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# 2020-08-23 - Of Men and Mountains by William O. Douglas
(IMG) Photo of William O. Douglas wearing a horseshoe pack
I found this book in a thrift store and was attracked to the cover,
which used a USFS topographic map for the background. I thoroughly
enjoyed reading the book. The author clearly expresses a love for
nature and the outdoors. At times he expresses philosophical
thoughts that i also find appealing. Another reviewer writes
"Written in the 50s, this book reflects the language of the day, and
omits women from the tales of adventure that help turn boys into
men." The author's attitudes and language are dated in other ways as
well.
I truly enjoyed his attention to detail. It was fascinating to read
methods used to organize gear, roll horseshoe packs, chop wood, camp
in snow, cook over a campfire, etc. Reading the chapter about
camping in a snow hole, i wondered how they climbed back out of the
hole? Did they tie some kind of rope to climb back out?
What follows below are notable excerpts from the book.
# Introduction
I learned early that the richness of life is found in adventure.
Adventure calls on all the faculties of mind and spirit. It develops
self-reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement.
But man is not ready for adventure unless he is rid of fear. For
fear confines him and limits his scope. He stays tethered by strings
of doubt and indecision and has only a small and narrow world to
explore.
Discovery is adventure. ... When one moves through the forests, his
sense of discovery is quickened. ... He is free of the restraints of
society and free of its safeguards too.
# Chapter 1, The Cascades
Perhaps man was losing his freedom in a subtle manner. He was
becoming more and more dependent on other men. ... He looked to
[other] people rather than to himself and to the earth for his
salvation. He fixed his expectations on frowns or smiles or words of
men, not on the strength of his own soul, or the sunrise, or the
warming south wind, or the song of the warbler.
Once man leaned that heavily on people he was not wholly free to
live. ... He walked in an unreal world, for he did not know the
earth from which he came and to which he would return. He became a
captive of civilization rather than an adventurer... He lost the feel
of his own strength, the power of his own soul to master any
adversity.
After a long absence from my old home town of Yakima, Washington, I
have fairly raced by car down from Ellensburg or up from Pasco to see
Mount Adams before night dropped the curtain around it. At such a
time my heart has leaped at the first sight of it. ... At those
moments my spine has always tingled. There is a feeling of respect
and admiration and pride. One has the sensation of being part of
something bigger than himself, something great and majestic and
wholesome.
I felt jungle companionship in this old man of the stockyards. He
was only a vagabond. But he was not a bum. I later realized that he
had been a greater credit to his country than many of the more elite.
He made me see, in the dreary stockyards of America, some of the
country's greatness--kindness, sympathy, selflessness, understanding.
Finally, he [Dr. George Draper] turned to me and said, "You should
write a book some day about the influence of mountains on men. If
man could only get to know the mountains better, and let them become
a part of him, he would lose much of his aggression. The struggle of
man against man produces jealousy, deceit, frustration, bitterness,
hate. The struggle of man against mountains is different. Man then
bows before Something that is bigger than he. When he does that, he
finds serenity and humility and dignity too."
# Chapter 2, Yakima
Saturday nights the Indians would come into the stores for shopping.
They had some amusing habits. They never would place their whole
order at once. They would bargain for a single article at a time,
and when the bargain for that article was completed they would pay
the price and leave. They would be back in a jiffy, having left the
purchased article outside. Then the negotiation for the next article
on their list would start. And so the process continued until all
purchases were made.
It was at Father's funeral that Mount Adams made its deepest early
impression on me. Indeed, that day it became a symbol of great
importance. The service was held in Yakima. Inside the church it
was dark and cool; and the minister's voice rolled around like an
echo in a cavern. It was for me meaningless and melancholy. I
longed to escape. I remember the relief I felt in walking out onto a
dusty street in bright sunlight. There were horses and carriages;
and then a long, slow trek to the cemetery. Dust, the smell of the
horses, and more dust, filled my nostrils.
It was a young cemetery. The trees were saplings. There was but
little green grass. Dust seemed to be everywhere. I heard hard, dry
lumps of dirt strike the casket. The cemetery became at once a place
of desolation that I shunned for years. As I stood by the edge of
the grave a wave of lonesomeness swept over me. Then in my
lonesomeness I became afraid--afraid of being left alone, afraid
because the grave held my defender and protector. These feelings
were deepened by the realization that Mother was afraid and lonesome
too. My throat choked up, and I started to cry. I remember the
words of the minister who had said to me, "You must now be a man,
sonny." I tried to steel myself and control my emotions.
