Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/179

 BAY AND UPPER COAST COUNTIES 145 built, mounts through forests containing trees of both the sub-tropic and the temperate zone. Be- tween the crest and the sea, in a depression on the hill-side, the Muir Woods spread a dark cloak which covers the flank for four or five miles. This retreat is reached by a loop from " the Double Bow Knot." The beautiful sequoia forest is pre- served in its primitive state, according to the will of the donor, William Kent, who, in 1907, gave the Woods, named for John Muir, to the nation. Just under the topmost reach of the mountain is the tavern where the wise will remain at least a night, the very wise many nights and days to com- mune with a view whose physical features were amazing enough without the enhancing grandeur of storm and moonlight, of sunset and fog drifts, flaming with colour and light. Sometimes Nature shuts you in with just the sky and the mountains for companions. The world is drowned beneath a flood of cloud. Great waves of mist come pushing toward the peak ; the black crests of other moun- tains loom like islands in a restless surf. You are aloof, alone. . . . When perhaps for two days your eye has beheld no water, and no land ex- cept the scrubby slopes about you, then the winds sweep in from the Farallones, blow hard upon the fog sea, rend it into rags of vapour, and cities which have lain unseen rise smiling in the sun.