Glacier Camp
Glacier Camp
The good old captain of the little craft weaves fact and fancy into wonderful yarns as he steers his launch straight for the long, purplish-green point which is the landing. To him no ocean greyhound is more seaworthy than his boat, and he likes to tell of timid tender-feet entreating him to keep to shore when the lake was tumultuous with storm, and how he, spurning danger, guided them all safely through the trough of the waves. He keeps a little log wherein each passenger is asked to write his name. The poor old man has a maimed hand, his eyes are filmy with years and his gums are all but toothless, but it would seem that naturehas compensated him for his afflictions by concentrating his whole strength in his tongue. He knows each landmark well, and gravely points out to the credulous traveller, the highest mountain in the world; calls attention to the 18,000 fathoms of lake depth whence no drowned man ever rises, and other marvels, each the greatest of its kind upon the circumference of the globe. There came a day soon after when the lake chafed beneath a lashing gale and the little craft and her gallant captain were dumped ingloriously upon the beach. But accidents happen to the best of seamen, and the launch, after a furious expulsion of steam, and much hiccoughing, was dragged once more into her place upon the wave.
Although there is evidence that Lake McDonald was long ago frequented by some of the Indian tribes, it was not known to the world until comparatively recent times. There are two stories of its discovery and naming, both of whichhave a foundation of truth. The first is that Sir John McDonald, the famous Canadian politician, riding across the border with a party, cut a trail through the pathless woods and happening to penetrate to the lake, blazed his name upon a tree to commemorate the event, thus linking his fame with the newly found natural treasure. The old trail remains—probably the virgin way into the wilderness. The second story—which is from the lips of Duncan McDonald, son of Angus, runs thus: He and a little band of Selish were crossing from their own land of the Jocko into the country of the Blackfeet which lies East of the Main Range, to recover some ponies stolen by the latter tribe, when they came in view of this lake hitherto unknown to them. Duncan McDonald, who was the leader orpartizan, as the French-Canadians say, blazed the name "McDonald" upon some pines along the shore. It matters little who was actually the first to set foot onthese unpeopled banks, but it is a strange coincidence that the two pathfinders should have borne the same name.
The purplish-green point draws nearer, log cabins appear among the trees, each one decorated with a bear skin hung near its door. This is a fur trading center as well as a resort of nature lovers, and upon the broad porch of the club house is a heap of pelts of silver tip, black and brown bear, mountain lion and lynx, and from the walls within, bighorn sheep and mountain goats' heads peer down. The trappers themselves, quaint, old hunters of the wilderness, come out of their retreats to trade. But even now their day is passing. With the advent of outside life these characters, scarcely less shy than the game they seek, move farther back into uncontaminated solitudes. They are the last, lingering fragment of that old West which is so nearly a sad, sweet memory, a loving regret.
Each hour of the day traces its lapse inlight and shadow on the lake, until the sunset flowing in a copper tide, draws aureoles of golden cloud over the white-browed peaks, transforming their huge and rugged bulk into luminous light-giving bodies of faded roses and lavender. As the evening wanes the mountains burn out in ashes of roses, still lightened here and there upon their ultimate heights, with a glow as faint as the memory of a dead love, and the living halo of the clouds deepens into coral crowns. Then the lake becomes a vast opal, kindling with fires that flash and die in the growing dusk.
The dark forests that cloak the lake shores, are threaded with trails each leading to some treasure store of Nature far off in the secrecy of the hills. One of great beauty starts from the head of the lake, beneath the shadow of the mountains, and overhangs the boisterous, rock-rent torrent of McDonald's Creek. The narrow way is padded thick with pineneedles ground into sweet, brown powder which deadens the least intrusive footfall, as though the whole wood were harkening to the singing of the waters through the silence of the trees. Along the trail are mosses of multitudinous kinds. The delicate star moss unfolds its feathery points of green; a strange variety with thick, mottled leaves grows like a full blown rose around decayed trees, and a small, pale, gray-green trumpet-shaped moss rears hosts of elfin horns. Only a skilled botanist could classify these rich carpets which Nature has spread over the dead royalty of her forests, so that even in their death there is resurrection; even in their decay, new life. Bluebells and twinflowers, those delicate faery-bells of pink, sweet grass, pigeon berry and many another blossom beautiful in its strangeness, weave their colour into gay patterns on the green; blend their fragrance with the balsam sweetness of the woods. And all around, the stately pine trees growbearded with long, gray moss which marks their antiquity and foretells their doom. The stream below, flowing between steep banks that it has cut during centuries of ceaseless washing, raises its song to a roar as it flings its swift current over a parapet of stone in a banner of shimmering, white foam. Above, the water breaks in whirling rapids and farther still is another fall. Towering in the distance is an exalted peak, the father of this stream, whose snowy gift pours down its perennial blessing into the clear tide of the lake.
