i8o 



Sierra Club Bulletin 



which mere man must clamber down sixteen hundred feet to 

 the third lake of Deer Creek. This is the chief difficulty be- 

 tween the Kern and the Giant Forest, and the trail-builder will 

 have his task. 



My pack was small, but I felt as if I were trying to carry a 

 wardrobe trunk down a winding stair without damaging the 

 plaster. For some time one of us had been going ahead and re- 

 ceiving the two packs which the other handed down to him, 

 when it occurred to me that it would be feasible to let my pack 

 slide ahead of me for ten or fifteen feet. A wild mountain sheep 

 could not have sprung from my grasp with a more lifelike leap 

 — one bound to leave the ledge, another to clear the cliff, and 

 out it spun into the blue, and then down, down. ... At the base 

 of the cliffs a little stream ran out between high banks of snow. 

 There, on a rock in the midst, like a wet cormorant^ sunning, I 

 found my much-cursed pack an hour later. 



Gerhart Hauptmann, speaking of mysteries in secret socie- 

 ties, says, "Even children possessing a secret in common swell 

 with a sense of importance." To overcome this childish feeling 

 is difficult in remembering the lake we now approached, which 

 is one of nature's most precious revelations to what can be the 

 merest handful of men. The arcana of all societies, from an- 

 cient Eleusis to a modern Skull and Crossbones, seem paltry by 

 comparison. With a great apostle, I can say, "Behold, I show 

 you a mystery." Down five hundred feet and more, over cliffs 

 which make dawn late, half a dozen cascades shake their silver 

 ribbons. Groups of stately pines stand on the margin of the 

 lake. From its northern edge rise granite cliffs of marvelous 

 sculpturing. At its northwest end its green and blue waters 

 flow out in a slow and limpid stream through a magnificent 

 forest. Every puddle in Italy, every pond in New England — 

 even the waterless hollows of the moon — have their names, but 

 this glorious lake lies flashing in the summer sun, unnamed, 

 almost unknown. 



From this lake (Lake San Graal I think I shall call it until a 

 more authoritative christening) there is no royal highway down 

 Deer Creek. We tried the cliffs to the right, failed, moved a 

 short distance through brake- fern higher than our heads, then 

 through a wildwood tangle, crossed the creek on a log where the 



