Via Deer Creek 



i8i 



final "r" of "Deer" is on the Government map, tried the cliffs 

 of the south side, and then finally made for a place down-stream 

 some three-quarters of a mile, where the creek again ran into a 

 forest and gave promise that the jungle there would cease. In 

 the meantime it was a hand-to-branch encounter. Underfoot 

 was tippy talus concealed largely by vines. Manzanita did the 

 low tackling, while elder and deer-brush slashed at our faces in 

 front or at our packs from behind. Nor did the sun forget to 

 concentrate his rays on our perspiring foreheads. 



Our destination was Bearpaw Meadow, where we expected 

 to meet two fellow-Sierrans who were coming in from the 

 Giant Forest to join the main party. We might now have fol- 

 lowed on down the canon to Wet Meadow and climbed up to 

 Bearpaw by trail. Preferring, however, to keep grade, we fol- 

 lowed up the right bank of the Kaweah River. From Lone Pine 

 Meadow down to its confluence with Deer Creek this branch of 

 the Kaweah is almost one long cascade. We spent the after- 

 noon climbing up ledges or burrowing through brush without 

 finding a place at which the stream could be forded. But when 

 we surmounted the eight- thousand- foot contour we came out 

 into a wide swale and there gingerly crossed the river on a snow 

 bridge just below the point where it bends to the east. At once 

 we hit the trail from Lone Pine to Bearpaw. Kipling speaks of 

 "the trail that is always new," but in a sense the trail is also 

 always old. That late afternoon, certainly, after our contest 

 with the wilderness, the trail seemed something ancient and 

 familiar and full of comfort. We were glad to set our feet in 

 the way that other human feet had trod. 



Like the hanging gardens of Babylon is Bearpaw Meadow — a 

 part of the slope of the mountain, 1500 to 2000 feet above the 

 Kaweah River. Its long grassy slope, filled with aspens and 

 wild flowers, is watered by little streams that flow across it 

 down the mountainside. Our expected friends did not meet us, 

 and we broke our hardtack in disappointment. 



I remember no more glorious pageant than we witnessed 

 from Bearpaw that evening. Down Kaweah Canon and far on 

 to the west we saw the hot San Joaquin Valley, covered with a 

 dark haze, the sunset sky above it splendid with a tarnished but 

 royal crimson, "the excess of glory obscured," like Satan new- 