So it is, the streams that issue from the glaciers yield their pure tribute to Lake McDonald, and all the trails, uncoiling their devious and dizzy ways over the mountains, bring us back to these shores. And every time that we return it breaks upon us with renewed freshness of mood. It may be ridden by a wind that lashes it into running waves of purple and wine colour, marked with the white foot-printsof the gale. It may be still as the first thought of love, holding in its broad mirror the bending sky and mountains peering into its secrecy. It may be ephemeral with mist that dims the mountains into pale, shadowy ghosts; or it may be like a voluptuous beauty glittering with jewels and clad in robes of silken sheen; again, it may be Quakerish in its pallid monotone. The changing cycle of the day and night each brings its different gift of beauty, and likewise, the passing seasons deck the mountains and the waters with a glory all their own, until, with martial hosts of cloud, with banners streaming silver and emblazoned with lightning-gleam, Winter spreads its garment of white upon the mystery of the wild. Perhaps the lake is never so exquisite as then. At least it seems so, as with closed eyes and passive soul, a memory undimmed arises out of the past.
It is night in the dead of Winter. The silence of deep sleep and isolation is onthe world. The snow has fallen like a flock of white birds and the air has cleared to the degree of scintillating brilliance that mocks the diamond's flash. The full moon is beneath a cloud and its veiled light, filtering through the vapor, shows dimly the shadowy waters and the wan peaks fainting far away. Then the cloud passes. The moon leaps into the heavens and a flood of white light illumines the water, the sky and the mountains, transforming the whole into a faery scene of arctic splendour. It is as though the last breath of life had vanished in that chaste frozen atmosphere, and the earth had become a Palace of Dreams.
And though that Palace of Dreams vanishes as dreams must, like a melting snow crystal or a frosty sigh upon the night, there remains in our hearts a yearning which shall bear us back to the reality of beauty that rewards each pilgrim who returns to the deathless glory of the mountain-married lake.
OFall the trails in the McDonald country, there is none more travelled, or more worthy of the toil than that which leads to the Piegan glacier. From the moment we stand in expectant readiness in the little clearing behind the log cabins comprising the hotel, a new phase of existence has begun for us. So strange are the place and the conditions that it seems we must have stepped back fifty years or more, into that West whose glamour lives in story and song. Strong, tanned, sinewy guides who wear cartridge belts and six-shooters, load grunting pack-horses and "throw" diamond-hitches in businesslike silence. When at last all is ready, the riders mount the Indian ponies or "cayuses"—Allie Sand, the yellow cow pony; Babe, the slumbrous; Bunchie, but recently subdued, and Baldy, nicknamed "Foolish" because of the musical pack of kettles, camp stoves and sundries that jingle and jump up and down upon his back, lightening the way with merriment for those who follow. With a quickened beating of the heart, the good cheer and Godspeed of friendly voices ringing in our ears, we take leave of the last haunt of civilization and strike out into the virgin solitude of heaven-aspiring peaks.
As the feeling of remoteness smites the spirit when we pass beyond the railway station of Belton and follow in creaking wagons the shadow-curtained road to the lake, so now it returns with stronger impulse, calling to life new emotions begotten of the Wild. The world-rush calms into the great stillness of untrodden places, the world-voices sigh out in the murmuring breeze, the petty traffic of the cities is forgotten in the soulful silenceof the trees. And out of this newly found affinity with the Nature forces, the love of adventure thrills into being, together with the fine scorn of danger and the resolve to do that which we set out to do no matter what the cost or the peril. Here the "white feather" is the greatest badge of dishonour, and he who fails through cowardice to win his goal is a man among men no more. This spirit is the faint, far-off echo of the hero-bearing days of the early West.
Our guide is a stocky, little man of soldierly bearing, clad in khaki suit and cow-boy hat, whom his fellows call "Scotty." He is brown with exposure, smoothly shaven, and his keen, blue eyes are slightly contracted at the corners from the strain of peering through vast distances—a characteristic of men who follow woodcraft and hunting. He rides ahead silently but for a rebuke to the slumbrous "Babe," such as, "Go on, you lazy coyote," or a familiar, half-caressingremark to Bunchie, the ex-outlaw, who is his favourite. Indeed, he, like most men who have ridden the range, has the habit of talking to the ponies as though they knew and understood. And who can be sure they do not?
