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 cañons 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 cañons 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.