Then I happened to see Mount Adams, towering over us on the west. It
was dark purple and white in the August day. Its shoulders of basalt
were heavy with glacial snow. It was a giant whose head touched the
sky.
As I looked, I stopped sobbing. My eyes dried. Adams stool cool and
calm, unperturbed by an event that had stirred us so deeply that
Mother was crushed for years. Adams suddenly seemed to be a friend.
Adams subtly became a force for me to tie to, a symbol of stability
and strength.
# Chapter 3, Infantile Paralysis
I imagined I saw in the appraising eyes of everyone who looked at me
the thought, "Yes, he's a weakling." The idea festered. As I look
back on those early years, I think I became a rebel with a cause. My
cause was the disproof of the charge of inferiority that had been
leveled by the jury of my contemporaries. There was no one in whom I
could confide; no one whom I could express my inner turmoil and
tension. So my revolt grew and grew in my heart.
During my school studies I had read of the Spartans of ancient
Greece. They were rugged and hardy people, the kind that I aspired
to be. So I searched out the literature that described their habits
and capacities to see if I could get some clue to their toughness.
My research brought to light various staggering bits of information.
I found in Plato's Republic a passage that shattered my morale.
Plato talked of the dangers to the race through propagation of the
"inferior" type of person. By "inferior" he meant those who were
physical weaklings. There was no doubt about it, because he
described what should be done with children of that character.
"The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to
the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses
who dwell in a separate quarter, but the offspring of the inferior,
or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in
some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be."
These were the ideas that I struggled against. It was oppressive to
think that I would have been destroyed by the Spartans to make room
for some hardier boy. By boyhood standards I was a failure. If I
were to have happiness or success, I must get strong. And so I
searched for ways and means to do it.
One day I met another boy, whom I had known at Sunday school, coming
in on a fast walk from the country. He was a husky, long-legged
chap, to me a perfect physical specimen. I asked him where he'd
been, and he replied that he had been climbing the foothills north of
town. I asked him why he did it. He told me that his doctors had
advised it; that he was trying to correct certain difficulties
following an illness. He was climbing the foothills every day to
develop his lungs and legs.
An overwhelming light swept me. My resolution was instantaneous. I
would do the same. I would make my legs strong on the foothills.
# Chapter 4, Sagebrush and Lava Rock
It has been thought that the deification of Coyote was due to the
fact that Tyhee, the Spirit Chief of the Indians of the Pacific
Northwest, was a revengeful not a beneficent deity. He had no
kindness or compassion in his heart. The Indians observed that in
the woods the weaker animals survived only by cunning. That was
therefore the only route by which they could escape the vengeance of
their god. So they deified the weakest and craftiest of all major
animals, the coyote, to help them in their struggle for survival.
That night I felt at peace. I felt that I was a part of the
universe, a companion to the friendly chinook that brought the
promise of life and adventure. That night, I think, there first came
to me the germ of a philosophy of life: that man's best measure of
the universe is in his hopes and his dreams, not his fears; that man
is a part of a plan, only a fraction of which he, perhaps, can ever
comprehend.
# Chapter 5, Ahtanum
And on every hand along the road was the ever present yarrow. Some
Indians placed this plant inside salmon to promote the curing process
while the fish were being dried.
Then I became aware of the fragrance of the trees. The ponderosa
pine towered over all the others. But I began to see the scatterings
of other conifers: black pine and whitebark pine, white and red fir,
and the tamarack or larch. I stopped, looked up, and breathed deep.
Then I realized I was experiencing a great healing.
I had been hurrying, tense, and strained. I was alone and on my own
in unexplored land. I was conscious of being exposed to all the
dangers of the woods, a prey for any predator hunting man. But now,
strangely, that apprehension fell from me like ashes touched by a
wind. I suddenly felt that these pine and fir that greeted the
Fathers of the Ahtanum Mission in 1847 were here to welcome me, too.
These trees were friends--silent, dignified, and beneficent friends.
They were kindly like the chinook. They promised as much help and
solace to me as had the sagebrush and lava rock.
I felt a warm glow of peace spread over me. I was at ease in this
unknown wilderness. I, who had never set foot on this particular
trail, who had never crossed the high ridge where I was headed, felt
at home. One who is among friends, I thought, has no need to be
afraid.
Then there was a roar--subdued and muffled at first, and then as loud
as a great cataract. A wind had sprung up from the northwest. It
swept the mountainside and set up a steady vibration in the treetops.
