Bill's School and Mine Part 4

_This book is dedicated to the kind of education that is proving itself at the University of Cincinnati._

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and whittling. But from the absurdity of an Academic Epitome of Industry may the good Lord deliver us! And he will deliver us, never fear, for the law of economy is His law too.

_The greatest educational problem of our time is how to make use of commercial and industrial establishments as schools to the extent that they are schools._

The first object of all work is indeed to get food and clothes and lodging and fuel, but the essence of work is a human discipline as kindly and beneficent as the suns.h.i.+ne and the rain, and the greatest need of our time is that the discipline of work come again to its own in our entire system of education.

_This book is dedicated to the kind of education that is proving itself at the University of Cincinnati._

PART OF AN EDUCATION.

Prairie born; Once his feet touch the slope of Western mountain The level road they ever more shall spurn.

If once he drink from snow-pure crystal fountain His thirst shall, ever more consuming, burn With deepened draughts from common stream.

Once his eye catch glimpse of more substantial glory Than prairie horizon high piled with clouded foam His quickened yearning shall inspire old story Of unbounded, deathless realms beyond the sunset--Home!

There were two of us, a prairie born tenderfoot in the person of a sixteen-year-old college soph.o.m.ore and the writer. After months of antic.i.p.ation and planning we hurried away at the close of the college term, leaving the prairies of Iowa to spend a short vacation in the mountains; and we arrived in Denver on a perfect, cloudless morning in June.

Since early daylight we had kept an eager watch to westward across the even plains to catch a first glimpse of the great Front Range of the Rocky Mountains with its covering of summer snow, and after making some purchases of camp supplies we climbed to Capitol Hill in Denver to see the foothills soften to purple and the snow fields melt to liquid gold as the crystal day turned to crimson glory with the setting of the sun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sunset Washes]

"This is the land that the sunset washes, Those are the Banks of the Yellow Sea Where it arose, and whither it rushes This is the western mystery."

Late in the evening we took the train for Loveland from which place we were to start on a walking trip to Laramie, up in Wyoming.

In Loveland we purchased a pony and a pack-saddle. The pony had never been broken to the saddle, and inasmuch as the art of packing has always to be learned anew when one has not practiced it for several years, both of us were, in some respects, as green as the pony, and naturally somewhat nervous when we started from Loveland. The pony served us well however and at the worst only gave us a name for the Bucking Horse Pa.s.s when we crossed the range of the Medicine Bow Mountains from the waters of the Grand River to those of the North Platte.

From Loveland we reached Sprague's Ranch in Estes Park, thirty-five miles away, in two days of easy travel over a good stage road, encountering a snow squall in the high foothills which left us cold and wet at sundown of the first day. In Estes Park we stayed three days, fis.h.i.+ng, running up to timber line as preliminary exercise, and writing letters. The writer had spent two previous summers in Estes Park near Sprague's Ranch in company with friends from the University of Kansas.

CAMP ACCLIMATIZATION June 21st.

_My dear little Friend:_--

D. and I reached this place day before yesterday. I saw Fred Sprague yesterday. He had already learned of our presence in the Park, having seen our characteristic hob-nail tracks, and, as his mother tells me, he remarked upon seeing them that "G.o.d's people had come," meaning the Kansas boys with whom he became acquainted in '86 and '89.

We have pa.s.sed thousands of flowers since leaving Loveland, white poppies, cactus, blue bells, columbine and others more than I can tell. The blue bells are of the same kind that you and I found near Bloomington several weeks ago. It would be very nice if you and I could make some of our Sat.u.r.day excursions in this country.

I wish I could tell you more of our trip. Of course it is scarcely begun as yet, but I know pretty well what it will be; hard, for one thing, and lonesome, but strangely fascinating. We are beginning already to have that att.i.tude towards nature which I imagine Indians have, namely, the desire to get something to eat out of everything we see. [M. had written her brother D. at Moraine post office of the pies and cakes they were making at home.] This is by no means greediness, for a measured appet.i.te is essentially incompatible with the conditions of Indian life. In fact the only wild animals which are not gourmands on occasion are those which eat gra.s.s. Of course, we are at best only Agency Indians, but we shall soon be off our reservation.

Few people realize the utter desolation of many parts of the Rocky Mountains; and often on my mountain trips, hungry and foot-sore, my fancy has turned to what my friend 'Gric[H] has told me of the utterly desolate Funeral Mountains that border Death Valley in southern California, and of the infinite suns.h.i.+ne there. What would _you_ think, my little friend, even now amid the comforts and joys of home, if you could hear a trustworthy account of an actual trip over those dreadful Mountains and into that awful Valley?

I hope that the map with the accompanying description will help you to a knowledge of the geography and geology of this country. I send kind regards to your father and mother.

Your friend, F.

Starting from Estes Park for the Grand River country we stopped over night at _Camp Desolation_ in Windy Gulch, an enormous amphitheater rising above timber line on the north, east, and west, and opening to the south into Big Thompson Canyon. The mouth of the Gulch is dammed by the lateral moraine of an ancient Thompson glacier and behind this dam is a level, marshy stretch with a few green spruce and thickets of aspen, black alder and mountain willow. Near timber line also is a scattered fringe of green with dots of white. All the rest is a desolate stretch of burned timber.

