That to-day began in snow and cloud matters not,—it ended in a glory. Olson, Rockwell, and I sat that late afternoon far out on the bay basking in the warmth of a summer sun, rocked gently on a blue summer sea. For hours we had explored the island’s western shore, skirting its tumbled reefs, riding through perilous straits right up to where the eddying water seethed at some jagged chasm’s mouth. That’s fine adventuring! flirting with danger, safe enough but close—so close to death. We landed on the beach of Sunny Cove, found in the dark thicket the moldering ruins of an old feed house of the foxes, gruesome with the staring bones of devoured carcasses. And then we younger ones dashed up the sheer, snow-covered eastward ridge—dashed on all fours digging our feet into the snow, clinging with hands as to a ladder. There at the top two or three hundred feet above the bay we overlooked the farthest seaward mountains of Cape Resurrection, then Barwell Island and the open sea.
Ah, to see again that far horizon! Wander where you will over all the world, from every valley seeing forever new hills calling you to climb them, from every mountain top farther peaks enticing you. Always the distant land looks fairest, till you are made at last a restless wanderer never reaching home—never—until you stand one day on the last peak on the border of the interminable sea, stopped by the finality of that.
THE IMPERISHABLE
From our feet the cliff dropped in a V-shaped divide straight down to the green ocean; and at its base the ground swell curled, broke white and eddied. The jagged mountains across shone white against black clouds,—what peaks! huge and sharp like the teeth of the Fenris-Wolf.
We hurried back to Olson who waited in the boat. That side—the cove and the more familiar mountains to the westward—lay half shrouded in fast dissolving mist. The descent was real sport. We just sat down and slid clear to the bottom, going at toboggan pace. Poor Olson, who watched us from below, was aghast. On the shore I found a long, thick bamboo pole, doubtless carried directly here from the orient by the Japanese current. We longed to go across to Bear Glacier that we could now see, a broad, inclined plane, spotless white, with the tallest mountains rising steeply from its borders. But it was too late and we returned home. The wonders of this country, of this one bay in fact, it would take years to know!
Monday, March tenth.
On the eighth it snowed hard all day and both of us worked at our trade indoors. The ninth dawned fresh and clear and cold. It was too windy to go out onto the bay as we had intended, so, not to be entirely cheated out of an excursion, we packed a bag of various supplies and set off for the ridge to the eastward.
It was glorious in the woods. New fallen snow lay upon the tree branches; the sun touched only the tallest tops, the wind rustled them now and then and made it snow again below. We came out upon the summit of the ridge more to the north than we had ever been before and from there beheld again the open sea. Nothing can be more wonderful than to emerge from the dense forest onto such a view! Right on the ridge we built a fire beneath the arched roots of a large tree. Rockwell will long remember that wonderful chimney beneath the roots. I painted on one of the canvases I had brought while Rockwell played about or cut wood for the fire. Presently the can of beans that we’d laid in the ashes went pop!—and we knew that dinner was ready. So we sat down and ate the good beans, bread and peanut butter, and chocolate,—while our backs sizzled and our bellies froze. But we loved it and Rockwell proposed that we spend three or four days there like that. Then after more painting and some play in the snow we came home again.
But the beautiful days must be busy ones for me. I painted out on the lake for an hour or more; after that again-this time the glorious sunset. After supper bread to bake and then, tired out, early to sleep in our great, hard, comfortable bed. Olson would have started to-day had the weather been moderate. But it has blown fiercely from the north—and still it blows. All day I worked packing and now my boxes are made and nearly filled. It is surely true that we are going! All day it has seemed to me to be fall. We had thought of that before during these recent days. We scent it and feel it. I believe that it’s the end of a real summer in our lives that we taste the sadness of.