I saw great pine and fir bowing before their master, swaying in the
high wind. And as they swayed, their groans and creaks swelled into
violence. A tremendous symphony had broken the quiet of the forest.
I leaned against the trunk of a yellow pine that reached 150 or 200
feet into the sky. It towered over all the trees in the canyon. As
I watched its top weaving back and forth in the gale that swept off
Darling Mountain, it seemed to be a graceful partner of the wind.
Had not the pine in fact been mistress of Boreas the wind from
ancient days? The symphony that was being played was indeed the
first music of the universe. It had been carried on the wings of
this wind long before the Indians arrived from Asia, long before man
walked the earth. The music of the wind in the trees brought
messages floating down millions of years of time. It sang of the
eternity of the universe, of the transient nature of man.
# Chapter 7, Indian Flat
The basic secret on such climbs is the breathing. The professional
mountaineer is an expert. The lungs are the carburetor. As the air
thins out, and the oxygen decreases and the carbon dioxide
accumulates, inhalations and exhalations must increase unless the
motor is to drop to an idling speed. Above 10,000 feet some breath
five times or more for every step they take. The increase in
respiration varies with the individual. Once the required rate is
discovered, coordination between breathing and walking is possible.
This takes time, patience, and practice. But it turns out mileage
under pressure.
At this time I had not yet mastered the technique. I climbed the
hard way. I suspect I practically lunged at the hillside; at least I
went in spurts, taking a dozen steps or so and then stopping to pant.
We took great pride in these packs. We did not know about rucksacks
or pack baskets, so we never used them. Once I tried the pack board
with the forehead strap, and ones the Nelson pack. But I found the
horseshoe roll more to my liking. Each would take one-half of a
canvas pup tent which would serve as the outside cover of the roll.
Inside would be the blankets (two in each pack) and the food. And we
designed a method for carrying food that suited our needs. We took
the inside white cotton bag of a sugar sack, washed it, and then had
Mother, by stitching it lengthwise, make three bags out of one. We'd
fill these long, narrow, white bags with our food supplies. The
sacks, when filled, would roll neatly up with the blankets. Each end
of the roll would be tied with rope, later to be used for pitching
the pup tent. Then the roll could be slipped over the head onto the
shoulder. [1]
We could not pack fresh meat, not only because of its weight but
because it wouldn't keep. Canned goods, ham, and bacon were too
heavy to carry. We would, however, take along some bacon-rind for
grease. We'd substitute a vial of saccharin for sugar and thus save
several pounds. Into one white sack we would put powdered milk, into
another, beans. We'd fill one with flour already mixed with salt and
baking powder, and ready for hot cakes or bread. In another we would
put oatmeal, cream of wheat, or corn meal. One sack would be filled
with dried fruit--prunes or apples. Another would contain packages
of coffee, salt, and pepper. Usually we would take along some
powdered eggs.
On the outside of our packs would be tied a frying pan, coffee pot,
and kettle. One of us usually would strap on a revolver; the other
would carry a hatchet. Each would have a fishing rod and matches.
Thus equipped, each pack would weight between 30 and 60 pounds,
depending on the length of the trip planned.
We also took along a haversack which we alternated in carrying. In
it were our plates, knives, forks, spoons, lunch, and other items we
wished to keep readily available. It hung by a shoulder strap on the
hip opposite from the horseshoe pack. The one who carried it was
indeed well loaded.
It is easy to see the delicate handiwork of the Creator in any
meadow. But perhaps it takes these startling views to remind us of
His omnipotence. Perhaps it takes such a view to make us realize
that vain, cocky, aggressive, selfish man never conquers the
mountains in spite of all his boasting and bustling and exertion. He
conquers only himself.
# Chapter 8, Deep Water
The case of Warm Lake, below the Goat Rocks ridge, was different. It
was in the open, like a swimming pool in a lawn. Its water was so
clear that I could see the rocky, sandy bottom far out from shore.
No dark depths were there to warn me. And at no place did it appear
more than twenty feet deep. There was nothing ominous about it, and,
as I have said, its surface water was warm, although it lay close to
a snow field. As boys we planned a night there whenever possible,
for there is nothing more attractive than a bath after a week's
exertion on the trails. And there is the same novelty about swimming
in comfort next to a snowbank as there is skating outdoors on
artificial ice at Sun Valley on a warm day in July.
[I have swum in a lake next to a snow bank with David.]
We would bathe and swim in this lake for a whole afternoon in July or
August. Our pattern was to take a dip, then lie naked in the heather
sunning ourselves, and then return to the water for more splashing
and shouting.
