The Book of the National ParksYard, Robert Sterling
History
The Book of the National Parks
Yard, Robert Sterling
National parks and reserves -- United States
Slowly and painfully he made his way home. Everything was strangely
altered. Ancient trees grew where shrubs had grown four days before.
Cedars under whose shade he used to sleep lay rotting on the ground.
Where his lodge had stood now he saw a new and handsome lodge, and
presently out of it came a very old decrepit squaw who, nevertheless,
through her wrinkles, had a look that seemed strangely familiar to him.
Her shoulders were hung thick with hiaqua strings. She bent over a pot
of boiling salmon and crooned:
"My old man has gone, gone, gone.
My old man to Tacoma has gone.
To hunt the elk he went long ago.
When will he come down, down, down
To salmon pot and me?"
"He has come down," quavered the returned traveller, at last recognizing
his wife.
He asked no questions. Charging it all to the wrath of Tamanoues, he
accepted fate as he found it. After all, it was a happy fate enough in
the end, for the old man became the Great Medicine-Man of his tribe, by
whom he was greatly revered.
The name of this Rip Van Winkle of Mount Rainier is not mentioned in Mr.
Winthrop's narrative.
IX
CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO
CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, SOUTHWESTERN OREGON. AREA, 249 SQUARE MILES
Crater Lake is in southwestern Oregon among the Cascade Mountains, and
is reached by an automobile ride of several hours from Medford. The
government information circular calls it "the deepest and bluest lake in
the world." Advertising circulars praise it in choicest professional
phrase. Its beauty is described as exceeding that of any other lake in
all the world. Never was blue so wonderful as the blue of these waters;
never were waters so deep as its two thousand feet.
Lured by this eloquence the traveller goes to Crater Lake and finds it
all as promised--in fact, far better than promised, for the best
intended adjectives, even when winged by the energetic pen of the most
talented ad writer, cannot begin to convey the glowing, changing,
mysterious loveliness of this lake of unbelievable beauty. In fact, the
tourist, with expectation at fever-heat by the time he steps from the
auto-stage upon the crater rim, is silenced as much by astonishment as
by admiration.
Before him lies a crater of pale pearly lava several miles in diameter.
A thousand feet below its rim is a lake whose farthest blues vie in
delicacy with the horizon lavas, and deepen as they approach till at
his feet they turn to almost black. There is nothing with which to
compare the near-by blue looked sharply down upon from Crater's rim. The
deepest indigo is nearest its intensity, but at certain angles falls far
short.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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