262 



Sierra Club Bulletin 



and metamorphosed into granite; outcropped and ground by the 

 first glaciers, spread out as soil and silt, the home and the grave of 

 living creatures; washed by softer rains and compacted into sedi- 

 mentary rock, with the fossils of its children hidden in its matrix; 

 crumpled and tilted into a new mountain range, with its crown of 

 living verdure, its veil of shifting cloud, its diamond cascades; its 

 face scarred with the glaciers and the storms of ages and buried in 

 its structure the record of all the ages before — that is a tale, not of 

 death, but of life. Vast time and vast forces have gone to the making 

 of the mountain, but they are comprehensible and finite; the projec- 

 tion, not the immediate symbol, of the Infinite. The mountain in- 

 spires to thought and to work. There are things to understand and 

 things to do, all on a scale grand enough to uplift, but not over- 

 whelming enough to cast down. Humanly the mountain speaks the 

 language and preaches the creed of the occidental man. One can be 

 a Christian in the mountains, and believe in a personal God and an 

 individual immortality. Also, one can work and think and study, 

 and remember and plan. 



A mountain's life is a man's life multiplied by billions, but not 

 a changeless infinity. The mountains call us, not to rest, but to 

 work. A great peak is a frowning challenge, until v/e have scaled it ; 

 a strong and trusted friend thereafter. We can share the life of the 

 mountain; we can search its history until we are as old in knowledge 

 as it is in experience; we can stand on its summit and be lifted up 

 in spirit as if we had grown to its height and expanded in soul to the 

 whole reach of a broadened horizon. The glaciers have carved a 

 castle for us whose ceiling the sun emblazons with cubic miles of 

 filmy gold; the winds fling banners from the bleak peaks; the win- 

 ters of ages have piled our partitions ; the summers of centuries have 

 grown the pines for our bedposts, and God has scattered the firma- 

 ment with stars, to give us courage by contemplating their infinity, 

 to measure our pygmy finitude against the giant but also finite 

 mountains. The torrents and the pines sing to us, the birds and the 

 busy squirrels speak to us, the rocks preach to us, and the mind is at 

 stress with the muscles as the soul breathes deep with the lungs. So 

 the mountains enter into our lives as we enter into theirs. We are 

 lifted up in the high places, not beyond ourselves, but to our best 

 selves. 



But the sea preserves no marks of the finger of God, and its God 