# Chapter 9, Fear Walks The Woods
The fears of forest fires and avalanches, the only mountain fears
that have any substantial basis of fact, are not the ones men usually
take with them into the wilderness. The things they fear in the
woods are in large part of the same kind of things they fear in the
city. The things they fear hold no intrinsic threat. They are as
harmless as a frown, a knife, a skyscraper, a great cliff, or
lightning. They are symbols of things that are terrifying.
Some of these mountain scenes of electrical storms can be either
beautiful or terrifying, depending on one's conditioning. A few
years ago I brought back a pack train out of the Minam in the
Wallowas up the Glacier Trail to Long Lake. A storm was rising from
the south as we started the steep climb out of the Minam. We were
perhaps 1500 feet above the river when the storm broke on the
opposite ridge, some five air miles away. For a while sheet
lightning played among the clouds. Then forked tongues struck at the
ridge. In rapid succession--almost as fast as one could
count--lightning hit three trees. And as each tree was hit it burst
into flames like a match. It was one of those rare and exquisitely
beautiful scenes that one could ride the trails 50 years or more and
never see. For some people, however, there would be in it no beauty
but only terror.
# Chapter 10, The Campfire
Our boyish shouts and shrieks echoed off the cliffs of the Cascades.
We pushed each other from logs into pools of water. We poured cold
water down unsuspecting necks. At dusk we stretched a rope or a vine
ankle high across the path to the creek, so that our pal would fall
flat on his face as he went to get water for cooking. When that
happened, bedlam broke loose in the woods.
This horseplay took even more robust forms. Once three or four of us
were camped on the edge of Goose Prairie a few miles below Bumping
Lake. It had been a miserable trip. We had rain for over a day and
the camp was soaked through. We dubbed the place Camp
Rain-in-the-Face, for we had no tent and our blankets had absorbed
all the drippings from the trees. Our bedrolls were soaked through.
In the morning when we crawled out of our doused blankets, we looked
as if we had been dragged in a lake behind a boat.
The consequence was a gloom over the camp which I decided to dispel.
While I cooked breakfast, I planned my strategy. I served my
companions, and while they were seated on the ground eating, I
brought them coffee in big tin cups. When cleaning the rainbow trout
cooked for this meal, I had reserved the heads, and when I poured the
coffee I had put one head in each cup.
I watched the faces as the boys ate their trout and pancake bread and
sipped their coffee. One boy finished his plate, put it on the
ground, took his tin cup of coffee in both hands, and slowly drank
it. Soon he took a deep draught. I saw his face turn white. The
expression was one of shock, nausea, and disgust. Peering out of the
coffee at the bottom of the cup were the cold, glassy eyes of a
trout. He let loose with terrible imprecations. At once the calm of
Goose Prairie was broken by a riot. The gloom that had settled over
the camp was gone.
Maybe some day I could take Gifford Pinchot's place. He helped
create the Forest Service. I often saw its men in the mountains,
riding the trails--strong, long-legged rangers, clear-eyed, robust
men. If I went to forestry school and learned all the knowledge of
the woods, I too could be a ranger and from there work up to
Pinchot's place. I could carry on his fight for conservation. He
loved the mountains; so did I.
The story was that Borah had saved a Negro from being lynched. The
man was in jail in a town not far from Boise. Borah got an engineer
to take a locomotive out of the roundhouse at Boise late one night
and run him over to this town. Borah barely got there in time. He
ran to the jail where the mob was tearing down the door. Standing on
a box, he talked. At first the rioters were sullen and threatening.
Then, meek and shamefaced, they melted away into the night.
There was a man, this Borah! A great lawyer, too! If I could only
talk like him!
These were the things we discussed around dozens of campfires on the
high ridges above Yakima. It seemed, in fact, that I had to escape
the town to see my personal problems more clearly.
There was time for reflection in the solitude of the mountains. The
roaring bonfire of the camp would draw out our innermost secrets and
longings. Sometimes we would talk until only a glow of coals
remained of a roaring fire. A crescent moon would appear above a
distant peak. The long dark fingers of the pine and fir reached
higher and higher in the sky as the fire died down, and the stars
drew closer to the high shoulders of the Cascades. A brisk breeze
would come down off some glacier of Adams or Ranier. A chill would
sweep over the camp. Then we would know that we had put off sleep
too long.
# Chapter 11, Indian Philosopher
The flies were bad, and the squaw had built a smudge of green willow.
[Ah, this is one way that smudging could represent purification: by
repelling disease-bearing insects.]
