Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 56 Issue 2.djvu/10

 152 OVERLAND MONTHLY. have learned to loiter. The trail, too, is changing in its tone. We have lived under ing, the time when at home we sit on our the dense forests of the Puget Sound porches just after the evening meal and country, but this is different. There is a long stretch where the trees will soon set. rise up, straight and tall and close to- gether, but where there is no vestige of an undergrowth beneath, not even a blade of grass. to have the calm of an early summer even- turn toward the horizon where the sun Here we pause for a considerable time to enjoy the grandeur of the scene-a scene far beyond the brush and imagina- There are no lower branches, tion of even the greatest of painters. A and the green tops are so far above that all slight rest now and then is a great aid, our world seems colored brown, brown and gives encouragement to further effort. We have one more scramble up the bed of a rocky torrent, now shrunken to small When we reach the steepest part of our proportions, and then our leader cries: tThe tents." The cry is welcome, for to us of the city the walk has been long; but and we struggle. The first little level still we have time to pause and to admire. To our left rises Mount Ararat; to our snow. This tiny plateau is all surrounded right, Iron Mountain, Crystal Mountain, by bold, rugged peaks that seemed to have Pyramid Peak-well named-and reign- opened to let us through. The trees rise ing over the whole region, Mount Rainier dark green around us, but scattered singly towers in his mantle of white that has now turned to soft shades of pink and ame- peaks cut off the sun and send twilight. thyst and violet. Before us stretches our Štretched out before us is a beautiful and Mecca, the Hunting Ground. The meadow runs on for some distance, then seemingly breaks sheer off. Far on the other side of the valley that must lie below, rise the stretches a white carpet of graceful adder lofty peaks of the next ridge. Over all the Hunting Ground is spread a carpet of the most gorgeous hues. The background is of moss and grass; the pattern, of every color, crimson, purple, yellow, orange, blue, violet, white, and a hundred shades A Harvard pro- fessor gave up his chair to come and live tile; we may perhaps carry a few blooms among the flowers of Paradise Valley, and calls these blooms even more beautifully bril- from the soil beneath and brown from the bare trunks that rise so far above us. climb, as far as we can see through the tree tops above, the mountain towers- stretch is welcome, and it brings the first or in groups of two or three. The high wonderful carpet: here and there are patches of snow, and between them as far as the eye can reach through the trees tongues, nodding their heads gently as each zephyr strikes them, true snow flow- ers. It is too beautiful and too different to leave quickly. It seems a desecration to tread upon them, as we must, to pass on. Mankind's desire to grasp the beautiful rises within us, and yet it all seems so fu- of each different color. with us, but the sublimity can live after- wards only as a fading picture of memory. Some great painter some day perhaps will liant than those of Paradise. catch the light and shade, but the soul of it is too illusive to confine. Our way becomes seem to be ascending from one tiny pla- teau to another. There are still trees, but they are more scattered, forming rather an open park. The underbrush has given way to fields of adder tongues and pale stream's edge to greet us. purple flowers. Then through a narrow cleft in the mountains, we take our way of this Hunting Ground, and he But the tents are still in the distance, and we push on. The ponies for the down trail trot past us and their riders pause a moment for the merry salutation of the The spirit of camaraderie less rugged. We mountains. and adventure burns brightly. The landlord rises from a knoll by the He questions us good-humoredly of the trail, and he praises our fortitude in electing to tramp over the snow, and before us lays a lake, it. We begin to grow nearly as much in love with ourselves as with the Hunting Ground. A little flattery at the end of a rise more peaks, Mount Rainier himself long day's climb is soothing. And then towering over them. The great heights he assures us that the seven miles was as the crow flies, that we have covered many, the water smooth and dark. Across it a log cabin stands solitary, and beyond it temper the sun's rays, and the place seems Digiüzed by Google Original from PRINCETON UNIVERSITY