Have you ever stood on a mountain ridge or divide when a fierce gale
was blowing, so that you were unable to walk without staggering, and
where it was hard to get your breath, much less speak, and where it
seemed as if Nature herself had set herself the purpose of cleansing
you through and through with her sweetening pneumatic processes? If
not, you have missed one of the blessed influences of life.
Rough? harsh? severe? Of course, but what of that, compared with the
blessings that result. It is things like that that teach one to
love Nature. Read John Muir's account--in his _Mountains of
California_--and see how he reveled in wind-storms, and even
climbed into a tree and clung to its top "like a bobolink on a reed"
in order to enjoy a storm to the full.
Immediately at our feet lie the various mazes of canyons and ravines
that make the diverse forks of the American River. In one place is
a forbidding El Capitan, while in another we can clearly follow for
miles the Royal Gorge of this many branched Sierran river. To the
right is Castle Peak (9139 feet) to the north and west of Donner Lake,
while nearby is Tinker's Knob (9020 feet) leading the eye down to
Hopkins' Soda Springs.
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