Steep Trails | Page 4

and in
California and elsewhere as the Mariposa Tulip (Calochortus Nuttallii).
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
Along the Oregon Sea Bluffs A view near the town of Ecola, Oregon.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
O'Neill's Point A favorite point of observation overlooking the Grand
Canyon Of Arizona. Now called by the Indian name, Yavapai Point.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

I
WILD WOOL
Moral improvers have calls to preach. I have a friend who has a call to
plough, and woe to the daisy sod or azalea thicket that falls under the
savage redemption of his keen steel shares. Not content with the
so-called subjugation of every terrestrial bog, rock, and moorland, he
would fain discover some method of reclamation applicable to the
ocean and the sky, that in due calendar time they might be brought to
bud and blossom as the rose. Our efforts are of no avail when we seek
to turn his attention to wild roses, or to the fact that both ocean and sky
are already about as rosy as possible--the one with stars, the other with

dulse, and foam, and wild light. The practical developments of his
culture are orchards and clover-fields wearing a smiling, benevolent
aspect, truly excellent in their way, though a near view discloses
something barbarous in them all. Wildness charms not my friend,
charm it never so wisely: and whatsoever may be the character of his
heaven, his earth seems only a chaos of agricultural possibilities calling
for grubbing-hoes and manures.
Sometimes I venture to approach him with a plea for wildness, when he
good-naturedly shakes a big mellow apple in my face, reiterating his
favorite aphorism, "Culture is an orchard apples; Nature is a crab." Not
all culture, however, is equally destructive and inappreciative. Azure
skies and crystal waters find loving recognition, and few there be who
would welcome the axe among mountain pines, or would care to apply
any correction to the tones and costumes of mountain waterfalls.
Nevertheless, the barbarous notion is almost universally entertained by
civilized man, that there is in all the manufactures of Nature something
essentially coarse which can and must be eradicated by human culture.
I was, therefore, delighted in finding that the wild wool growing upon
mountain sheep in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta was much finer
than the average grades of cultivated wool. This FINE discovery was
made some three months ago[1], while hunting among the Shasta sheep
between Shasta and Lower Klamath Lake. Three fleeces were
obtained--one that belonged to a large ram about four years old, another
to a ewe about the same age, and another to a yearling lamb. After
parting their beautiful wool on the side and many places along the back,
shoulders, and hips, and examining it closely with my lens, I shouted:
"Well done for wildness! Wild wool is finer than tame!"
My companions stooped down and examined the fleeces for themselves,
pulling out tufts and ringlets, spinning them between their fingers, and
measuring the length of the staple, each in turn paying tribute to
wildness. It WAS finer, and no mistake; finer than Spanish Merino.
Wild wool IS finer than tame.
"Here," said I, "is an argument for fine wildness that needs no
explanation. Not that such arguments are by any means rare, for all
wildness is finer than tameness, but because fine wool is appreciable by
everybody alike--from the most speculative president of national
wool-growers' associations all the way down to the gude-wife spinning

by her ingleside."
Nature is a good mother, and sees well to the clothing of her many
bairns--birds with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining
jackets, and bears with shaggy furs. In the tropical south, where the sun
warms like a fire, they are allowed to go thinly clad; but in the snowy
northland she takes care to clothe warmly. The squirrel has socks and
mittens, and a tail broad enough for a blanket; the grouse is densely
feathered down to the ends of his toes; and the wild sheep, besides his
undergarment of fine wool, has a thick overcoat of hair that sheds off
both the snow and the rain. Other provisions and adaptations in the
dresses of animals, relating less to climate than to the more mechanical
circumstances of life, are made with the same consummate skill that
characterizes all the love work of Nature. Land, water, and air, jagged
rocks, muddy ground, sand beds, forests, underbrush, grassy plains, etc.,
are considered in all their possible combinations while the clothing of
her beautiful wildlings is preparing. No matter what the circumstances
of their lives may be, she never allows them to go dirty or ragged. The
mole, living always in the dark and in the dirt, is yet as clean as the
otter