"...outings were in every season of the year and...in every kind of weather.  High peaks by the score have been climbed and hundreds of miles covered on snowshoes.  I have even followed the trail by night, and by moonlight have enjoyed the solemn forests, the silent lakes, the white cascades, and the summits of the high peaks."

"Mountain ledges are not good places for hysterical performances."

"Thoughtfulness and deliberation are essentials of mountain-climbing.  Climb slowly.  Look before stepping.  Ease down off boulders; a jump may jar or sprain.  Enjoy the scenery and do most of your talking while at rest.  Think of the fellow lower down.  A careful diet and training beforehand will make the climb easier and far more enjoyable."

"Scenery, like music, is thought-compelling and gives one a rare combination of practical and poetical inspiration.  Along with mountain-climbing, scenery shakes us free from ourselves and the world."

"Timber-line in the high mountains of the West wakes up this most indifferent visitor.  The uppermost limit of tree-growth shows nature in strange, picturesque forms, and is so graphic and impressive that all classes of visitors pause to look in silent wonder.  This is the forest frontier."

"Exploring this during every month of the year, I have had great days and nights along the timber-line.  It was ever good to be with these trees in the clear air, up close to the wide and silent sky.  Adventurers they appeared, strangely wrapped and enveloped in the shifting fog of low-drifting clouds.  In the twilight they were always groups and forms of friendly figures, while by moonlight they were just a romantic camp of fraternal explorers."

"The powerful impressions received at timber-line lead many visitors to return for a better acquaintance, and from each visit the visitor goes away more deeply impressed: for timber-line is not only novel and strange, it is touched with pathos and poetry and has a life-story that is heroic.  Its scenes are among the most primeval, interesting, and thought-compelling to be found upon the globe."

"High up in the Rocky Mountains are lakes which shine as brightly as dewdrops in a garden.  These mountains are a vast hanging garden in which flowers and waterfalls, forests and lakes, slopes and terraces, group and mingle in lovely grandeur.  Hundreds of these lakes and tarns rest in this broken topography."

"Although filled with the purest and clearest water, from a distant height they often appear to contain a brilliant heavy liquid.  Under different lights and from different points of view they are emerald, opal, inky black, violet, indigo-blue, and sea-green. I have approached one from a high distant point, and as I descended and waveringly advanced, the lake took on a number of deep colors, each melting like a passing shadow from one into the other.  Occasionally, too, it almost vanished in dull gray or flashed up in molten silver.  The colors shown were as vivid as if made of the brilliant fire of the northern lights.  All these changing colors played on the lake, while the surrounding peaks towered in cold and silent desolation, changeless except when occasionally swept with the filmy bluish shadows of the clouds."

"Many an evening after a day with the moraines and the forests, or with the eagles and the crags, I have gone down to one of these ideal camping-places.  Here through the night my fire blazed and faded in the edge of a meadow before a templed cluster of spruces on a rocky rim above the lake."

"Many times camp was so situated that splendid sun-sets or the lingering pink and silver afterglow were at their best behind a broken sky-line ridge.  My camp-fire was reflected in the lake, which often sparkled as if enamel-filled with stars.  Across one corner lay softly the inverted Milky Way.  Shooting stars passed like white rockets through the silent waters.  The moon came up big and yellow from behind a crag and in the lake became a disc of gold.  Many a night the cliffs repeated the restless-ness of the wind-shaken water until the sun quieted all with light.  During the calm nights there were hours of almost unbroken silence, though at times and faintly a far-off waterfall could be heard, the bark of a fox sounded across the lake, or the weird and merry cries of the coyote were echoed and reechoed around the shore.  More often the white crowned sparrow sang hopefully in the night.  Morning usually was preceded by a horizon of red and rose and gold.  Often, too, vague sheep and deer along the farther shore were slowly developed into reality by the morning light.  From all around birds came to bathe and drink, and meet in morning song service."

"The night was of refined clearness, and from time to time I moved away from the pungent camp-fire smoke too look at the myriads of stars that pierced with icy points the purple sky."

"The grizzly is not ferocious.  On the contrary, he uses his wits to keep far away from man.  He will not make a wanton attack. He will fight in self-defense; or if surprised, and thinking himself cornered, he at once be-comes the aggressor. If a mother grizzly feels that her cubs are in danger, she will face any danger for their defense; but the grizzly does not fight unless he thinks a fight cannot be avoided."

"...the grizzly deserves a better fate.  He is an animal of high type; and for strength, mentality, alertness, prowess, superiority, and sheer force of char-acter he is the king of the wilderness.  It is unfortunate that the Fates have conspired to end the reign of this royal monarch.  How dull will be the forest primeval without the grizzly bear!  Much of the spell of the wilderness will be gone."

"These parks make ideal camping-places,—wild, beautiful, and alluring in every season.  I have enjoyed them when they were white with snow, mysterious with cloud and mist, romantic with moonlight, and knee-deep in the floral wealth of June.  Often I have burst out upon a sunny meadow hidden away in the solitude of the forest.  As it lies silent in the sunshine, butterflies with beautifully colored wings circle lightly above its brilliant masses of flowers.  Here bears prowl, deer feed, and birds assemble in such numbers that the park appears to be their social centre.  In these wild gardens the matchless solitaire is found.  Often he sings from the top of a spruce and accompanies his song by darting off or upward on happy wings, returning and darting again, singing all the time as if enchanted."

