John Muir: Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies, Memoirs & Letters (Illustrated Edition)
the nearest point on the Southern Pacific railroad. It is about nine miles long, half a mile wide at the bottom, and 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. The walls are quite as precipitous as those of Yosemite, 3,000 to 4,000 feet high, and sculptured in the same grand style so characteristic of all the valleys of this kind in the Sierra. As to water-falls, those of the new Yosemite are less striking in form and in the songs they sing, although the whole quantity of water pouring into the valley is greater, and comes from higher sources. The descent of the Kings Valley waters is made mostly in long, dashing cascades, and falls of moderate height, that are far less showy in general views than those of Yosemite.
My last visit to this magnificent valley was made with a small party in July, 1875, when the beauty of its wildness was still complete. We set out from Yosemite, pushing our way through the wilderness, past Clark's Station, through the Mariposa grove of big trees, and the luxuriant forests of upper Fresno, down to the dappled plain of the San Joaquin. Thence, skirting the margin of the foot hills, we crossed the stately current of Kings River near Centerville, and facing eastward, climbed again into the sugar-pine woods, and on through the grand Sequoia forests of the Kaweah. Here we heard the sound of axes, and soon came upon a group of men busily engaged in preparing a section of one of the big trees they had felled for the Centennial Exhibition. This tree was 25 feet in diameter at the base, and so fine was the taper of the trunk it still measured 10 feet in diameter at a height of 200 feet from the ground. According to the testimony of the annual wood-rings, it was upwards of 2,000 years of age.
Out of this solemn ancient forest we climbed yet higher into the cool realms of the Alpine pines, until at length we caught a long sweeping view of the glorious Yosemite we were so eagerly seeking. The trail by which we descended to the bottom of the valley enters at the lower or west end, zigzagging in a wild, independent fashion over the south lip of the valley, and corresponding both in position and direction with the old Mariposa trail of Yosemite, and like it, affording a series of grand views up the valley, over the groves and meadows between the massive granite walls. So fully were these views Yosemitic in all their leading features it was hard to realize that we were not entering the old Yosemite by Inspiration Point.
In about two hours after beginning the descent we found ourselves among the sugar-pine groves at the lower end of the valley; and never did pines seem more noble and religious in gesture and tone.
The sun, pouring down mellow gold, seemed to be shining only for them, and the wind gave them voice; but the gestures of their outstretched arms appeared wholly independent of the wind, and impressed one with a solemn awe that overbore all our knowledge of causes, and brought us into the condition of being newly arrived from some other world. The ground was strewn with leaves and cones, making a fine surface for shadows; many a wide even bar from tapering trunk and column, and rich mosaic from leaf and branch; while ever and anon we came to small forest openings wholly filled with sunshine like lakes of light.
We made our first camp on the river bank, a mile or two up the valley, on the margin of a small circular meadow that was one of the most perfect flower gardens I have ever discovered in the Sierra. The trampling mules, whom I would gladly have kept out, fairly disappeared beneath the broad over-arching ferns that encircled it. The meadow was filled with lilies and orchids, larkspurs and columbines, daisies and asters and sun-loving golden-rods, violets and roses and purple geraniums, with a hundred others in prime of bloom, but whose names few would care to read, though all would enjoy fresh, wild beauty. One of the lilies that I measured was six feet long, and had eleven open flowers, five of them in their prime. The wind rocked this splendid panicle above the heads of the geraniums and briar-roses, forming a spectacle of pure beauty, exquisitely poised and harmonized in all its parts.
