82 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



the forest into the tumbled gorges of the Cascade Range, 

 advancing like a sea of white-capped billows in a vast 

 wave line against the western sky. Far to the north- 

 west rose the blue and white cone of Mount Baker. To 

 the southwest, across the hole which held in its depths 

 the green jewel of Lake Chelan, and seemingly but just 

 beyond the opposite wall of that hole, lay the white- 

 crowned ridge of Glacier Peak, 10,435 feet, the glaciers 

 sprawling down its summit like some monstrous octopus 

 of ice. All between was a world of upheaved magnifi- 

 cence, of deep ravine and sun-washed pinnacle, of naked 

 precipices and dazzling snowfields, of dark, timbered 

 slopes and the glimpse of flashing water. Down those six 

 thousand feet below you lay the lake, the green pathway 

 to this pageant of the peaks. Lake and pinnacle, forest 

 and glacier, are dedicated to the nation; they are our own 

 forever. Yet they are but a relatively small section of 

 the unending range, set apart because of its perfection. 

 A young poet of the Hood River Valley, homesick in 

 New York, not long ago put his longing into verse. He 

 spoke of the call of the West, and then he said: 



" But mightier still than its clarion call 

 Is the walloping bigness of it all, 

 And you live the days when your eye swept clear 

 From the slopes of Hood to old Rainier. 

 Canon on canon rock-ribbed piles 

 Rolling away for a hundred miles 

 And the gold of the sunset on leaf and branch 

 Crowding your soul like an avalanche." 



