Camping Above the Yosemite. 



95 



cold ; to be a barbarian and a communist, a homeless and 

 roofless vagabond, limited to one gown or one suit of 

 clothes; to lose one's last hat-pin or shoe-lacing, and 

 give devout thanks for a bit of string wherewith to tie 

 oneself together; to make one's toilet on a slippery bank, 

 after a brave plunge into an icy river — all these breaches 

 of convention become commonplaces in such a life as this, 

 part of the adventure, a whispering in the ear of nature's 

 secrets. 



Certain pictures from these nights and days are vivid 

 among beautiful memories. Tuolumne River, which we 

 followed to the beginning of its awesome gorge, has as 

 many moods as an army with banners : slipping, sliding, 

 leaping, cascading, resting in still basins full of fearless 

 trout, leaping over ruthless precipices to a chasm piled 

 with cruel rocks. One morning we followed the Lyell 

 Fork of the Tuolumne back toward its source in Mount 

 Lyell's glaciers, and perched for the night on any rock 

 we could find up the steep slope at the base of the moun- 

 tain, each group having its own little campfire against 

 the frost and snow. The scene was of an indescribable 

 magnificence — an amphitheater of snowy peaks shutting 

 out the southern stars, the great campfire flaming below 

 us and the lesser fires climbing the slope, while the pearly 

 river slipped away northward into the soft still night. 



Another picture is of Lake Mono as it lay hot and blue 

 in the sun, among the ancient pinkish-lilac craters of 

 barren Nevada. As I looked down from the sharp meta- 

 morphic crimson rocks of the Bloody Canon trail, the 

 color of this disk of water flamed like a meteor — a burning 

 deep cerulean which may be seen but once on earth, one 

 of the mystic impossible colors, like the purples of the 

 Grand Canon. And the lavender desert beyond, scarred 

 with volcanoes extinct for ages, looked as old and dead 

 as a landscape of the moon. 



On breaking camp at the Meadows we plunged into 

 the wilderness indeed. The flimsy bread-baking stoves 

 were folded away — from this time canned goods and 