After another pause, he said, "It takes many different trees and
shrubs and grass to make a forest. It takes many kinds of animals to
fill the woods. The bear, goat, cougar, coyote, deer, and elk are
all different. Wouldn't it be bad if all the animals were alike? It
takes many races to make the world. Wouldn't it be bad if all people
were the same? My skin is brown; yours is white. You can do things
I can't do. I can do things you can't do. Some of my people think
we're better than the whites. They say that the white man gets
strong when he has Indian blood in him. Some of your people think
they are better than us Indians. Maybe so. But no white man can
spear salmon better."
This Indian was justly proud of his race; he had discovered an
important secret of success. He knew that as a Douglas fir cannot
possibly become a cedar or a sugar pine, similarly he could not be
recast into another image. He could be only himself. Once a man
accepts that fact, his yearnings become geared to his capacities. He
knows his strength as well as his limitations. He may be unknown and
unsung; but being wise, he has found the road to contentment. Like a
mountain laurel, or snowberry, or sage, he pretends to be no more
than he is. By being just what he is, and no more, he contributes a
unique and distinct flavor to his community. He is not likely to
have a neurosis that produces physical ailment or social
maladjustment. Thus did I have a lesson in philosophy.
# Chapter 12, Sheepherders
"One summer nicht John Duncan McRae, a freen o' mine, and I went into
Spokane, dirty and thirsty, from a weary job a'loading sheep. We
went into a pub and had a drink. As we come oot we met up with a
Salvation Army street corner meetin'. As we paused there a moment, a
Salvation Army lassie with a tamboreene walked up to Jock for a
donation. 'What dae ye want, lassie?' Jock asked. 'Some money for
the Lord,' she replied. With a twinkle in his eyes, Jock countered,
'How old are ye, lassie?' 'Eighteen,' was her answer. Jock said,
'Well, I am eighty-seven and will be seein' the Lord lang afore ye
and I'll just gie him the penney mysel'.'"
There was a pause and then Jack said, "It all goes to show that the
Scotchman isn't stingy; he's just cautious."
Visitors were welcome in the sheep camps because the herders were
lonely men. From June to October they would see few outsiders. They
longed for news of the outside world; they usually longed for
companionship. We would sit and talk to them far into the night.
Our talk ran not so much to the mountains and their mysteries as to
the affairs of men in Yakima, Chicago, Washington D.C., London, and
Berlin.
I think we told the sheepherders more about the mountains than we
learned from them. And we also conducted seminars in current events
around their camp fires.
As I was rolling up my horseshoe pack, I had an idea. I would be
gone a week or more. I planned to enter the Cascades through the
Naches and the Tieton and go back into the lake country beyond
Cowlitz Pass. I would most likely run into a sheepherder in that
region, for sheep by this time would be getting close to the highest
ridges. The papers carried big news--news of war in Europe. So i
decided to take recent issues of the Takoma Daily Republic with me.
I put several in my blankets and also a recent issue of the weekly
magazine, The Outlook.
The sheepherder who greeted me was a middle-aged man with a full
brown beard. His eyes were blue and kindly. He looked a little as I
imagined Walt Whitman must have looked.
"I haven't seen a paper for four months," he said. "So you will have
to bring me up to date."
By that time he had his pots on the fire. I handed him the Yakima
newspapers and the copy of The Outlook. He thanked me, and after a
pause said, "Will you do me a favor? Read me the paper while it is
still light."
My heart was filled. There was hard work in the valley. There was
freedom in the mountains. There seemed to be endless opportunities
ahead. I saw my future shaping up in vague outline. I had some
family responsibilities, but I had no worries or doubts or fears. I
felt a place awaited me in America. I felt I belonged here and that
I was part of something exciting and important.
The war in Europe? It was as remote as the typhoon that swept bare
an island in the South Pacific whose name I could not even pronounce.
War in Europe? That should not concern any one here. Hasn't Europe
always had wars?
That is why, I think, the evening in the meadow below Cowlitz Pass
remains so vivid in my mind. For as I sat in silence thinking of the
war as something wholly removed and apart from our world, the
sheepherder spoke, "Well, you boys may have to finish this."
I was startled. I plied him with questions. Why should a war in
Europe affect us? How could fifteen-year-old boys finish a war? Why
would America want to fight in Europe?
We talked into the night by the campfire on the edge of the lonely
meadow in the high Cascades. My host did not have much formal
education, but he was informed and highly intelligent. He could make
complicated things seem simple; he had the capacity of putting
seemingly irrelevant things into a pattern. Or perhaps it was an
ability on his part to make one see things this way. He was indeed
exciting. He gave me my first seminar on war. He told me why it was
that this war would soon be "our war."
