If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on
our timber ranch for the next two or three weeks, it must be a
sort of life which I have not read of in books or experienced in
person. We did not see a human being but ourselves during the
time, or hear any sounds but those that were made by the wind and
the waves, the sighing of the pines, and now and then the far-off
thunder of an avalanche. The forest about us was dense and cool,
the sky above us was cloudless and brilliant with sunshine, the
broad lake before us was glassy and clear, or rippled and breezy,
or black and storm-tossed, according to Nature’s mood; and its
circling border of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred
with land-slides, cloven by canons and valleys, and helmeted with
glittering snow, fitly framed and finished the noble picture. The
view was always fascinating, bewitching, entrancing. The eye was
never tired of gazing, night or day, in calm or storm; it
suffered but one grief, and that was that it could not look
always, but must close sometimes in sleep.
We slept in the sand close to the water’s edge, between two
protecting boulders, which took care of the stormy night-winds
for us. We never took any paregoric to make us sleep. At the
first break of dawn we were always up and running foot-races to
tone down excess of physical vigor and exuberance of spirits.
That is, Johnny was—but I held his hat. While smoking the pipe
of peace after breakfast we watched the sentinel peaks put on the
glory of the sun, and followed the conquering light as it swept
down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forests
free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the
water till every little detail of forest, precipice and pinnacle
was wrought in and finished, and the miracle of the enchanter
complete. Then to “business.”
That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north
shore. There, the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray,
sometimes white. This gives the marvelous transparency of the
water a fuller advantage than it has elsewhere on the lake. We
usually pushed out a hundred yards or so from shore, and then lay
down on the thwarts, in the sun, and let the boat drift by the
hour whither it would. We seldom talked. It interrupted the
Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the luxurious rest and
indolence brought. The shore all along was indented with deep,
curved bays and coves, bordered by narrow sand-beaches; and where
the sand ended, the steep mountain-sides rose right up aloft into
space—rose up like a vast wall a little out of the
perpendicular, and thickly wooded with tall pines.
So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only
twenty or thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct
that the boat seemed floating in the air! Yes, where it was even
eighty feet deep. Every little pebble was distinct, every
speckled trout, every hand’s-breadth of sand. Often, as we lay
on our faces, a granite boulder, as large as a village church,
would start out of the bottom apparently, and seem climbing up
rapidly to the surface, till presently it threatened to touch our
faces, and we could not resist the impulse to seize an oar and
avert the danger. But the boat would float on, and the boulder
descend again, and then we could see that when we had been
exactly above it, it must still have been twenty or thirty feet
below the surface. Down through the transparency of these great
depths, the water was not merely transparent, but dazzlingly,
brilliantly so. All objects seen through it had a bright, strong
vividness, not only of outline, but of every minute detail, which
they would not have had when seen simply through the same depth
of atmosphere. So empty and airy did all spaces seem below us,
and so strong was the sense of floating high aloft in
mid-nothingness, that we called these boat-excursions
“balloon-voyages.”
We fished a good deal, but we did not average one fish a week.
We could see trout by the thousand winging about in the emptiness
under us, or sleeping in shoals on the bottom, but they would not
bite—they could see the line too plainly, perhaps. We frequently
selected the trout we wanted, and rested the bait patiently and
persistently on the end of his nose at a depth of eighty feet,
but he would only shake it off with an annoyed manner, and shift
his position.
We bathed occasionally, but the water was rather chilly, for
all it looked so sunny. Sometimes we rowed out to the “blue
water,” a mile or two from shore. It was as dead blue as indigo
there, because of the immense depth. By official measurement the
lake in its centre is one thousand five hundred and twenty-five
feet deep!
Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, we lolled on the sand in camp,
and smoked pipes and read some old well-worn novels. At night, by
the camp-fire, we played euchre and seven-up to strengthen the
mind—and played them with cards so greasy and defaced that only
a whole summer’s acquaintance with them could enable the student
to tell the ace of clubs from the jack of diamonds.
We never slept in our “house.” It never recurred to us, for
one thing; and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that
was enough. We did not wish to strain it.
By and by our provisions began to run short, and we went back
to the old camp and laid in a new supply. We were gone all day,
and reached home again about night-fall, pretty tired and hungry.
While Johnny was carrying the main bulk of the provisions up to
our “house” for future use, I took the loaf of bread, some slices
of bacon, and the coffee-pot, ashore, set them down by a tree,
lit a fire, and went back to the boat to get the frying-pan.
While I was at this, I heard a shout from Johnny, and looking up
I saw that my fire was galloping all over the premises! Johnny
was on the other side of it. He had to run through the flames to
get to the lake shore, and then we stood helpless and watched the
devastation.
The ground was deeply carpeted with dry pine-needles, and the
fire touched them off as if they were gunpowder. It was wonderful
to see with what fierce speed the tall sheet of flame traveled!
My coffee-pot was gone, and everything with it. In a minute and a
half the fire seized upon a dense growth of dry manzanita
chapparal six or eight feet high, and then the roaring and
popping and crackling was something terrific. We were driven to
the boat by the intense heat, and there we remained,
spell-bound.
Within half an hour all before us was a tossing, blinding
tempest of flame! It went surging up adjacent ridges—surmounted
them and disappeared in the canons beyond—burst into view upon
higher and farther ridges, presently—shed a grander illumination
abroad, and dove again—flamed out again, directly, higher and
still higher up the mountain-side--threw out skirmishing parties
of fire here and there, and sent them trailing their crimson
spirals away among remote ramparts and ribs and gorges, till as
far as the eye could reach the lofty mountain-fronts were webbed
as it were with a tangled network of red lava streams. Away
across the water the crags and domes were lit with a ruddy glare,
and the firmament above was a reflected hell!
Every feature of the spectacle was repeated in the glowing
mirror of the lake! Both pictures were sublime, both were
beautiful; but that in the lake had a bewildering richness about
it that enchanted the eye and held it with the stronger
fascination.
We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours. We
never thought of supper, and never felt fatigue. But at eleven
o’clock the conflagration had traveled beyond our range of
vision, and then darkness stole down upon the landscape
again.
Hunger asserted itself now, but there was nothing to eat. The
provisions were all cooked, no doubt, but we did not go to see.
We were homeless wanderers again, without any property. Our fence
was gone, our house burned down; no insurance. Our pine forest
was well scorched, the dead trees all burned up, and our broad
acres of manzanita swept away. Our blankets were on our usual
sand-bed, however, and so we lay down and went to sleep. The next
morning we started back to the old camp, but while out a long way
from shore, so great a storm came up that we dared not try to
land. So I baled out the seas we shipped, and Johnny pulled
heavily through the billows till we had reached a point three or
four miles beyond the camp. The storm was increasing, and it
became evident that it was better to take the hazard of beaching
the boat than go down in a hundred fathoms of water; so we ran
in, with tall white-caps following, and I sat down in the
stern-sheets and pointed her head-on to the shore. The instant
the bow struck, a wave came over the stern that washed crew and
cargo ashore, and saved a deal of trouble. We shivered in the lee
of a boulder all the rest of the day, and froze all the night
through. In the morning the tempest had gone down, and we paddled
down to the camp without any unnecessary delay. We were so
starved that we ate up the rest of the Brigade’s provisions, and
then set out to Carson to tell them about it and ask their
forgiveness. It was accorded, upon payment of damages.
We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a
hair-breadth escape and blood-curdling adventure which will never
be recorded in any history.
