登陆注册
5269500000030

第30章 WATER BORDERS(1)

I like that name the Indians give to the mountain of Lone Pine, and find it pertinent to my subject,--Oppapago, The Weeper. It sits eastward and solitary from the lordliest ranks of the Sierras, and above a range of little, old, blunt hills, and has a bowed, grave aspect as of some woman you might have known, looking out across the grassy barrows of her dead. From twin gray lakes under its noble brow stream down incessant white and tumbling waters.

"Mahala all time cry," said Winnenap', drawing furrows in his rugged, wrinkled cheeks.

The origin of mountain streams is like the origin of tears, patent to the understanding but mysterious to the sense. They are always at it, but one so seldom catches them in the act. Here in the valley there is no cessation of waters even in the season when the niggard frost gives them scant leave to run. They make the most of their midday hour, and tinkle all night thinly under the ice. An ear laid to the snow catches a muffled hint of their eternal busyness fifteen or twenty feet under the canon drifts, and long before any appreciable spring thaw, the sagging edges of the snow bridges mark out the place of their running. One who ventures to look for it finds the immediate source of the spring freshets--all the hill fronts furrowed with the reek of melting drifts, all the gravelly flats in a swirl of waters. But later, in June or July, when the camping season begins, there runs the stream away full and singing, with no visible reinforcement other than an icy trickle from some high, belated dot of snow.

Oftenest the stream drops bodily from the bleak bowl of some alpine lake; sometimes breaks out of a hillside as a spring where the ear can trace it under the rubble of loose stones to the neighborhood of some blind pool. But that leaves the lakes to be accounted for.

The lake is the eye of the mountain, jade green, placid, unwinking, also unfathomable. Whatever goes on under the high and stony brows is guessed at. It is always a favorite local tradition that one or another of the blind lakes is bottomless. Often they lie in such deep cairns of broken boulders that one never gets quite to them, or gets away unhurt. One such drops below the plunging slope that the Kearsarge trail winds over, perilously, nearing the pass. It lies still and wickedly green in its sharp-lipped cap, and the guides of that region love to tell of the packs and pack animals it has swallowed up.

But the lakes of Oppapago are perhaps not so deep, less green than gray, and better befriended. The ousel haunts them, while still hang about their coasts the thin undercut drifts that never quite leave the high altitudes. In and out of the bluish ice caves he flits and sings, and his singing heard from above is sweet and uncanny like the Nixie's chord. One finds butterflies, too, about these high, sharp regions which might be called desolate, but will not by me who love them. This is above timber-line but not too high for comforting by succulent small herbs and golden tufted grass. A granite mountain does not crumble with alacrity, but once resolved to soil makes the best of it. Every handful of loose gravel not wholly water leached affords a plant footing, and even in such unpromising surroundings there is a choice of locations.

There is never going to be any communism of mountain herbage, their affinities are too sure. Full in the tunnels of snow water on gravelly, open spaces in the shadow of a drift, one looks to find buttercups, frozen knee-deep by night, and owning no desire but to ripen their fruit above the icy bath. Soppy little plants of the portulaca and small, fine ferns shiver under the drip of falls and in dribbling crevices. The bleaker the situation, so it is near a stream border, the better the cassiope loves it. Yet Ihave not found it on the polished glacier slips, but where the country rock cleaves and splinters in the high windy headlands that the wild sheep frequents, hordes and hordes of the white bells swing over matted, mossy foliage. On Oppapago, which is also called Sheep Mountain, one finds not far from the beds of cassiope the ice-worn, stony hollows where the big-horns cradle their young.

These are above the wolf's quest and the eagle's wont, and though the heather beds are softer, they are neither so dry nor so warm, and here only the stars go by. No other animal of any pretensions makes a habitat of the alpine regions. Now and then one gets a hint of some small, brown creature, rat or mouse kind, that slips secretly among the rocks; no others adapt themselves to desertness of aridity or altitude so readily as these ground inhabiting, graminivorous species. If there is an open stream the trout go up the lake as far as the water breeds food for them, but the ousel goes farthest, for pure love of it.

Since no lake can be at the highest point, it is possible to find plant life higher than the water borders; grasses perhaps the highest, gilias, royal blue trusses of polymonium, rosy plats of Sierra primroses. What one has to get used to in flowers at high altitudes is the bleaching of the sun. Hardly do they hold their virgin color for a day, and this early fading before their function is performed gives them a pitiful appearance not according with their hardihood. The color scheme runs along the high ridges from blue to rosy purple, carmine and coral red; along the water borders it is chiefly white and yellow where the mimulus makes a vivid note, running into red when the two schemes meet and mix about the borders of the meadows, at the upper limit of the columbine.