# Chapter 16, Goat Rocks
I said those things to Elon and went on to say that nature was a
great leveler. Men fighting a blizzard on the plains or an angry
storm at sea at once became equal. The same was true when they walk
the trails or climb mountains. The fact that a person lived on one
side of the railroad tracks rather than on the other made no
difference. Poverty, wealth, accidents of birth, social standing,
race were immaterial. When a man is on his own, mother's accent,
father's prestige, grandma's wealth don't count. Neither does the
turn of a phrase or a perfect voice. Tricks and boasting are of no
account in surviving the adversities of nature.
# Chapter 18, Roy Schaeffer
Roy was preparing breakfast, and as he cooked, Mac, a wise, old mule,
age 35, came up and muzzled him.
This morning Roy turned to Mac and said, "Want a hot cake? Well, go
away and come back pretty soon and I'll give you one."
This happened over and again. Finally he fed Mac a few.
"Now don't bother us any more," said Roy. "Go on." And with that he
gave Mac a push. Mac stood for a minute and then went over to the
trail that ran close by camp and started downstream.
When Roy saw Mac go downstream, he was puzzled. The horses were
upstream. Lapover was upstream, up the North Minam and across a high
range ruled by the jagged finger of Flagstaff Point. Downstream was
the winter range and the town of Minam on the paved highway coming up
from La Grande. Roy sometimes went out that way, but only in an
emergency; for when he got out, he would be 30 miles by road from
Lapover. That was the long way around.
"Let's see where Mac goes," said Roy.
So we followed him down the trail a mile or so. Roy finally stopped
and said, "We're breaking camp and following Mac. We're moving down
the Big Minam and will go out by the town of Minam. Looks to me like
a big snow is coming. Mac usually knows it before I do."
We broke camp and moved downstream. Before morning a heavy snow
fell, almost 18 inches, which meant there were at least 4 feet on the
ridges. And 4 feet are far too much for any pack train.
The next night beside the campfire Roy chuckled as he said, "Mac knew
more than all the rest of us put together, didn't he?"
Roy would leave Lapover on snowshoes every week or so for a five-day
inspection of his marten traps.
Roy's pack weighed 40 pounds or more. He always took an axe for wood
and a shovel to dig a hole in the snow for lodging. He carried a
frying pan, kettle, coffee pot, and a cup, plate, and spoon. He took
20 pounds of rabbit meat for bait, and a half-dozen extra traps. For
food he had coffee, sugar, bacon, whole wheat cereal, potatoes, and
bread. Roy never took blankets or a bedroll on these winter trips,
because the weight of the pack did not permit it. At night he slept
like a bear in a hole in the snow. He cut off the top of a snag and
with that wood built a fire next to the snag.
Those who have built fires in deep snow know, as Gifford Pinchot
observed (Breaking New Ground), that it promptly melts itself down
out of sight, leaving only a hole with a little steam coming out.
That's why Roy always carried a shovel on these snowshoe trips. He
dug a pit in the snow as he followed the fire down. Since the fire
was next to the snag, Roy ways able to take his wood supply down with
him to the bottom of the pit. In the morning he might be 15 feet or
more beneath the surface. His bed was fir boughs. If it rained or
snowed, he would dig an alcove in the side of the pit and crawl into
it. There he could ride out a blizzard for several days.
One day, when Roy was reminiscing about these trap-line trips, he
said to me, "People think snow is cold, but it isn't. It's a blanket
that has a lot of warmth in it. ..."
Roy's first principles of winter travel are:
* Always take along a shovel and an ax;
* get under the snow when weather is bad; and
* go slowly at the beginning of the day, saving energy for the last
few hours of the evening, for a blizzard or rainstorm may come up
and change the character of the travel. Then a man's life may
depend on his reserve of energy.
[Roy paid a visit in Washington D.C.] He slept in a bed with white,
clean sheets and commented, "Never slept inside but what I caught a
cold. Wish I had brought my sleeping bag. Then I'd sleep on the
back porch. It's much healthier outdoors."
# Chapter 19, Food
Bread was important to us on our early pack trips. As I related in a
previous chapter, we carried ready-mix flour in long, thin cotton
sacks and rolled them in our horseshoe packs. The recipe was Brad's:
* 2 cups flour
* 4 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
Sometimes we stirred powdered milk into it, and added fat if we had
some.