The forests begin as soon as the bit of clearing is passed, then single file the little cavalcade moves on through huckleberry fields, purplish-black with luscious, ripe berries, where bears come to feed and fatten, where, also, thirsty wayfarers stop to eat the juicy fruit. The pines clasp branches overhead in a lacy, broken roof whose pattern of needle and burr shows in dark traceries against patches of blue sky remote and far beyond. A thick, sweet shadow dappled now and again with splashes of yellow sun tempers the air which presses its cool touch upon our brows. On either hand a dense, even lawn of tender green fern and mist-maiden covers the earth and through the silence sounds the merry clamour of astream. It ripples gaily along between wooded banks, breaking into little crests of foam upon the rocks, showing through the glassy medium of its waters, every stone and pebble of its speckled bed polished and rounded by ceaseless flowing. The horses splash through the creek and upon the opposite side begins anew the delicate lawn of mist-maiden and fern, so freshly, tenderly green with the pale greenness of things that live away from the sun, so ephemerally exquisite as to embarrass coarse, mortal presence. It is a spot fit for fairies to dance upon; fit for wood-nymphs and white hinds to make merry in; fit for the flute-like melody of Pan to awake to dancing echoes as he calls the forest sprites unto high revelry.
A forest ranger joins us. He is tramping to the Gunsight Pass with his axe upon his shoulder and his kit upon his back, to repair the trail to the Great St. Mary's Lakes.
The shades of brown and green, theshadow threaded with an occasional strand of gold, are livened by crimson patches of Indian Paint Brush, bluebells, white starry lilies called Queen's Cups, trembling feathers of coral pink, sun-yellow and white syringa. Beneath the overhanging verdure, around and upon the mossy rocks, the ever-present twinflowers open their delicate petals and sweeten the air, and from clumps of coarse grass rise cones of minute white blossoms, the bear-grass, one of the most curious of the mountain flowers. This ranger knows the common names of nearly all the plants, and at every turn new varieties spring up. He stops to gather each kind of bloom until we have a great bouquet—apotpourriof all the floral beauty of the multitudes that people our path.
The way is very fair, ministering to the senses; troops of new, forest forms and colours pass before the eye, the mingled sweets of the flowers, the pungentmould and balsam of spruce and pine breathe sensuously into the nostrils, and the fingers of the wind caress and soothe as they pass. Through the voiceful silence, sounds that are on the borderland between fancy and reality, thrill for a moment, then are lost in the grand chorus of trees and rushing rivers. A stream of volume and velocity flowing through a deep gorge falls twice in its downward rush. These two falls, the Wynona and Minneopa, flash great, white plumes among steeps of green forest.
With sharp descent and stubborn climb, the trail, that seems the merest thread, untangles its skein and leads, at length, into a small basin partly enclosed within sheer, naked rock-walls, whence three delicate silver streams trickle down and join the creek that waters a little park. Beyond, the peaks loom up masterfully, sheathing their icy lances in the clouds. High over the lip of the mighty rock-wall, rising like the giant counterpart ofan ancient battlement, lies the glacier. Up that precipitous, overhanging parapet we must make our way, but where the footing or how the ascent is to be won, fancy cannot fathom, for it would seem no living thing save a mountain goat, a bighorn sheep or an eagle could scale this stronghold of Nature. Across the basin, where there is a gentler slope, the mountain side is dotted with groups of tall, spire-like pines. The level meadow is grassy and shaded with small spruce of the size of Christmas trees. And in this peaceful spot, girt with grim, challenging steeps, the tinkle of the stream sounds pastorally sweet, while the more distant and powerful roar of the three tumbling streams chants a solemn undertone to the merry lilt.
Here the camp is made. A fire crackles gaily and our tents are pitched beneath the trees. Suddenly a shadow falls,—dimly, almost imperceptibly. The sun has gone. It is only six o'clock in mid-summer, but so lofty are the barrier-heights that even now we are in a world of shade,—shade of a strangely luminous kind, hinting of ruddy lights that are obscured but not quenched. Through the quiet, echo the whistle of the marmot, the metallic whirr of contentious squirrels going off like small alarm clocks, and the mellow, drowsy note of bells ringing to the rhythmic crop of browsing ponies. So the long beautiful twilight settles over the mountains until the sounds are stilled save the tinkling bells and the water-voices singing their ceaseless song. The forest sleeps. Long, mystical fancy-bearing moments and tens of moments pass, and something of awe closes down with the gloaming. Then through the dim, monkish grey shadow pulses a red-gold stream of light that runs in long, uneven streamers across the face of the grim, dark walls, transfiguring them into radiant shapes of living golden-rose. In that effulgence of glory, lost peaks gleam fora second out of the dusk and vanish into nothingness again, snowy diadems flash into being and fade like a dream. The life-blood of the day ebbs and flows, sending out long, slender fingers to trace its fleeting message on the rocks, then with a deepening, crimson glow it flickers and is fled. Night settles fast and the flare of the camp fire, shedding its spark-spangles in brilliant showers, reclaims one little spot from the devouring blackness. It is a magical thing—this campfire, and the living ring around it is an enchanted circle. Perhaps its warmth penetrates even to the heart, or perhaps the bond of human fellowship asserts itself more strongly when only the precarious, flamboyant fire-light, leaping and waning, throwing forth a rain of sparks, or searing grey with sudden decline, separates our little group from utter desolation. Whatever the charm may be, it falls upon us all, and with eyes fixed on the ember-pictures or raised to the starryskies, we listen to tales of the long ago and of a present as unfamiliar as the past. The reserve of our guide is quite broken and he tells in a low, reminiscent voice, of wonder-spots in the range,—for he knows its every peak and gorge,—of the animals that dwell in its solitary recesses and of how the Piegan Glacier got its name.