It was as if nature had fingered every leaf and petal that very day, readjusting every curving line and touching the colors of every corolla; and so, she had for not a leaf was misbent, and every plant was so placed with reference to every other, that the whole garden had seemingly been arranged like one tasteful bouquet. Here we lived a fine, unmeasured hour, considering the lilies, every individual flower radiating beauty as real and appreciable as sunbeams. Many other wild gardens occur along the river bank, and in many a cool side dell where streams enter, but neither at this time nor on my first visit to the valley were any discovered so perfect as this one. Toward the upper end of the valley there is quite an extensive meadow stretching across from wall to wall. The river borders are made up chiefly of alder, poplar, and willow, with pines and silver-fir where the banks are dry, and the common fringe of underbrush and flowers, all combined with reference to the best beauty and the wants of the broad crystal river.
The first two miles of the walls, beginning at the lower end of the valley, are bevelled off at the top, and are so broken and soil-besprinkled that they support quite a growth of trees and shaggy bushes; but farther up, the granite speedily assumes Yosemitic forms and dimensions, rising in stupendous cliffs, abrupt and sheer, from the level flats and meadows. On the north wall there is a rock like the El Capitan, and just above it a group like the Three Brothers. Further up, on the same side, there is an Indian Canyon, and North Dome, and Washington Column. On the south wall counterparts of the Cathedral and Sentinel Rocks occur in regular order, bearing the same relations to each other that they do in the old Yosemite. Our journey up the valley was perfectly enchanting, every bend of river presenting reaches of surpassing beauty, the sunbeams streaming through the border groves, or falling in broad masses upon white rapids or deep, calm pools. Here and there a dead pine, that had been swept down in floodtime, reached out over the current, its mosses and lichens contrasting with the crystal sheen of the water, and its gnarled roots forming shadowy caves for speckled trout, where the current eddies slowly, and protecting sedges and willows dip their leaves. Amid these varied and everchanging river views the appreciative artist may find studies for a lifetime. The deeply sculptured walls presented more and more exciting views, calling forth enthusiastic admiration. Bold, sheer brows, standing forth in a full blaze of light; deep, shadow-filled side canyons and gorges, inhabited by wild cascades, groups of gothic gables, glacier-polished domes coming in sight in ever changing combinations and with different foregrounds. Yet no rock in the valley equals El Capitan, or the great Half Dome; but, on the other hand, from no part of the Yosemite walls could a section five miles in length be selected equal in beauty and grandeur to five miles of the middle portion of the south wall of the new valley.
We camped for the night at the base of the new Washington Column, where ferns and lilies reached to our heads, the lavish exuberance of the vegetation about us contrasting with the bare, massive fronts of the walls. The summer day died in purple and gold, and we lay watching the fading sunshine and growing shadows among the heights. Each member of the party made his own bed, like birds building nests. Mine was made of overlapping fern fronds, with a few mint spikes in the pillow, combining luxurious softness and fragrance, and making the down beds of palaces and palace hotels seem poor and vulgar.
The full moon rose just after the night darkness was fairly established. Down the valley one rock after another caught the silvery glow, and stood out from the dusky shadows in long, imposing ranks like weird spirits, while the thickets and groves along the river were masses of solid darkness. The sky bloomed with stars like a meadow with flowers. It was too surpassingly beautiful a night for sleep, and we gazed long into the heart of the solemn, silent grandeur ere the weariness of enjoyment closed our eyes.
Next morning we continued on up the valley in the sunshine, following the north bank of the valley to where it forks at the head. The glacier-polished rocks glowed in the slant sunbeams in many places as if made of burnished metal. All the glacial phenomena of the new valley--the polished surfaces, roches moutonnées, and moraines are fresher, and therefore less changed, than those of the old. It is evidently a somewhat younger valley, a fact easily explained by its relations to the fountains of the ancient glaciers lying above it among the loftiest summits of the range. Like the old valley, this is a favorite resort of Indians because it produces acorns, and its waters abound in trout. They, doubtless, have names for all the principal rocks and cascades, and many grotesque and ornamental legends relating to them, though as yet I have not learned any of them.
This valley is already beginning to attract tourists from all parts of the world, and its fame may yet equal that of the old. It is quite accessible, the greater part of the distance from the railroad being by a good wagon-road, and