VII. SILENCED BY THE MOUNTAINS
My companion’s secret thought is that he is a Virginian. But how, since he was born in Illinois and his parents in Kentucky? “I am a follower of Poe and Jefferson,” he answers. Kentucky was largely colonised from Virginia, and the poet is ready to claim allegiance to the chivalric, leisurely and flamboyant genius of the South. “If only as a protest against the drab, square-toed, dull, unimaginative America which is gaining on us all,” he adds. He has a passion for ideal democracy, and his great hero of the hour as we stride over the rocks is John Randolph, of Roanoke, who could enter Congress with four hounds and a dog-whip and make speeches to which all must listen. “America,” Lindsay insists, “simply needs the flamboyant to save her soul.” I suppose, because of that faith, he also, Vachel Lindsay, the poet, is a flamboyant genius.
The higher we rose in the mountains the more serious became our conversation. We were silent only when we lost our breath. Upon occasion, in this grand and lonely scene, the poet would lift his voice so high that it could have been heard on the mountain on the other side of the valley. His enthusiasm naturally lifted his resonant voice. His political hero is John Randolph or Andrew Jackson, his literary hero is Ruskin, his artist in marble is Saint-Gaudens, his pet hobby is Egyptian hieroglyphics, his passion is the road, and his ideal is St. Francis. Tell it to the mountains and the streams; tell it out! They hear and so do I.
Where we stand is where never man has stood before, or foot of man has trod, and the fresh and virginal flowers on every hand look up at us with mute surprise. We carry our argument higher and higher. We sit and boil our pot beside a bank of purple heather, exalted upon the bare scarp of a sun-drowned mountain, and crackling of roots in the fire blends with strident Middle-West American. We pull up to the black door of a great rock, and the splashing of a cascade splashes through his vibrant tones.
At last, however, the mountains silenced us. They outstayed us, and will outstay us. They ate up our provisions, and swallowed our breath, and beguiled us deceptively to climb higher. “Upward and onward!” was invisibly written on every crag. And we always expected to get to the top in an hour. We finished the coffee, we finished the milk, we finished the bread, we finished the sugar. We got down to a rasher of bacon a day and tea without sugar and milk. Then even the much-loathed bacon got finished, and the problem was to find a “camp” and get more supplies. So we set ourselves seriously to the task of finding a pass over the range.
The poet became much exhausted, and the high altitude evidently affected him more than it did me. We walked quarter-hours and rested quarter-hours, and every time we rested we fell fast asleep. I led up the steep inclines, and we stopped every twenty paces and listened to our breath, I to his breath, he to mine—ao, ao, ao—almost a sob, and waited for the ahoo sound, which meant that the lungs had filled again. After some arduous hours in this wise, we came on our first destitute afternoon, to our first topmost ridge. A cold hurricane seemed to try to stop our final conquest of it, and it went through our bodies like swords. But when we exultantly bore through it we came to a sheer precipice going down to a narrow corridor which led always to the northward.
Vachel punctuates most of his remarks with a wild native yell—“Whoopee Whuh!” but he was down to a whisper now, and could no longer move the mountains with a “Hurrah for Bryan.” Silently and rather mournfully we diagonalised downward to a far blue lake which was the ultimate end of the valley, and the source of the stream we had followed for days. Devastating winds blew across us, and we watched how they descended upon the surface of that lake and tore it off in sprays and circles of water and steam. We found what seemed to be a horse trail over the shingle, but it led to an extensive field of snow, and we recognised only the footsteps of a bear. The lake was not blue, but green when we got near to it, and was banked on three sides by snow.
Said Vachel: “Here, Stephen, is the place to catch a fish.”
I said: “No, Vachel, this is just a snow-melt; there never were any fish here.”
“Nevertheless try!” said the poet.
Now we had purchased fishing tackle, though we had no rods. And Vachel had a large red wooden grasshopper, and I had a large green one.
Vachel said: “You must throw your grasshopper in, and I’ll go light a fire so as to be ready to cook the fish.”
So I fastened my fat green wooden gentleman to the gut, and the gut to the line, and attaching a stone, flung him in the air. Behold, he flew like a grasshopper and disported with the winds. But when he settled at last on the surface of that green and snowy lake, he always made a most rapid progress toward the shore. I sailed him like a boat. No fish came, and even our faith remained unrewarded.
Was not this adventure prophetically put in verses in Alice, where some one sent a message to the fish, telling them, this is what I wish. And the little fishes’ answer was—“We cannot do it, sir, because,”—the little fishes, as was disclosed later, were in bed.
We sat down together in a place like the heath in Macbeth, and the weird sisters were ready to appear, had we been evil. The sun had set, winds were blowing from four directions at the same time, and it was bitterly cold. A tiny fire of roots peeped at us and smoked and chattered, and we tried hard to get warm at it. We looked at the mountain-walls, we looked at our maps and compasses. We thought of the night and of our empty wallets and insides. “Just think of Broadway at this minute,” said Vachel. “Still sweltering in heat, not yet lighted up for evening pleasure.” We felt far from civilisation, and sighed at last for what we despised. “Or think of Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Avenue,” said I, “all a-swarm with the light-hearted summer crowd of London.”
“Well, we can’t sleep here,” said I at length.
“Let us make one last attempt to get over to the other side.”
Vachel seemed surprised, but agreed with alacrity: “I’m for it,” said he.
The greedy old mountains have been to our knapsacks
And eaten up most of our food.
They’ve swallowed our breath and silenced our speech.
But they haven’t broken our hearts.
It takes more than a mountain to do that!
IMPRISONED IN THE VIEWLESS WINDS