|
of ice.
Deceptively reserved and flat,
it lies 'in grandeur and in mass'
beneath a
sea of shifting snow-dunes;
dots of cyclamen-red and maroon on its clearly
defined
pseudo-podia
made of glass that will bend–a much needed
invention–
comprising twenty-eight ice-fields from fifty to five
hundred
feet thick,
of unimagined delicacy.
'Picking periwinkles from
the cracks'
or killing prey with the concentric crushing rigor of the
python,
it hovers forward 'spider fashion
on its arms' misleading like
lace;
its 'ghostly pallor changing
to the green metallic tinge of an
anemone-starred pool.'
The fir-trees, in 'the magnitude of their root
systems,'
rise aloof from these maneuvers 'creepy to behold,'
austere
specimens of our American royal families,
'each like the shadow of the one
beside it.
The rock seems frail compared with the dark energy of
life,'
its vermilion and onyx and manganese-blue interior
expensiveness
left at the mercy of the weather;
'stained transversely by
iron where the water drips down,'
recognized by its plants and its
animals.
Completing a circle,
you have been deceived into thinking that
you have progressed,
under the polite needles of the larches
'hung to filter, not to intercept the sunlight'–
met by
tightly wattled spruce-twigs
'conformed to an edge like clipped cypress
as
if no branch could penetrate the cold beyond its company';
and dumps of gold
and silver ore enclosing The Goat’s Mirror–
that lady-fingerlike depression
in the shape of the left human
foot,
which prejudices you in favor of
itself
before you have had time to see the others;
its indigo, pea-green,
blue-green, and turquoise,
from a hundred to two hundred feet
deep,
'merging in irregular patches in the middle of the lake
where, like
gusts of a storm
obliterating the shadows of the fir-trees, the wind makes
lanes
of ripples.'
What spot could have merits of equal importance
for
bears, elks, deer, wolves, goats, and ducks?
Pre-empted by their
ancestors,
this is the property of the exacting porcupine,
and of the rat
'slipping along to its burrow in the swamp
or pausing on high ground to smell
the heather';
of 'thoughtful beavers
making drains which seem the work of
careful men with shovels,'
and of the bears inspecting
unexpectedly
ant-hills and berry-bushes.
Composed of calcium gems and
alabaster pillars,
topaz, tourmaline crystals and amethyst quartz,
their
den in somewhere else, concealed in the confusion
of 'blue forests thrown
together with marble and jasper and agate
as if the whole quarries had been
dynamited.'
And farther up, in a stag-at-bay position
as a scintillating
fragment of these terrible stalagmites,
stands the goat,
its eye fixed on
the waterfall which never seems to fall–
an endless skein swayed by the
wind,
immune to force of gravity in the perspective of the peaks.
A
special antelope
acclimated to 'grottoes from which issue penetrating
draughts
which make you wonder why you came,'
it stands it ground
on
cliffs the color of the clouds, of petrified white vapor–
black feet, eyes,
nose, and horns, engraved on dazzling ice-fields,
the ermine body on the
crystal peak;
the sun kindling its shoulders to maximum heat like
acetylene,
dyeing them white–
upon this antique pedestal,
'a mountain
with those graceful lines which prove it a volcano,'
its top a complete cone
like Fujiyama’s
till an explosion blew it off.
Distinguished by a
beauty
of which 'the visitor dare never fully speak at home
for fear of
being stoned as an impostor,'
Big Snow Mountain is the home of a diversity of
creatures:
those who 'have lived in hotels
but who now live in camps–who
prefer to';
the mountain guide evolving from the trapper,
'in two pairs of
trousers, the outer one older,
wearing slowly away from the feet to the
knees';
'the nine-striped chipmunk
running with unmammal-like agility
along a log';
the water ouzel
with 'its passion for rapids and
high-pressured falls,'
building under the arch of some tiny Niagara;
the
white-tailed ptarmigan 'in winter solid white,
feeding on heather-bells and
alpine buckwheat';
and the eleven eagles of the west,
'fond of the spring
fragrance and the winter colors,'
used to the unegoistic action of the
glaciers
and 'several hours of frost every midsummer night.'
'They make a
nice appearance, don’t they,'
happy see nothing?