The dough was mixed fairly thick, as it would be for biscuits. The
cooking was done in the frying pan. When the pan was hot and
greased, the dough was poured to fill it. That meant it was about an
inch thick. We first held it over the fire for a few minutes in
order to cook the bottom. Then we propped it up in front of the fire
to finish by radiation.
It was the main part of our diet. We dunked it in coffee. We
carried it in our haversack for a noon meal. We picked the low-bush
huckleberry, made a sauce, and poured it over the bread.
As boys we made either a mush or a form of bread in the same way with
corn meal. In frying it, we invariable did what no good cook would
do--we let a scorched crust form, which was to us perhaps the
outstanding delicacy on the early pack trips.
There is no bread in the mountains like sourdough. ... The Lookout
Cookbook, Region One, of the Forest Service says of sourdough:
"Sourdough bread is much more healthful as a steady diet than baking
powder bread or biscuits." And it recommends sourdough for hot
cakes... [2]
There is a lot of Labrador-tea in the Wallowas and Cascades. I have
found it from 4000 to 7000 feet. It is usually found in damp or
boggy places such as are common in the North Miniam Meadows, though I
have seen it in spots less conspicuously wet. It is a leafy
evergreen shrub from one to four feet tall. Its oblong, leathery,
resinous dotted leaves are alternate, with small white flowers in
clusters at the ends of branches. There are five spreading petals.
At the elevation of a mile in the Wallowas it usually blooms in early
July.
This tea has long been known along the eastern seaboard. The Indians
used it. Settlers took it up, and it received fame in the Revolution
when the British product was banned because of the tax. It makes a
mild, pleasant tea that suffices in a pinch on a pack trip. It is
also a good seasoner for soups or mulligans. A handful of the
leaves, put in a pot for the last five or ten minutes of the cooking,
contributes a delicate aromatic flavor.
On a fishing trip in North Carolina I learned that potatoes can be
boiled so as to have a roasted or baked effect. To every quart of
water add a half-cup of salt. When the potatoes are cooked and
allowed to drain for a few minutes, they will have the mealy taste of
baked potatoes.
# Chapter 20, Snow Hole
They soon came racing down from Crystal Pass, the light snow whirling
in clouds from their skis, to report that a blinding blizzard was
raging above. We decided to make camp and get under the snow.
We found a snag 12 inches in diameter on the edge of a clump of
alpine fir. The snow was at least 15 feet deep. The snag looked
like the chimney of an old shack. When we chopped off its top, we
had a log about 25 or 30 feet long. The outside wood was wet from
snow and rain, but when we split out the core the wood was dry. The
snag had collected none of the moisture from the ground in its long
decay. We started a fire with small shavings from the core, using
what are known as fire flames--a petroleum by-product made by an oil
company. They look like small flat cakes of paraffin or beeswax.
They burn for about ten minutes, and are quite an asset in wet or
wintry weather.
We soon had a good fire burning not far from the trunk of the snag.
As it burned the snow melted, and we followed the fire down by
shoveling away the snow. As we shoveled, we kept our wood supply
with us, since we followed the snag down. Our snow hole was some six
feet square. The fire melted about a foot of snow an hour. By the
time we went to bed and let the fire go out, we were eight feet down
in the snow.
Cooking under such circumstances has special problems. The fire is
constantly sinking into the snow, causing pots and pans to tip and
food to spill.
At last we had soup, made from dried vegetables and meat. We cooked
dried beef and made a gravy of flour and dried milk. We made mashed
potatoes of dried potatoes. We had bread and butter and cups of hot
chocolate. It was a wonderful meal for the snow hole. We ate it in
a snowstorm, driven by a bitter cold wind. We huddled close to the
fire, and took turns shoveling out the pit.
Craig and Bob slept in a two-man tent they pitched in a near-by
grove. Elon and I dug an alcove into one wall of the snow hole.
Here we placed fir boughs. We put a nylon tarp over the boughs and
our sleeping bags on the tarp. Pulling the tarp over us. we lay in
our alcove as bears would in a hole. About 10 o'clock we let the
fire die. Though it stormed all night, we were warm and comfortable.
One has to lie deep in snow to learn how warm and protective it is.
A den in the snow confines the body heat like a blanket or overcoat.
It is a snug place, no matter how the wind may howl. One who holes
up in the snow understands better the mysteries of the woods in the
winter. He knows why in severe weather grouse squirm their way under
soft snow and lie quiet. He understands why deer bury themselves in
drifts, lying a half-day or more with just their heads sticking out.