The Piegan Indians are a branch of the Blackfeet tribe, and in the early days they were almost as noted horse raiders as the Absarokes who flourished near the Three Tetons, in the country of the Yellowstone. Back and forth across the passes they came and went in their nefarious traffic, secure from pursuit among the horns of these lonely heights. The vicinity of the eternal ice-fields, probably this little basin itself, sheltered the shadowy bands, and thus the glacier became known by their name. Still, you may look in vain on the maps for Piegan Glacier; you will find it called Sperry instead.The old name was discarded for that of a Professor who spent some weeks exploring its crevasses and under whose supervision a corps of college students spent a part of one summer's vacation, building the glacier trail. Yet there are those who love the old names as they love the traditions for which they stand, and to them the glacier will forever bear the time-honoured title of these Indians who have long since disappeared from its solitudes.
As the hours pass we draw from our guide and story-teller something of himself. Little by little, in fragmentary allusions and always incidentally, during that even-tide and the days following, we learn thus much of his life. He was born in those troublous days of Indian fighting on the frontier, shortly after his father, an army officer, was ordered out on campaign against the Sioux. When he was but a few weeks old word came to his mother that her husband had been killed,and she, sick and heart-broken, died, leaving besides this infant one other boy. The two children were left to the care of the officers at Fort Kehoe, but they were separated while both were so young that they did not realize the parting nor remember each other. Our guide became the ward of a lieutenant who had been a friend of his father. He played among the soldiers and Indian scouts at the Fort until he came to the age when he felt the desire to learn, then he went East to school, afterwards to college, always returning in the summer to ride the range or to lose himself in the mountains. And when the college days were done that old cry of the West, that old craving for the life that knows no restraint nor hindering bonds, beckoned him back inevitably as Fate. Again and again he had gone forth on the world's highway, once to serve in Cuba in the war with Spain, where in a yellow-fever hospital he met for the first time his older brother, who even then wasdying of the pestilence, but always he returned to the freedom of the wilderness. He is a type in himself, who belongs to the time of Lewis and Clark, rather than to this century—a man who lives too late. And there is about him, for all his carefree indifference to the world, something of indefinable pathos. He is quite alone—he has no kinsfolk and few friends. He is a man without a home but the forests, who has renounced human companionship for the solitudes, without a love but the mountains, to whom the greatest sorrow would be the knowledge that he might never look upon them again.
*****
A cloud, heavy with rain, drifts across the sky, and big, cool drops splash with a hissing noise in the fire, upon our upturned faces, upon the warm, flower-sown earth which exhales, like incense, the odours of sun-heated soil and summer shower. The bright flames deepen to a blood-red glow and ashes gather like hoar frost on the cooling logs and boughs.The circle around the fire disperses to seek the narcotic gift breathed by the pines, sung as a lullaby by the voices of trees and streams.
The start for the glacier is made while the day is young. Pack horses and camp are left behind and with the guide leading the way, the tortuous climb is begun. Sheer as those rock-walls seemed to be, there is a footing for the careful ponies, as from narrow ledge to ledge they turn and zigzag up the mountain-face; and naked as those steeps appeared, they are animated with frisking conies and marmots, and hidden among the stones are rarely exquisite flowers. Here the mountain lilies grow, blossoms with brown eyes in each of their three white petals, covered with soft, silvery fur which makes them seem of the texture of velvet. These lilies are somewhat similar to the Mariposa lily of the California Sierras. The ground-cedar, a minute and delicate plant; strange varieties of fern and moss,and everchanging, unfamiliar flowers appear as we ascend, until, wheeling dizzily hundreds of feet above the basin upon the slight and slippery trail, with things beneath dwarfed by distance into a pigmy world and things above looming formidably, the increasing altitude shears the rocks and leaves them bare and grim. The air grows sharp with icy chill, great billowy, low-trailing clouds drag over the mountain-tops, down the ravines and float in detached banners in free spaces below. Broad stretches of snow lie ahead. The painstaking ponies pick their way across them, for it is fifteen feet down to solid ground. Sluggish streams creep between banks crusty with old ice, and pretty falls, broken into lacy meshes of foam, cascade down a parapet of rock and baptize us as we pass. In this spot the stone wall has been worn into a grotto where the water plays as in a fountain. From every little fissure ferns dart their long green lancesand feathery fronds, and the rocks are grown over with moss.
