With the Sierra Club in 1914 



255 



of all our camping sites the most marvelous, the most bril- 

 liantly beautiful. Deep blue was the lake, shot through 

 with sparkling light. Bright banks of snow and great dark 

 trees made its setting, and gray peaks rose abruptly above 

 it like the mountains of the moon. Its loveliness was un- 

 earthly. And when night came we looked straight up from 

 our hard beds through black trees into a sky glittering with 

 stars of equally unearthly brilliance. In the usual skies 

 over our lowland country the stars seem mere twinkling 

 punctures in a huge fabric. The eye strains to get a sense 

 of perspective. But the stars above Rodgers Lake that 

 night were silvery flames, globes of trembling fire, and 

 some were terrifyingly near and some infinitely far away. 

 No ripple broke the steel-blue surface of the lake, another 

 firmament with great stars, apparently not reflected, but 

 from its very depths "glittering magnificently unperturbed." 



Yet next morning's journey was scarcely an anticlimax. 

 Much of the day we saw constantly, between dark tree 

 trunks, glimpses of the opposite wall of Tuolumne Cafion 

 hung with the deep purple veil of space, or our way was 

 through the brilliant garden of flowers that grow so gaily 

 on the protected southern slope. 



That afternoon at the camp in Pleasant Valley we were 

 met by the Tuolumne Gorge detachments quite as expected, 

 save that Mr. Colby's group had pressed on to Hetch- 

 Hetchy, relying solely on the beauties of Nature and much 

 corn meal mush for sustenance during a hard two days' 

 march. 



Rising at dawn may sometimes borrow from necessity a 

 seasoning of pleasure, but the rising at half-past four, at 

 Mr. Tappaan's instigation the day we left Pleasant Valley is 

 in the minds of many, forever unforgivable, for after this 

 superhuman efifort we found ourselves still in the prime of 

 the morning, after a six mile stroll through forest and open 

 garden, in camp on Rancheria Mountain. It was unbeliev- 

 able, and many could scarcely be persuaded to stop. Since 

 the day was on our hands, so to speak, we killed a huge rat- 

 tlesnake or two, and then climbed to the outlook. No place 

 in the Sierra offers such a generous reward for so little 



