Dutch Flat—A Retrospect 171 
As I stroll amidst these mighty columns 
by the lake with their rich red brown and 
saffron red bark, cracked and fluted and 
rugged, little pictures frame themselves there 
in the sunshine and the silence. The forest 
yields me tree thoughts and forest moods 
which may be imperfectly translated by the 
words strength, amplitude, calm, and by 
self-reliance and freedom. How serene they 
are—the great pines! What grand old age 
is this! Not ruin at last, but strength and 
dominion written in vast rude characters. 
If it were possible to write adequately of the 
forest, it would be in characters equally rude 
and large. 
One who has known the spell of the forest 
will carry the memory of it to the grave. He 
shall come upon it now and again in life, 
stretching away from the confines of his 
every-day thoughts into some mysterious 
background of his mind and shall escape for a 
moment from the din and tumult into its si- 
lence. More than twenty years have elapsed 
since I last saw it, while on an all-summer’s 
tramp south of here through Tuolumne and 
Calaveras Counties and into the Yosemite, 
sauntering day after day through the pines, 
tramping along dusty stage roads, or dreaming 
