CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDEXIII. CLIMBING RED EAGLE
CROSSING THE GREAT DIVIDE
Wejourneyed through the primeval forest without a trail to guide us, through the jagged, thorny, tumultuous pine wilderness. It was not so easy for Lindsay, whose legs are shorter than mine, but he took it as a game of banter leader and moved forward doggedly into the openings I made. We were glad to take advantage of the thousands of wind-smitten trees which lay dead, piled at every angle and piled on one another.
We climbed upward for miles on the white, smooth, dead timber of fallen trees, balancing and jumping, transferring from trunk to trunk, and clambering over the immense stars of upturned roots. We were rewarded at length by a view of the rocks above the tree line and of a tumbling cascade. This was in the direction we required and we made for it and lunched by the cascade become rivulet, and then climbed all the afternoon by rock stairs to the snow.
At six beside a “bride-veil waterfall,” we had supper. Above us was an amphitheatre of red rocks and ruined slate and it seemed but a small climb to the top of the mountain. The gradient was steep and there were large quantities of loose stones. We climbed without intermittence until 9 o’clock at night, and as one top was nearly conquered another top seemed to be added. The amphitheatre receded upward to heaven.
How arduous it was and at times how risky! Massive stones on which we relied to place our feet proved to be only passengers like ourselves upon the mountain and at a touch from us resumed their downward track, clashing andsmashing from rock to rock. We came to steep banks of shale which moveden massewith the weight of our bodies and we lay flat on them and slid with them unwillingly and fearfully. Nevertheless we did make great progress upward, and if we did not conquer the mountain on which we were we at least conquered some peaks that were behind us. We entered the society of the mountains. The mighty eminences and august personalities of the southward view came into our ken.
Thesun went down, the shadows below us deepened, the snow banks multiplied themselves in number, and their outlines and suggestiveness intensified as the valley whence we had arisen lost its trees and changed to a vast blank abyss. Our unfailing wonder when we sat down on a stone to regain our lost breath was the multitudinous terrain of awful, wrathful mountain peaks which in indescribable promiscuity had climbed the horizon wall to stare at us.
Vachel confessed to being dizzy and dared hardly look downward whence we had come. He preferred to look upward, and it was always“three more dashes and we’ll be there,” though instead of three we made thirty.
Our mountain at length seemed to show the last limits and to be crowned by a sort of Roman wall. We came in view of a long, serried, level grey rock which ran evenly along the mountain brow like a fortification, and in the midst of it was a way of stone steps and a gap. I got up through the hole in the wall and hauled up Lindsay’s pack after me, and he followed.
But when we got on top it was flat, but it was not the top. We lay full length there and ate raisins and looked upward over another field of shale and loose boulders, and a cold wind as from the Pole swept across. We watched the first stars appear and talked of finding a sheltered ledge somewhere and sleeping on it or at least waiting on it till morning. But secretly we still had a strong hold on hope. Mountain tops are only to be conquered, and we would not give in.
“Theother sky beyond the mountain ridge is on tiptoe waiting for us,” said I.
It should be explained that the mountainshere are nearly all “razor-edges.” When you have climbed sheer up to the top you have to climb sheer down the other side. Plateaus and table mountains are rare.
The mountain “cirques” and ridges actually cut the great sky in two and you can only join the two pieces of it at the top.
However, when, after another forty minutes of picking our way upward, we did actually reach the summit no new sky greeted us. Indeed, I shrank back aghast from the dreadful view that I saw. For the mountain swept downward in long, swift and severe lines into a funnel of Erebus darkness. We stood perched at a gigantic height above the world, and it was black night with an abyss both behind and in front of us.
You could stand on the top of the mountain and see the two dreadful views, on the one side scores and fifties of wrathful, staring mountains and on the other a purgatorial abyss for lost souls.
We dared not start a descent so we slept on the top of the mountain. I lay on a narrow ledge and slumbered and waked. And Vachel, who was hypnotised by the abyss, would notlie down for fear he might fall off or might get up in his sleep and jump. So he sat like a fakir the whole night long, looking unwaveringly on one fixed spot.
“Our friends all lie in their soft beds with their heads on pillows of down,” I thought, “far away in the valleys and across the plains, in snug, comfortable homes, and we lie on rocky, jagged edges on the very top of a great mountain, far from human ken.”
We seemed as much nearer the stars as we were further away from mankind. Venus was like a diamond cut out of the sun, and she lifted an unearthly splendour high into the sooty devouring darkness of the night. In other parts of the sky the meteors shot laconically in and out as if on errands for the planets. Cold winds ravaged the heights, but they did not roar. For the forests were far away. And there was no sound of waters—only the long slow threatening roll and splurge of loose rocks continually detaching themselves from the heights and slipping downward to perdition.
I lay and I lay, and Vachel sat unmoving, and we heard, as it were, the pulse of the world.We did not see humanity’s prayers going up to God. We only saw the stars and the night.
If you join the mountain-peak clubYou’ll notice the old members stare at you,Call you silently a parvenu, interloper, upstart.Upstart you are, of course,But never mind, you’ve got a rise in the world.No use trying to outstare the mountainsSitting in their arms-chairs, nursing their gouty feet.Be a social climber still,Aspire higher,And be put up as soon as you canFor the club of Heaven’s stars.
If you join the mountain-peak clubYou’ll notice the old members stare at you,Call you silently a parvenu, interloper, upstart.Upstart you are, of course,But never mind, you’ve got a rise in the world.No use trying to outstare the mountainsSitting in their arms-chairs, nursing their gouty feet.Be a social climber still,Aspire higher,And be put up as soon as you canFor the club of Heaven’s stars.
If you join the mountain-peak club
You’ll notice the old members stare at you,
Call you silently a parvenu, interloper, upstart.
Upstart you are, of course,
But never mind, you’ve got a rise in the world.
No use trying to outstare the mountains
Sitting in their arms-chairs, nursing their gouty feet.
Be a social climber still,
Aspire higher,
And be put up as soon as you can
For the club of Heaven’s stars.