Perched on treacherous
lava and pumice–
those unadjusted chimney-pots and cleavers
which
stipulate 'names and addresses of persons to notify
in case of
disaster'–
they hear the roar of ice and supervise the water
winding
slowly through the cliffs,
the road 'climbing like the thread
which forms the
groove around a snail-shell,
doubling back and forth until where snow begins,
it ends.'
No 'deliberate wide-eyed wistfulness' is here
among the boulders
sunk in ripples and white water
where 'when you hear the best wild music of
the forest
it is sure to be a marmot,'
the victim on some slight
observatory,
of 'a struggle between curiosity and caution,'
inquiring what
has scared it:
a stone from the moraine descending in leaps,
another
marmot, or the spotted ponies with glass eyes,
brought up on frosty grass and
flowers
and rapid draughts of ice-water.
Instructed none knows how, to
climb the mountain,
by business men who require for recreation
three
hundred and sixty-five holidays in the year,
these conspicuously spotted
little horses are peculiar;
hard to discern among the birch-trees, ferns, and
lily-pads,
avalanche lilies, Indian paint-brushes,
bear’s ears and
kittentails,
and miniature cavalcades of chlorophylless fungi
magnified in
profile on the moss-beds like moonstones in the water;
the cavalcade of
calico competing
with the original American menagerie of styles
among the
white flowers of the rhododendron surmounting
rigid leaves
upon which
moisture works its alchemy,
transmuting verdure into onyx.
'Like happy
souls in Hell,' enjoying mental difficulties,
the Greeks
amused themselves
with delicate behavior
because it was 'so noble and fair';
not practised
in adapting their intelligence
to eagle-traps and snow-shoes,
to
alpenstocks and other toys contrived by those
'alive to the advantage of
invigorating pleasures.'
Bows, arrows, oars, and paddles, for which trees
provide the
wood,
in new countries more eloquent than
elsewhere–
augmenting the assertion that, essentially humane,
'the forest
affords wood for dwellings and by its beauty
stimulates the moral vigor of
its citizens.'
The Greeks liked smoothness, distrusting what was back
of
what could not be clearly seen,
resolving with benevolent
conclusiveness,
'complexities which still will be complexities
as long as
the world lasts';
ascribing what we clumsily call happiness,
to 'an
accident or a quality,
a spiritual substance or the soul itself,
an act, a
disposition, or a habit,
or a habit infused, to which the soul has been
persuaded,
or something distinct from a habit, a power'–
such power as
Adam had and we are still devoid of.
'Emotionally sensitive, their hearts
were hard';
their wisdom was remote
from that of these odd oracles of cool
official sarcasm,
upon this game preserve
where 'guns, nets, seines,
traps, and explosives,
hired vehicles, gambling and intoxicants are
prohibited;
disobedient persons being summarily removed
and not allowed to
return without permission in writing.'
It is self-evident
that it is
frightful to have everything afraid of one;
that one must do as one is
told
and eat rice, prunes, dates, raisins, hardtack, and tomatoes
this
fossil flower concise without a shiver,
intact when it is cut,
damned for
its sacrosanct remoteness–
like Henry James 'damned by the public for
decorum';
not decorum, but restraint;
it is the love of doing hard
things
that rebuffed and wore them out–a public out of sympathy
with
neatness.
Neatness of finish! Neatness of finish!
Relentless accuracy
is the nature of this octopus
with its capacity for fact.
'Creeping slowly
as with meditated stealth,
its arms seeming to approach from all
directions,'
it receives one under winds that 'tear the snow to bits
and
hurl it like a sandblast
shearing off twigs and loose bark from the
trees.'
Is 'tree' the word for these things
'flat on the ground like
vines'?
some 'bent in a half circle with branches on one side
suggesting
dust-brushes, not trees;
some finding strength in union, forming little
stunted grooves
their flattened mats of branches shrunk in trying to
escape'
from the hard mountain 'planned by ice and polished by the
wind'–
the white volcano with no weather side;
the lightning flashing at
its base,
rain falling in the valleys, and snow falling on the peak–
the
glassy octopus symmetrically pointed,
its claw cut by the avalanche
'with
a sound like the crack of a rifle,
in a curtain of powdered snow launched
like a waterfall.'
|
|
