848 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Soil along the banks of a glacial stream prices — prices to make up for the fact 

 is soft and fine as wet flour. It has been you didn't take the $1,000 cabin cross- 

 ground by the mountain gods between ing the Atlantic. But if you really 

 the upper and nether mill-stones of ice want to see the West, there is a better 

 and adamant. Streams from snow way of turning the trick. I am sorry I 

 peaks are clear as crystal. They come cannot give the same recipe for turn- 

 shouting down the mountain sides with ing the trick in each of the six belts of 

 a leap of foaming laughter and joy as of mountains; but you must go differently 

 life disimprisoned by sun warmth from to each. Don't attempt to do all, or 

 snow death; and they hardly quiet their even part of one, in one year! Choose 

 wild leaping till far out on the prairie, what you want to do! Then choose 

 as East of Denver, or East of Calgary, your playground! Then write to the 



I have been asked by sluggish souls National Forest Supervisor of that play- 

 what good it does you to risk breaking ground for directions! If you want to 

 your neck climb'ing mountains. It is hunt, do not go to those National Parks 

 like asking what good it does to bathe which have perpetual closed seasons 

 both body and soul in an atmosphere for game — such as the Banff Park 

 of ozone that electrifies every dull nerve region, or the Grand Canyon Park. If 

 in your body and turns amuck in every you want to fish, don't go to the Desert, 

 one of your slow-going blood corpuscles unless to such exceptional valleys as the 

 a small galvanic battery. It is like Verdes of Arizona; and if you want to 

 asking what good it does you to gain a sleep under the stars, don't go to the 

 new lease of life, so that you are no Northern mountains which are misty 

 longer tired in muscle or mind: what and cold at night in the warmest sum- 

 good it does you to breathe ten thousand mer months. At two o'clock on an 

 years of atmosphere distilled of un- August morning on Moraine Lake I 

 tempered sunbeams and the healing have put on a buffalo coat and called in 

 resin of the pines. An Easterner lies the camp dog to put my feet on him 

 quiescent in a bower of roses and for- and kindled the camp fire, and then 

 getfulness — that is his Nirvana. Not shivered. And if you want to see 

 so the Westerner — when mind and seracs — where the glaciers tumble over 

 nerves are tiredest is the time he shouts a precipice and form blue ice caverns — 

 not for quiescence, but for life, more and to negotiate crevasses where the 

 life, and that is what the mountains snow has covered a chasm a thousand 

 impart with their ozone stabbing to feet deep, better go far North; and al- 

 new life, and their leaping torrents shout- ways — literally always without one ex- 

 ing of life, disimprisoned life, and their ception — go in twos and threes and go 

 pines tossing wild arms to the winds of roped; so if one falls in, the weight of 

 heaven, taking but the deeper grip of the other two on the rope will haul him 

 the eternal rocks the wilder the tempest, out. I have violated this precept and 

 Mountains are what explain that most paid for it; and I never knew a climber 

 precious possession of Northern races — to violate it and not pay for it — so that 

 virility, grip, fire! guides have come to the point where 



To come down from the mountains they say "only a greenhorn or a fool 



to very mundane practical consider- takes chances on mountains." 



ations for the tourists, who are going to A party of Eastern university men 



see their own country first — it need had hired all the guides available but 



not be told that you cannot tour the one. Not meaning to go far and taking 



American West in the luxury you tour only a hght lunch, I roped up with this 



Europe. You can go to the foot hills guide and set out to see some seracs at 



of pretty nearly every peak of first Glacier. I love rock climbing and if 



rank in a motor, if you want to; and if properly booted never tire of it; but I 



you want to, at the foot of that peak loathe ice. I cannot think of any 



you can sit you down in a palatial hotel reason why I loathe ice and love rocks 



that is an imitation of a hotel in London except that I was brought up in a 



or Paris, and pay you the most palatial prairie country where the sidewalks 



