weak two thousand and twenty-five have returned fat and strong. The losses are ten killed by bears one by a rattlesnake one that had to be killed after it had broken its leg on a boulder slope and one that ran away from blind terror on being accidentally separated from the flock thirteen all told. Of the other twelve doomed never to return three were sold to ranchmen and nine were made camp mutton. Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the range of light surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built and rejoicing in its glory I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again. End of section fifteen and end of my first summer in the Sierra read by Adrian Pretzels in Santa Rosa, California June 3rd 2009 in commemoration of the one hundred and fortyth anniversary of Mures first summer in the Sierra