XXV. STOPPED BY THE CLOUDS
We scrambled through thickets to Mount Grinnell, which stands like a gigantic fortress, a bulwark of this world against others. Its impregnability seemed appalling. Fancy knocking at that door after it was shut! We stopped and looked up at it, and the sight of it relaxed our tense human energy and left us with very contrite souls. However, the nearer we got to it the less it was magnified. Its battlements receded and we soon had a fly’s view of the mountain, the view which the fly has when it is walking on the barren surface of the rock.
We clawed our way along the steep entangled shore of Lake Grinnell to a waste of willow saplings, and a litter of postal packets of great rocks delivered by the mail chute of the Grinnell Cataract. Here a great mass of water meets momentarily with calamity and falls over a precipice like houses falling. At two miles’ distance it is like a picture of a waterfall seen in a shop window, pretty and attractive. At twenty yards’ distance it is the awful thing it is. The sun is hidden at noon and a noise that drowns all other noises is in your ears. The spray blows turbulently over you like rain.
We had thought to cross the cataract through the disjecta membra of the rocks at its base, and climbed into dreadful proximity, and advanced our noses inquisitively over the foam. And then very hurriedly we drew back as if we feared we should be tempted across it. But what to do? Not surely to retrace our steps? That seemed unthinkable.
We decided to go lower and try to ford the rapids. Vachel thought that would not be difficult. But I had attempted such crossings in the Caucasus and knew what it meant to adventure one’s tender body into a hypnotic, rushing current and a frantic roar of stones. So I went first and demonstrated it.
And we did get across. With most of our clothes off and stuffed into our packs, and with uprooted pine saplings for support, we made a criss-cross diagonal course into the water, which rushed up our bodies like wild mastiffs, and we were too preoccupied with the rolling stones and slippery snags and the mesmerising onset of the waters to think about the chilling we were getting. It was certainly a victory when we slipped out of the central violence and got into the shallows on the other side.
We did no more that day. I had sprained two fingers anyway, and could not rely on my left hand. So we piled a dead-willow fire beside the red rocks and talked. The cliff above us went up to heaven, but there was a recess washed out by the water of that waterfall in some past age. I am inclined to think that the cataract made the wind which simply raged round the corner all night long. But we had found a place that was completely out of it. Also, we got enough wood to burn all night and cure the cold. For it was cold up here. We built a long barrier of little rocks between us and the elongated glowing furnace of willow which we had made. This kept the flames off our blankets and yet warmed our bodies all the way along.
It was a majestic night, with the screened light of the moon filling a narrow sky. A selection of heaven’s stars played voluntaries to us, but the jazz band of the waterfall kept up a grandiose hubbub, in which were vocal human cries and groans and chatterings—as if it were hell or Broadway going past.
Vachel could talk above this roar; I could not. So I listened to him and his cataclysmic accompaniment. It was, I think, on the subject of Turner and heroic painting. Vachel, and Ruskin before him were attracted to Turner by the heroic style.
“Scenes such as this beside the waterfall delighted Turner. Just at dusk it was a perfect Turner painting. Did you ever see that ‘elegant’ edition of Rogers’s Italy which old Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin read with their child? It is profusely illustrated with vignettes by Turner. They are all in the heroic spirit and they started Ruskin on his speculation about cloud-forms and in his idealistic interpretation of Turner.”
“I love the heroic,” Vachel went on. “I hate the game of puncturing heroics which people think so clever nowadays.”
I made no objection. A poet whose voice can be heard above the jazz band is a hero, and my sympathies are not with the flood of the burlesque—unless, as now, they begin to wrap my soul in slumber’s holy balm.
Next day we went up to the clouds, climbing by tiny steps of rock and slippery tussocks, and Vachel went ahead and became pioneer of the way. For it was a left-handed mountain, and I had no left hand that I could use, and I kept slipping five feet down in making one foot up. I got left behind, and when I caught up with the poet he was sitting stripped under a waterfall and leaning against a gleaming rock whilst the stream splashed downward over him.
It was a day of great moving clouds. Clouds with personalities came stalking out of chasm bed-chambers, clouds overtook us and enveloped us. We found November’s home, where sweeping rains cross and recross on the mountains. We passed near the base of the black and dirty glacier and watched the clouds smoking over it like a spreading fire. And presently there was not a particle of view above us except cloud, and no view below except of the rocks at our feet and the cloud-filled ravines.
We stood in perplexity. In clear weather it is difficult to get over the “Garden Wall” from this side. Now we could not see our way any further. We retired to twin slits in the cliff, stretched ourselves on our blankets, and gave way to meditation.
The clouds came out of their homes to see us;
They had heard of us and had seen us from afar,
Now they could satisfy their curiosity
And find out just exactly who we were.
So they gave us of their hospitality,
Inviting us both to their mountain abode.
Mr. and Mrs. Glacier were at home—a chilly couple,
So were the impulsive avalanches, a family of long descent
And purest origin.
The visitors were mostly ladies of the upper strata of society
Most æsthetically gowned.
They came about us, asked us various questions,
Conventional questions about the weather.
Some new ones came, others drifted away.
We were left by ourselves at the last.
The clouds didn’t altogether like our style,
Our form wasn’t theirs,
We were obviously parvenus, Nature’s profiteers,
Living not on our income but by our output.
The Peaks, their husbands, with their patrimonies,
Were certainly less clever and more stodgy,
But we were clear outsiders, people of a lowly birth,
Not altogether possible, they judged.
So the clouds’ curiosity regarding us abated,
We felt pretty chilly towards the end of the party.
They offered us no tea, though we each had an ice on a wafer.
Proud, supercilious, overweening ladies!
IF YOU’RE MY FRIEND YOU’RE GREAT