With the Sierra Club in 1914 



247 



WITH THE SIERRA CLUB IN 1914 



By Bertha Gorham Pope 



The Sierra Club trip of 1914 really began, as always, 

 with that first vivid moment when one has made the ir- 

 revocable decision and knows for sure that he is actually 

 to be numbered, for the first or the twentieth time, in that 

 goodly fellowship up among the great glorious wastes of 

 the California mountains. It is from that moment that one 

 travels : hits the trail of the ideal at dawn with an airy ease 

 — somewhat unlike that in real life, be it said — looks off 

 across a world from rocky peaks, meets rare friends in 

 strange guise and parts from them again, eats the simple 

 savory food of the gods and knows their fellowship, and 

 at night lies down in Arcadian simplicity with only a sleep- 

 ing bag and a friendly slender bush between him and all 

 the world around. Not always is the fancy of the prospec- 

 tive Sierran thus employed. He can be practical. He dis- 

 cusses shoes, down blankets versus wool, and makes lists 

 illimitable for thirty pounds of baggage. During all this 

 time of dreaming and of preparation, the affairs of the class- 

 room or the office are regarded as but impertinent interrup- 

 tions to the real business of life. 



After such a period, and it is by no means the least happy 

 part of one of the happiest experiences in life, we found 

 ourselves at last, after a night in the Pullman, tearing along 

 a somewhat crooked track above the foaming Merced river 

 on our way to El Portal of the Yosemite. There had 1)een 

 a wreck a few days before, and our morning was piquant 

 with expectation of seeing the overturned coaches below us 

 at the river's edge, and we finally saw them. Some of our 

 women (the night before) had so anticipated even more 

 than a spectacle that they went to bed in stout Sierra boots 

 and skirts — just as if one did not more closely approximate 

 angelic styles in the usual garb of night! 