Trailing to the head of Windy Gulch in the morning we gained the summit of Thompson Ridge which we followed in a northwesterly direction for about twelve miles; then we circled around the head of Big Thompson river and went down to Camp at the head of the Cache la Poudre river, precisely on the Continental Divide in Milner Pa.s.s about two hundred feet below timber line with Specimen Mountain immediately to the north of us.

SPECIMEN MOUNTAIN CAMP, June 24th.

_My Dear B:_--

D. and I are going to run down to Grand Lake settlement to-morrow for bacon and flour so I write this today. I have been in camp all morning cooking and mending while D. has been looking for sheep up in the crater of Specimen Mountain. He saw two and shot without effect.

Specimen Mountain is an extinct volcano and sheep come to the crater to lick. I have seen as many as a hundred and fifty sheep there at different times during the four trips that I have made to this region, but I have hunted them only one day (the first) of the twenty-five that I have spent in this camp--without success, of course.

Flowers in profusion are found at these alt.i.tudes already where the shrinking snow drifts have exposed the ground to the warm June sun, but under the drifts it is yet the dead of winter. As the season advances the snow recedes, and each newly uncovered strip of ground pa.s.ses with exuberant haste through a cycle of spring.

We came over from Estes Park yesterday and the day before. At one point I carried the horse's pack about a quarter of a mile on account of steepness of trail and depth of snow, leaving the pony under D.'s guidance to wallow through as best she could. We shall, no doubt, have some hard work getting out of the Grand River valley to the north over the Medicine Bow but we intend to keep at it. We are, of course, likely to get cold and wet, tired and hungry. In fact, I am neither very dry nor very warm now as I write, for it is half snowing and half raining; nor hungry (?) for I have just eaten three slices of bacon, half a corn cake eight inches in diameter and an inch thick, with bacon gravy made with flour and water, and nearly a quart of strong coffee of syrupy sweetness. I do wish D. had killed that sheep this morning! We hope to get some trout to-morrow out of Grand River, but to see the sheets of water which are being shed off the range from rain and melting snow makes one feel uncertain of the trout fis.h.i.+ng. I will close for this time and put this into my knapsack. To-morrow D. and I will get our "walkins" on bright and early, and pack it to Grand Lake. This is a tough country beyond imagination.

Yours sincerely, F.

When trailing above timber line on our way to Specimen Mountain and subsequently we were on snow much of the time; below timber line at high alt.i.tudes we contended about equally with snow and fallen timber; and at middle alt.i.tudes where the timber is heavy and where fires have been frequent and disastrous the fallen timber alone is quite enough to make travel troublesome. Mud and water, fallen and falling, we encountered everywhere, but without much concern. The greatest vexation to the amateur traveler in the Rockies is to slip off a log in trying to cross a stream, and thus get wet all over, when if one had been reasonable, one might have been wet only to the middle.

An awkward comrade of '89 did this so many times that it became a standing joke; but 'Gric,{7} as we called him, that is to say _Agricola,_ after his father "Farmer" Funston of Kansas, developed grit enough to take him through Death Valley in southern California, to take him, all alone, 1,600 miles down the Yukon River in an open boat and across 200 miles of unexplored country during the winter night to the sh.o.r.es of the Arctic Ocean, to take him into the Cuban army, where he received three serious wounds, and finally to take him through the Philippines with our Volunteer Army where he captured Aguinaldo.

From _Specimen Mountain Camp_ in Milner Pa.s.s we made our way to Grand River over an extremely difficult trail, nearly breaking our pony's leg in the fallen timber, and, finding it impossible to reach Grand Lake by the river trail without wetting our pack, we went into (_Mosquito_) camp and did our week's was.h.i.+ng. The next day we left our pony, and made a flying round trip of thirty miles to the settlement.

The next morning, hoping to escape the mosquitoes, we moved camp several miles up stream and in the afternoon we climbed to the summit of one of the high spurs of a nameless[J] peak in the range of the Medicine Bow. We got back to camp late in the evening in a sharp rain, which continued all night.

The next morning promised fair weather, and after some hesitation, we packed up for the trip over to North Park. Starting at eight o'clock we reached the deserted mining camp, Lulu, at eleven, having forded Grand River seven times, the water of it ice cold and swift as an arrow.

We then began to climb the range, the summit of which we reached at three o'clock at the pa.s.s of the Bucking Horse far above timber line. At four o'clock we began the descent into the valley of the Michigan fork of the North Platte. The rain, until now fitful, became steady and we, determined to reach a good camping place, kept our pony at a half-trot until eight o'clock, when we found a deserted cabin. We were too impatiently hungry to make biscuit, which we ordinarily baked in the frying pan before cooking our bacon, so we made our supper of graham mush, bacon, bacon gravy and coffee. Next morning we found to our dismay that our baking powder had been left at the Bucking Horse--and no wonder, for our pack had been strewn for a quarter of a mile along the trail--so we were reduced to mush again for breakfast.