From our eyrie we look down into a small lake called Peary's, sunk within dark and desolate cliffs, shattered and ground down into fantastic forms. It is but partly thawed and its cold, blue-green centre is enclosed in opaque, greenish-white ice and drifts of snow. Indeed snow is everywhere in broken drifts—in the furrowed mountain-combs and along the level in smooth white stretches. Close to the margin of the ice-sealed shores is a grotesque, sapless, scrubby vegetation, as strange in its way as the brilliant-hued waters or the rocks that impress us with huge antiquity and elemental crudeness, as though we stood face to face with Earth's infancy, close in the wake of ebbing, primeval seas. But for all the savage roughness and arctic chill this is a scene to cherish and remember—the blue cup of heaven, flecked with a thistledown of clouds, the black menace of shiveredrock-crests, the dazzle of the snow and the darkly beautiful waters that are neither blue nor green yet seemingly of both colours, held fast in the circle of cold, pale ice.
Above this lake, down an overhanging wall, are more little falls, indeed the whole country is interlaced with them as though the life-blood of the mountains flowed in silver veins upon the surface. Within the hollow over the stone barrier lies Nansen's Lake, even more frigid in its ice-sheath, more palely green in the little patch of water which the sun has laid bare. And although the mountains soar tremendously, yet ever and anon the course lies upward over the frowning brows, over the very crowns of the Range, until the high peaks, stripped of atmospheric illusion, stand stark and naked to the gaze. There is in this sudden intimacy with the fellows of the clouds, the veiled lords of upper air, an awe which we feel before powers incomprehensible.
At last the trail ceases; overhead are cliffs no horse could climb. The guide ties the ponies, and with a stout rope clambers ahead up a smoothly sculptured parapet. We follow him and find ourselves on a bleak waste which leads to a small basin, strewn with great boulders and lesser rocks, dark and of the colour of slate. Growing upon these rock-heaps are masses of flowering moss starred by tiny pink buds and blossoms, or white spattered with the crimson of heart's blood. And now the guide begins to whistle—a long, plaintive note which is answered presently by a similar sound and a shrill, infantile treble, cheeping, cheeping among the stones. Then from the security of her home a Ptarmigan, or Arctic Grouse, hops into the open with her family of five chicks jumping on her patient back, and tumbling, the merest puff-balls, at her feet. She chirps softly to them, proud and dignified in her maternity, ever watchful of her pretty littlebrood. She is dressed in Quakerish summer-garb of mottled grey, the feathers covering her to the utmost extremity of her toes. Once the winter snows descend, these birds become as white as the frigid regions which they inhabit. Ordinarily they are very wild, but this little mother, knowing only friendliness from human visitors, comes forth trustfully with her beloved young, suffers them to be handled and caressed and she, herself, with wings dropped in the semblance of a pretty courtesy, jumps into the hand of the guide, and from that perch feeds daintily on the pink and white buds of the moss, as fragilely lovely as the snowflakes to which they appear strangely akin. Indeed, the bird, the flowers and the environing snow all seem more of the cloud-land than of the earth.
But there is a sequel to the story of this little grouse, which is, unhappily, a tragedy. Not long after she greeted us, giving an air of friendliness to the forbidding,wind-swept rocks, a Tyrolese came hunting through the mountains. He made his camp near the home of the Ptarmigan and her little ones, and one day when the guide came calling to her there was no answer but the empty whistling of the wind. He called again and again; he searched among the crags and the rock-heaps, then he came upon the ashes of a camp-fire and the mottled feathers and silken down of the Ptarmigan and her chicks. She had been betrayed at last by her trustfulness, and she and her brood had been cruelly sacrificed to the blood-lust and appetite of that enemy of poor dumb things—the man with the gun.
