John Muir: Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies, Memoirs & Letters (Illustrated Edition)
we become reassured by the glad birds and flowers, a chain of small lakes is seen, extending from the very summit of the pass, linked together by a silvery stream, that seems to lead the way and invite us on. Those near the summit are set in bleak rough rock-bowls, scantily fringed with sedges. Winter storms drive snow through the canyon in blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights rushing and booming like waterfalls. Then are these sparkling tams filled and buried leaving no sign of their existence. In June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes; sedges thrust up their short brown spikes about their shores, the daisies bloom in turn, and the most profoundly snow-buried of them all is at length warmed and dressed as if winter were only the dream of a night. Red Lake is the lowest of the chain and also the largest. It seems rather dull and forbidding, at first sight, lying motionless in its deep, dark bed, seldom stiffed during the day by any wind strong enough to make a wave.
The canyon wall rises sheer from the water's edge on the south, but on the opposite side there is sufficient space and sunshine for a fine garden. Daisies star the sod about the margin of it, and the center is lighted with tall lilies, castilleias, larkspurs and columbines, while leafy willows make a fine protecting hedge; the whole forming a joyful outburst of warm, rosy plantlife keenly emphasized by the raw, flinty baldness of the onlooking cliffs.
After resting in the lake the happy stream sets forth again on its travels warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully confiding, no matter how rough the way; leaping, gliding, hither, thither, foaming or clear, and displaying the beauty of its virgin wildness at every bound.
One of its most beautiful developments is the Diamond Cascade, situated a short distance below Red Lake. The crisp water is first dashed into coarse granular spray that sheds off the light in quick flashing lances, mixed farther down with loose dusty foam; then it is divided into a diamond pattern by tracing the diagonal cleavage joints that intersect the face of the precipice over which it pours. Viewed in front, it resembles a wide sheet of embroidery of definite pattern, with an outer covering of fine mist, the whole varying with the temperature and the volume of water. Scarce a flower may be seen along its snowy border. A few bent pines took on from a distance, and small fringes of cassiope and rock-ferns grow in fissures near the head, but these are so lowly and undemonstrative only the attentive observer will be likely to notice them.
A little below the Diamond Cascade, on the north wall of the canyon, there is a long, narrow fall about two thousand feet in height that makes a fine, telling show of itself in contrast with the dull, red rocks over which it hangs. A ragged talus curves up against the cliff in front of it, overgrown with a tangle of snow-pressed willows, in which it disappears with many a surge, and swirl, and plashing leap, and finally wins its way, still grey with foam, to a confluence with the main canyon stream.
Below this point the climate is no longer arctic. Butterflies become more abundant, grasses with showy purple panicles wave above your shoulders, and the deep summery drone of the bumble-bee thickens the air. Pinus Albicaulis, the tree mountaineer that climbs highest and braves the coldest blasts, is found in dwarfed, wind-bent clumps throughout the upper half of the canyon, gradually becoming more erect, until it is joined by the two-leafed pine, which again is succeeded by the taller yellow and mountain pines. These, with the burly juniper and trembling aspen, rapidly grow larger as they descend into the richer sunshine, forming groves that block the view; or they stand more apart in picturesque groups here and there, making beautiful and obvious harmony with each other, and with the rocks. Blooming underbrush also becomes abundant,--azalea, spiraea, and dogwood weaving rich fringes for the stream, and shaggy rugs for the stem unflinching rock-bosses, adding beauty to their strength, and fragrance to the winds and the breath of the waterfalls. Through this blessed wilderness the canyon stream roams free, without any restraining channel, stirring the bushes like a rustling breeze, throbbing and wavering in wide swirls and zigzags, now in the sunshine, now in the shade; dancing, falling, flashing from side to side beneath the lofty walls in weariless exuberance of energy.
A glorious milky way of cascades is thus developed whose individual beauties might well call forth volumes of description. Bower Cascade is among the smallest, yet it is perhaps the most beautiful of them all. It is situated in the lower region of the pass where the sunshine begins to mellow between the cold and warm climates. Here the glad stream, grown strong with tribute gathered from many a snowy fountain, sings richer strains, and becomes more human and lovable at every step. Now you may see the rose and homely yarrow by its side, and bits of meadow with clover, and bees. At the head of a low-browed rock, luxuriant cornel and willow bushes arch over from side to side, embowering the stream with their leafy branches; and waving plumes, kept in motion by the current, make a graceful fringe in front.
From so fine a bower as this, after all its dashing among bare rocks on the heights, the stream leaps out into the light in a fluted curve, thick-sown with sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool among brown boulders, out of which it creeps grey with foam, and disappears beneath a roof of verdure like that from which it came. Hence to the foot of the canyon the metamorphic slates give place to granite, whose nobler sculpture calls forth corresponding expressions of beauty from the stream in passing over it--bright trills of rapids, booming notes of falls, and the solemn hushing tones of smooth gliding sheets, all chanting and blending in pure wild harmony. And when at length its impetuous alpine life is done, it slips through a meadow at the foot of the canyon, and rests in Moraine Lake. This lake, about a mile long, lying between massive moraines piled up centuries ago by the grand old canyon glacier, is the last of the beautiful beds of the stream. Tall silver firs wave soothingly about its shores, and the breath of flowers, borne by the winds from the mountains, drifts over it like incense. Henceforth the stream, now grow stately and tranquil, glides through meadows full of gentians, and groves of rustling aspen, to its confluence with Rush Creek, with which it flows across the desert and falls into the Dead Sea.
At Moraine Lake the canyon terminates, although apparently continued by two lateral moraines of imposing dimensions and regularity of structure. They extend out into the plain about five miles, with a height, toward their upper ends, of nearly three hundred feet. Their cool, shady sides are evenly forested with silver-firs, while the sides facing the sun are planted with showy flowers, a square rod containing five to six profusely flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of bahias and linosyris, and a few poppies, phloxes, gilias and grasses, each species planted trimly apart with bare soil between as if cultivated artificially.
My first visit to Bloody Canyon was made in the summer of 1869, under circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the peculiar offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of Florida, and waded out into the plant-gold of the great Central plain of California while its unrivaled flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had I beheld congregations of social flowers half so extensive, or half so glorious. Golden compositae covered all the ground from the Coast Range to the Sierra like a stratum of denser sunshine, in which I reveled for weeks, then gave myself up to be home forward on the crest of the summer plant-wave that sweeps annually up the Sierra flank, and spends itself on its snowy summits. At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching, botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains ere the fame of Bloody Canyon had reached me.
The mountaineer with whom I camped was one of those remarkable men so frequently found in California, the bold angles of whose character have been brought into relief by the grinding effects of the gold-period, like the features of glacier landscapes. But at this late day my friend's activities had subsided, and his craving for rest had caused him to become a gentle shepherd, and literally to lie down with a lamb, on the smoothest meadows he could find. Recognizing my Scotch Highland instincts, he threw out some hints about Bloody Canyon, and advised me to explore it. "I have never seen it myself," he said, "for I never was so unfortunate as to pass that way; but I have heard many a strange story about it; and I warrant you will find it wild enough."
Next day I made up a package of bread, tied my notebook to my belt, and strode away in the bracing air, every nerve and muscle tingling with eager indefinite hope, and ready to give welcome to all the wilderness might offer. The plushy lawns staffed with blue gentians and daisies soothed my morning haste, and made me linger; they were all so fresh, so sweet, so peaceful.
Climbing higher, as the day passed away, I traced