"Many times I have come out of the subdued light of the pathless forest to enjoy these sunny openings.  Often I have stood within them watching the butterflies circling in the sun or a deer and her fawns feeding quietly across, and, as I looked, I have listened to the scolding of the squirrel and the mellow ringing of the woodpecker far away in the forest.  Here I have watched the coming storm, have enjoyed its presence, and in its breaking have seen the brilliant bow rest its foundations in front of the trees just across the meadow.  Sometimes the moon showed its soft bow in the edge of the advancing or the breaking storm."

"Those who believe in fairies will receive the most from Nature.  The unfenced wilderness is full of wild folk, full of fairy gardens and homes.  With these a careless prowler is rarely welcome.  Wasps and bees early gave me sharp hints on blundering, hurried intrusion, and a mother grizzly with two cubs by her side also impressed me concerning this matter.  Birds sometimes made me ashamed for breaking in upon them...but refined wilderness etiquette was yet to be learned.  Usually I felt welcome in the most secluded place, but one day, having wandered out into the corner of the meadow, I felt that I was not only an uninvited guest, but a most unwelcome intruder.  The meadow was a deeply secluded one, such as the fairies would naturally reserve for themselves.  Towering spruces shut it out from the world.  A summer play was surely in progress when I blundered upon the scene.  With my intrusion everything stopped abruptly.  Each flower paused in the midst of its part, the music of the thrush broke off, the tall spruces scowled stiffly, and the slender, observant young trees stood unwillingly still. Plainly all were annoyed at my presence, and all were waiting impatiently for me to be gone.  As I retreated into the woods, a breeze whispered and the spruces made stately movements.  The flowers in the meadow resumed their dance, the aspen leaves their merry accompaniment, the young trees their graceful swaying and bowing, and the fairies and bees became as happy as before."

"Although I have watched the camp-fire all alone in many scenes,—in the wilderness, at the shore of the sea, at timber-line, and on the desert in the shadow of the prehistoric cactus,—nowhere has my imagination been more deeply stirred than it was one night by my camp-fire in a little mountain meadow.  Around were the silent ranks of trees.  Here the world was new and the fire blazed in primeval scenes.  Its strange dance of lights and shadows against the trees rebuilt for me the past.  Once more I felt the hopes and dreads of savage life.  Once more I knew the legends that were told when the first camp-fire burned."

"But the attractions in the Alps are being preserved, while the Rocky Mountains are being stripped of the scenery. Yet in the Rocky Mountains there are many areas rich in perishable attractions which might well be reserved as parks so that their natural beauties could be kept unmarred.  It is to be hoped that the growing interest in American scenery will bring this about before these wild mountain gardens are shorn of their loveliness. "

"The unfortunate fact is that our scenery has never had a standing.  To date, it has been an outcast.  Often lauded as akin to the fine arts, or something sacred, commonly it is destroyed or put to base uses.  Parks should no longer be used as pigpens and pastures.  These base uses prevent the parks from paying dividends in humanity."

"Develop our parks by making them ready for the traveler, and they will become continuously productive, both commercially and spiritually."

"A park requires eternal vigilance.  The better half of our scenic attractions are the perishable ones.  The forests and the flowers, the birds and the animals, the luxuriant growths in the primeval wild gardens, are the poetry, the inspiration, of outdoors.  Without these, how dead and desolate the mountain, the meadow, and the lake!  If a park is to be kept permanently productive, its alluring features must be maintained.  If the beaver ceases to build his picturesque home, if the deer vanishes, if the mountain sheep no longer poses on the crags, if the columbine no longer opens its "bannered" bosom to the sun, if the solitaire no longer sings,—without these poetic and primeval charms, marred nature will not attract nor refresh.  People often feel the call of the wild, and they want the wild world beautiful.  They need the temples of the gods, the forest primeval, and the pure and flower-fringed brooks."

"Nature is more democratic even than death; and when people mingle amid primeval scenes they become fraternal.  Saving our best scenes is the saving of manhood.  These places encourage every one to do his best and help all to live comfortably in a beautiful world.  Scenery is our noblest resource.  No nation has ever fallen from having too much scenery."

"The trees of timber-line are stunted by cold, crushed by snow, and distorted by prolonged and terrific winds.  Many stretches appear like growths of coarse bushes and uncouth vines.  They maintain a perpetual battle, and, though crippled, bent, dwarfed, and deformed, they are stocky and strong old warriors, determined, now weak-lings, no cowards.  They are crowded together and tangled, presenting a united front. Few trees in this forest-front rise to a greater height than twelve feet... Wind and other hard conditions give a few trees the uncouth shapes of prehistoric animals. I measured a vine-like ichthyosaurus that was crawling to leeward, flat upon the earth.  It was sixty-seven feet long, and close to the roots its body was thirty-eight inches in diameter... Here and there a tough, tall tree manages to stand erect.  The high wind either prevents growing or trims off all limbs that do not point to leeward.  Some appear as though molded and pressed into shape.  A profile of others, with long, streaming-bannered limbs, gives a hopeful view, for they present an unconquerable and conscious appearance, like tattered pennants or torn, triumphant battle-flags of the victorious forest!"

Copyright 2002 by the Enos Mills Cabin
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