*****
From the mossy basin of the Ptarmigan we climb with ropes up a broken escarpment and there upon the very lip of the glacier are blossoms so unearthly in form and colour as to seem the merest ghosts of flowers. One is a dark, ocean-blue bell and another an ashen-green thing furred over with a beard as soft andcolorless as a moth's wing. From this eminence a stormy, wind-tossed little lake, the Gem, flashes angrily-bright waters beneath snow splashed, wonderfully stratified peaks, and there, through a gateway in the mountains, spreading out in a vast plateau of white, lies the glacier, undulating in frozen waves like a polar sea. Even under its shroud of snow one can trace its course by the seams and wrinkles of a congealed current. It is flanked on all sides by the savage, beetling peaks marshalled in endless ranks like the spears and unsheathed lances of war-gods in their domain midway between earth and heaven. Out across the death-white pallor of snow, in the death-chill of the ice-fields, we strike out slowly, cautiously, for the surface of the ice, now hidden by snow, is cleft by crevasses even to the mountain's core, and a misstep, a fall into their depths would be doom. Far away over the white stretches, a gaunt, spectral coyote watches our painful progress. Onand on we go by a tusk-like peak, the "Little Matterhorn," and ever on to a point where the giant panorama unfolds its mountain-multitudes, its barricaded lakes, and the echo breaks into a chorus that peals out as though each separate crest were possessed of a brazen tongue. These grimly naked heights, split and rent with elemental shocks and the resistance to huge forces, are the cradle of the lightning and the thunder-bolt, the citadel whence the storm-hosts ride down on blackwinged clouds upon the world. And even now phantom troops of clouds come gliding up out of the moist laps of the valleys, out of lakes and streams, passing in shifting wraith-shapes over the mountains, spreading their filmy scarfs across the sky until the livid expanse of snow, showing colourlessly in the grey light, brings to one a vivid picture of the ice-age, of a frozen world and the cold, pitiless illumination of a burnt-out sun.
Gem Lake
Gem Lake
Fine, pricking points of snow cut withthe sharpness of needle-thrusts; the wind whips through the bleak gaps in the Range and over the glacier, gathering cold and speed as it comes. A chilling numbness deadens our feet and hands. So, wind-buffeted, storm-driven, with the trumpeting gale in our ears, we turn back from the kingdom where Winter is unbroken, and descend through alternate shadow and sun into the blooming beauty, into the golden Summer that swims in the world below, whence snow and cold are only hinted of in a white-breasted, mountain-kissing cloud.
PERHAPSthe most sublime sweep of view within the entire Range is gained from the summit of Mount Lincoln. To accomplish this ascent it is necessary to leave the tortuous "switch-back" trail in full view of Gunsight Pass and strike out over a trackless mass of shattered rock, upward toward the peak. The way is steep and difficult, the footing slippery and insecure. The muscles strain to quivering tension, the breath comes in gusty sighs and still the mighty heap of dull rose and green rock rears its jagged crest against the throbbing sky. But even if the climb were tenfold longer and the goal tenfold harder to win, it would be a faint-hearted seeker after thebeautiful who would hesitate to make the sacrifice of toil for the magnificent reward that awaits him.
The rugged pedestal of stone that crowns the peak, drops almost precipitately three thousand six hundred feet, and directly below, in a gorge formed by this and a second chain of lofty mountains, lie two jade-green lakes, the Little Saint Mary's, joined by a slender, far-leaping waterfall. So immense is the distance, that this fall, spanning the seventeen hundred feet between the upper and lower lakes, does not break the brooding quiet with the whisper of an echo. The slim, white column parts upon the rocks into a diamond shape, and when, happily, the sunshine catches in its spray, it becomes a tangle of rainbows. But now, it unfolds its silver scarf silently, colourlessly as a ghost, and the green lake, so far below, receives the pouring tide with never a ripple to mar its smooth surface. The shadow gathers in the gorge and alongthe mountains, the pines are darkly green and in sharp contrast, the unmelted snow fields lie pale and gray-white to the very rim of the lakes forming a setting as of old silver. After the first shock of that sublimity has left the senses free of its thrall, a vast panorama unfolds, dominated by the majesty of mountain-lords flanked and crowded by range upon range of others, rising in lessening undulations to the horizon's rim, as though a sea whose giant billows strove to smite the sky in the throes of an awful storm, were suddenly transformed to stone.
In the crushing might of these great spaces, peering over the brink of the mountain top into the bosom of the smooth, still lakes as coldly beautiful as an emerald's heart, that half-mad idea of self-annihilation clutches at the mind. Perhaps it is the exhilarating leap of the waterfall that tempts one, or perhaps the hypnotic charm of the deep-set, jewel-bright pools, or perhaps some unguessedsecret of gravity which impels the tottering atom into the depths of life-absorbing space. It is the same terrible, savage joy, the magnetism of elemental force which we feel as we stand on the brink of the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone, with the glorious, brave call to death crying from the water voices, while the whisper of life sounds sweetly from the vocal winds of heaven.
