formality and get on an intimate
footing with the country traversed. One method is like rushing along the
highways of a strange land in an auto; the other approximates a
leisurely following of the byways on your own two feet. The comparison
is overdone, no doubt, but it has the virtue of fundamental truth.

People who "never lose the trail" and always proceed on schedule are to
be regarded with suspicion and pity; suspicion because they probably
prevaricate, and pity because they don't know what they miss! A
schedule should be left behind, in the world of business appointments,
time-tables, and other regrettable impedimenta of civilization. So long
as you know when mealtime comes, to plan further is folly.

Maps, also, are not to be taken over-seriously, or followed too
religiously. Despite their neat lines, and scale of miles and inherent
air of authority, they are deceivers ever, and apt to prove hollow
delusions and snares when given the acid test of implicit confidence.
Sometimes only annoyance results, but occasionally the outcome of
misplaced trust is serious.

Every one who has been above the snow line, under his or her own power,
so to speak, understands that there is no satisfaction quite like that
of getting to the top of a mountain. The most leisurely and unambitious
mortal, once he finds the 500-foot contour lines slipping away behind
him, acquires something of the true mountaineering itch. We inherited
that itch from previous attacks of the mountain malady. So standing
knee-deep in the rank grass of the Sparks Lake prairies, and seeing the
snow fields crowding down close to us, seemingly just behind the
timber which fringed our meadow camping place, we realized full well
that to-morrow's work held for us some five thousand feet of climb.

[Illustration: The trails are not all dry-shod]

[Illustration: "Our trail wound beneath a fairy forest"]

Once, in Central America, I stood upon a peak whence were visible both
the Atlantic and the Pacific. Again, in western Washington, from the
summit of Mt. Olympus, I have seen the silver waters of Puget Sound to
the east and the Pacific Ocean westward. From the South Sister we saw no
ocean--no water other than the myriad lakes nestling broadcast among the
foothills. No water, but two seas--eastward a brown sea of sagebrush and
grain lands, the plateau of Central Oregon, and westward the billowing
sea of smoky Willamette Valley lowlands, blue and hazy and softly t