He learns something of the comfort of the bear in hibernation.
I felt closer perhaps than ever before to my friends. We were buried
deep in the snow together, sharing the threat of the blizzard. Lying
there in the alcove I felt a new relationship to the wilderness--an
affinity even closer than when one lies on the shore of a mountain
lake in August or in the heather of a high basin, or on a bed among
Indian paintbrush and cinquefoil in a mountain meadow. It was a
closer tie than is given by the night music of the treetops under the
shoulder of a snow-capped range.
It came to me why this is true. When man holes up in the snow, he
returns to the earth in a subtle way. He does not return in the
manner of a man or a tree or a bird who dies, for them the body is
reclaimed by mold and transformed into the dust from which it came.
In a deep hollow of the snow, man returns to the womb of the earth to
live. Lying in the warm darkness he captures a fleeting sense of the
security of that part of his life that existed before his own
consciousness. He escapes the reality of the world and lowers the
tempo of his own life. He lies relaxed and peaceful, safe in a warm
embrace. Death and danger may stalk abroad, but in his retreat there
is no risk.
# Chapter 21, Klickitat
Man's greatest experience--the one that brings supreme exultation--is
spiritual, not physical. It is the catching of some vision of the
universe and translating it into a poem or work of art, into a Sermon
on the Mount, into a Gettysburg Address, into a mathematical formula
the unlocks the doors of atomic energy.
In adult life the same kind of experiences can be seen in Thoreau's
Walden and in Peattie's The Road of the Naturalist and Almanac for
Moderns. They can indeed be seen in every laboratory where the
scales of ignorance are being removed and new tissues of knowledge
revealed. The satisfaction is the same.
Sound heart and lungs are not enough for mastery of the peaks. It
takes the power of the spirit too, a resolve and determination that
knows no limit even when the feet are too heavy to lift. It is
spirit against matter, the power of the soul to drive the legs above
fatigue and to push an exhausted body without whimper. It is more
than what we call guts. It is the positive force that requires a man
to go forward even when every muscle rebels. It is man against the
mountain--finite man against the universe.
In these moments man discovers himself: what the limits of his
endurance are, how far the spirit will enable him to go. Then he
discovers the power of his soul to carry him on.
When he wins, there comes an exquisite moment, a feeling that
anything is possible. There comes a sense of austerity, a feeling of
peace. All the tensions are gone. Man stands powerful and
unconquered atop the world. He has destroyed nothing to get there,
except the doubts and fears that sought to prevent him from
discovering his true worth.
If there is failure, no bitterness follows. His respect for the
mountain increases. He has not failed; he has only discovered the
limits of his own strength and the power of the universe. He stands
proud and erect, not broken or sad. He has found a force greater
than himself.
# Chapter 22, Kloochman
These are powerful challenges. The fact that many of them are subtle
and invisible makes them no less potent. A prejudice can be as
ominous and threatening as a man with a bayonet. The issues that
challenge this generation call for bold and daring action. They
demand men who live dangerously--men who place adventure ahead of
security, men who would trade the comfort of today for the chance of
scaling a new peak of progress tomorrow. That activity requires men
who neither fear men nor ideas. For it is only when fear is cast out
that the full creative energies are unleashed. Then one is
unhampered by hesitation and indecision. One's energies are not
diverted into the making of some futile or hideous sacrifice at the
altar of a sick ego.
Man's age-long effort has been to be free. Throughout time he has
struggled against some form of tyranny that would enslave his mind or
his body. So far in this century three epidemics of it have been let
loose in the world.
We can keep our freedom through the increasing crises of history only
if we are self-reliant enough to be free. We cannot become
self-reliant if our dominant desire is to be safe and secure; under
that influence we could never face and overcome the adversities of
this competitive age. We will be self-reliant only if we have a real
appetite for independence.
Dollars, guns, and all the wondrous products of science and the
machine will not be enough: "This night thy soul shall be required of
thee."
[1]
(TXT) Shelter-half @Wikipedia
(BIN) How to make a horseshoe pack
[2]
(HTM) USFS Lookout Cookbook, Region 1
author: Douglas, William O.
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/William_O._Douglas
LOC: F851.7 .D68
(HTM) source: https://archive.org/details/ofmenandmountain000038mbp
tags: ebook,biography,history,non-fiction,outdoor,vagabond
title: Of Men and Mountains
# Tags
(DIR) ebook
(DIR) biography
(DIR) history
(DIR) non-fiction
(DIR) outdoor
(DIR) vagabond