And even as we gaze, the sun's light dies and the world is ashen pale. Suddenly over the distant ranges, storm clouds come trooping in black hosts. A heavy silence falls, broken now and again by the boom of thunder and the frightened cry of shelter-seeking birds. Perched upon a point of rock, silhouetted against the sky, a bighorn sheep watches the gathering tempest, unmindful of the muttering thunder and the ominous glow of lightning kindling in the sable-winged array. There is something noble about him as he turns his crest upward to bearthe onslaught of the blast. The purple of the mountains overhanging the lake deepens to black—the blue-black of a clear, night sky—and the snow filling the ravines lies passionless and white as death. Beneath the driving storm-banners, a luridly vivid light casts its reflection upon the earth in a gilded path, revealing the smallest detail of valley and height before the darkness wraps them in its mantle. The Kootenais for one brief instant shine like towers of brass and a pallid mist overhanging an arm of the remote Flathead Lake becomes a golden fleece, then the garish glare passes and mystery and shadow settle down. Violet tongues of lightning dart from the trailing clouds, the martial fifing of the wind makes shrill music through the bleak cairns and empty wastes, and great, splashes of rain fall fragrantly, refreshingly upon the warm ground. But in all the tumult, the cold, jade-green lakes lie unshaken, calm. So truly are they themountains' brides, held securely in their embrace of stone, that not even the wild riding of the gale nor the shivering thunderbolt disturbs their untroubled depths, while their champions, the peaks, in helmets of pale ice do battle with the elements.
The deafening cannonade becomes fainter, the sword-thrust of lightning strikes at other quarry, and the storm, with torn banners dragging low down the mountain sides, like routed hosts in retreat, follow the wake of the thunder, the lightning and the tempest-ridden wind. And as the sun shines forth from the heavens a transformation beams like a blessing from every crag and rock. Still wet with the summer rain, they take on strangely beautiful hues of sparkling rose colour, and green like that of the mother ocean, and the naked, glacier-ground escarpments reveal the exquisite illuminations wrought in flowing, multi-colored bands, in subtle shade and wordless rune,of the record book wherein is writ the history of æons.
Through the dazzle of the sun the sea of mountains re-appears, a flowing tide of purple billows growing more ethereally blue in the distance until they seem but the azure shadow of heaven. And far beneath in the deep, dark gorge, cool with perpetual shade, flanked by mighty mountain walls, are the polished jade-green lakes and the fall, spinning its endless silver skein into the untroubled waters below.
THEtrail to Avalanche Basin starts from the shores of Lake McDonald and plunges almost immediately into forests mysterious with primeval grandeur. Perhaps their denseness is the reason for the wealth of rank-growing weed and shrub that forms one vast screen beneath the spreading branches of pine, tamarack and kingly cedar trees. Whether this is the cause or not, the trail is richer in vegetation than any other that lays open the secrets of the forest's heart. Tall, juicy-stalked bear-weed, devil's walking cane, prickly with venomous thorns, slim, graceful stems of wild hollyhock crowned with pale, lavender blossoms, and broad-leafed thimble berry, bearing fragile, crapy-petalled flowers,weave their verdure into a tangled mass. An occasional path crushed down freshly shows where a bear has lately been, for these lavish brakes are a haunt of the three varieties that dwell in the surrounding mountains—the black, the brown and the silver tip, or grizzly. Strange sounds come up out of the silence, borne through dim, dark vistas where shy things peep and dry twigs snap under careful, stealthy tread. A woodpecker drums resonantly on the bole of a tree; shrill, elfin music quavers with reedy sweetness from the security of dense thickets. A haunting spell steals over the heart and turns the mind to thoughts of sirens, water sprites, and Piping Pan, for in spite of generations of culture, somewhat of that ancient worship of the Wild is revived in us when we are in the virgin woods. The hypnotic charm of the great silence and solitude possesses us and there comes a feeling as of memory of half-forgotten things lived in a dream,—or was itreality? The inarticulate voices of the past come calling in sylvan melody out of the closed lips of the centuries, re-awakening the life of our forebears and revealing to us a fleeting glimpse of something which we cannot define or understand. In this spell of the wilderness we not only feel the emotion of young world-life and race-childhood, but that of our own more personal childhood when the pursuit of a butterfly or a flower winged our feet and warmed our hearts. It may be the scent of a familiar shrub, the flight of a bird, or even the shimmer of dew that brings us afresh, for a moment, that gaily painted memory which the years may dim but never quite obliterate.
The trail is dark with shadow,—the awe of the woods,—roofed with boughs and so still that we seem to hear the breathing of the trees. A sudden turn unfolds a little lake, bright with a living pattern of lily-pads, bursting buds and golden water-lilies. Through a rift inthe pines the distant mountains appear; then the green tide of branches flows together and there is nothing but silence and shadow and the forest. The woods deepen. Low, bushy maples grow among the pines, Colorado spruce sheds its silver sheen amidst the more somber foliage, and towering high above the loftiest pines and tamaracks, of magnificent circumference and sweep of limb, are the cedars, the Lords of the Forest. Off to one side of the trail, among the thick-sown trees, is a giant boulder completely covered with moss, a throne fit for Pan. The pines around it are of goodly size, yet they sprang and grew, perhaps centuries after that huge stone came hurtling downward in a great avalanche, or was borne from the mountain tops by the slow progress of a glacier.