同类推荐
  • The Golden Bowl

    The Golden Bowl

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 清季台湾洋务史料

    清季台湾洋务史料

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 佛说龙王兄弟经

    佛说龙王兄弟经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 瘴疟指南

    瘴疟指南

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 修真太极混元指玄图

    修真太极混元指玄图

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 期待是美丽的

    期待是美丽的

    本书是一位智人学者的教育随笔集。作者李志强先生曾是一所中学的校长,他积极践行新教育的基本理念,在全市最薄弱的一所中学进行素质教育的拓荒实验。两年时间,学校变成了育人的绿洲,处处散发着书香,澎湃着活力。李先生的教育随笔不是毫无根据的高谈阔论,而是脚踏实地的实践真知。它来自校园、来自课堂,对大家司空见惯的问题进行了深入思考,非常值得从事基础教育工作的人员参考。
  • 明良论四

    明良论四

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 木槿初开

    木槿初开

    那年初夏,木槿花开,他们初次相见。“你好啊,妹妹,我是林离。”她对上少年的笑语吟吟。零碎的记忆,被锁的魂魄,前生的因果,今生的轮回,终究还是逃不过......“阿槿,我不会让人伤你分毫,哪怕要违抗天道……” “愿穷我毕生之力,不如轮回,换她一世安然……” 前生纠葛,今世纠缠,换来的是永远的泯灭还是生存?往事如烟,依稀记得那年木槿初开,最初的悸动,想要,护你一世安然,永恒美丽,不惹尘埃......
  • 假面骑士—战斗进化

    假面骑士—战斗进化

    假面骑士—战斗进化(暂定)以此文纪念假面骑士45周年,假面骑士OOO放送6周年距离所有的GREED被消灭已经过了6年,一切看起来是那么的平静。但是故事远远还没有结束,新的敌人出现了!修卡,奥菲以诺,Undead,残余的各种党派组成了一个邪恶组织:邪曼卡(Evilmanca),Greed居然再度复活了!他们通过某种途径进入了个没有骑士的世界,这时,骑士们也来到了这个世界,一场正与邪的大战就此开始。
  • 绝宠小杀手

    绝宠小杀手

    前世的我太寂寞,这一世的我太幸福了。有你们的陪伴,我不在独孤。简介小白
  • 七星之石

    七星之石

    一块已经锁在小木盒不知多少年的石头,竟然尘封了一段不为人知的故事。现在,这个石头连着木盒,在一个部落的孩子手上。紫夏不知道该如何是好。
  • 冥府见习鬼使

    冥府见习鬼使

    她雷厉风行,怎料被心爱之人背叛,死无葬身之地。一朝重生成为冥府见习鬼使,查身世,做任务,收装备,了却前世恩仇,摆着一张面瘫脸做尽坑人事。不仅收获美男老爹和逗比爷爷,还有了一帮脱线却忠心的部下。只是这搅混水的路上,闷骚上司怎么总是猜不透?
  • 四库全书总目提要_集部

    四库全书总目提要_集部

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 恍如隔世

    恍如隔世

    八岁,是我告别童年迎接灾难的开始,因为姥爷的死,一个小女孩本能的快乐和童真从我身上残忍地灭绝了。春夏之交的季节,会做棺材的木匠姥爷和我不得不结束乡村生活住到天津。头一回赶上停电,姥爷燃起红烛领我来到他阴面的房间,拿出白天画好的简笔画儿装进信封,粘好,叫我用歪扭的字迹写上地址,冯大鹤收。姥爷把信掖在褥子底下,郑重地说,花花,哪天我跟你姥姥一样瘫炕上,千万想着把它寄走。简笔画是想告诉乡下的大鹤,如果姥爷死了,不能把他当捆柴禾烧掉。
  • 陈寅恪的1958年

    陈寅恪的1958年

    在陈寅恪一生中,1958年是备受人们关注的年代之一。那么,这一年究竟发生了什么事情?他是如何应对的?这些事情对他的教学、科研与心理有何重大影响?本文勾稽当时的官方文件、报刊文章、档案材料、私人日记和回忆录,试图还原这段历史的真相。1958年3月11日,《人民日报》发表了曾任毛泽东秘书的中共中央宣传部副部长陈伯达,在国务院科学规划委员会第五次会议上所做“厚今薄古 边学边干”长篇讲话的摘要,透露出毛泽东对“资产阶级”知识分子的看法。