Again the forest pageant changes. There are groves of pine stricken with hoary age, bearded like patriarchs with long, pendent streamers of colourless moss;then comes a young growth of pine, fore-doomed to early death which already shows in the bronze of premature decay. It is a beautiful spot, nevertheless, balsam-sweet and strewn with needles that nurture violets of yellow and purple, twin flowers and Queen's Cups.
There is a sound like wind among the trees though not a branch stirs, and presently there bursts into view a sight of wild, exhilarating grandeur. A swift, tumultuous stream rushing down a steep, narrow channel, clean-cut as a sabre stroke, dashes headlong into a rainbow-ridden fall. The volume of water is churned into a passion of swirling foam that flings its light mist heavenward to descend again in rain. Ferny, mist-fed, moss-grown banks slope gently to the declivity and over smooth, emerald cushions, lacy leaf and trailing boughs, tiny, crystal drops, glinting prismatic hues, tremble and pass away. The air is very sweet with a new and unfamiliar fragrance,and amidst the moss, half hidden beneath grosser leaf and protruding root, is a flower, the loveliest of all the lovely woodland host. It is a small, snowy blossom of five petals and a golden heart, growing on a slender stem from a cluster of glossy, earth-clinging leaves, and as though to hide its chaste, shy beauty, the modest flower turns its face downward towards the ground. Its scent is strong and heavy like that of the magnolia. The guide, who travels the mountains over from the earliest budding to the ultimate passing of the flowers, has never seen this stranger blossom before, and we find it on no other trail. It was unknown, unnamed, so we call it the Star of the Mountains and leave it blooming in the secrecy of that elfin dell.
Above the thunder of the fall sounds a slight, shrill bird note and through the clouds of spray darts a little brown bird, dipping almost into the boiling current, rising upward with a graceful swell anda wild, free lilt, perching finally on a tiny point of rock just over the shock and roar of the flood. This strange little winged sprite is a water-ouzel who makes her home and raises her young upon these insecure, spray-drenched walls, with the water-challenge pealing its menace and breathing its chill on her nest. She and her kind haunt the lonely mountain creeks and rivers, seeking some fall or cataract that flings its spray and sings its song to the silent, ice-imprisoned world. Once the mating season is over and the young are fledged, each bird takes its solitary flight and becomes a veritable spirit of the woodland streams.
The dense forests become broken and sheer cliffs rise to stupendous heights. Upon their sharp and slender pinnacles wild goat and bighorn sheep dwell, and in passing we see a goat so far away on those dizzy steeps that he seems the merest patch of white. Through this gorge, between the mountains, are deep hewn furrowswhere year after year, century after century, the burden of ice from the peaks descends in avalanches. In the Spring when the first thaw begins, a deafening roar like a cannonade heralds the furious onslaught of ice and snow. At such times the Avalanche Trail is a dangerous way to travel, and even now a distant booming reminds us that the mountain forces are never idle, that in their serenity there is force, in their mystery there is still the energy of creation.
Through this narrow passage between overhanging crags, the trail continues until, bearing upward, it suddenly crosses a pretty, milky-hued stream, and thence to a hill-side overlooking a sheet of water opaque and pearly white, in a setting of dark-browed woods. It is Avalanche Lake. The water is perfectly calm, not a breath of air rustles the slightest leaf, but there is no reflection of throbbing, blue sky, of green woods or purple mountains—it does not thrill to the passion of theSummer, flash back azure and gold and picture in its responsive heart the glories of earth and heaven. Because of this, it is different from all the other lakes of these mountains and the shell-like whiteness of its surface, pallidly beautiful as a great pearl, has a peculiar beauty none the less striking for its strangeness. The cause of the milkiness of these waters seems at first without satisfactory explanation, but as we examine them more closely we see that they are charged with infinite multitudes of tiny air bubbles, and every stream that feeds the lake, having fallen from enormous heights, is likewise full of infinitesimal air beads. On the other hand, some contend that the water, pouring down from the glacier is white with particles of finely pulverized rock.
Pushing straight past the lake, through almost impenetrable thickets of whipping willows that fight like live things to guard from vandal footsteps what lies beyond, the journey reaches its climax inAvalanche Basin. There, in that vast amphitheatre sculptured from the living rock by glaciers, carved and scarred by innumerable avalanches descending through the ages, overhung by the Piegan ice fields, six silver streams leap the full height of the great rock walls. The falls seem to melt away before they touch the reality of earth, veritable spirits, born of the snowdrift and the sun; white ghosts spending themselves in spray to reascend into the clouds.