Cedar Mountain

“ A rainy day is a good time to walk a cedar trail, when the dull light seems to shine from the wet moss, making the underleaves of devil’s-club and Rocky Mountain maple glow. Wind and rain, like light, penetrate with difficulty the latticework of this canopy; thin lines of fog develop over the bogs. The air is fresh with growing plants, snow-cold still when the first spring flowers appear. ”

“ But whatever the sum total, thus much all things agreed on: they must get away from Cedar Mountain. Whither? There seemed no answer but Deadwood.
The next day Mrs. Jebb gave a reception for the young people and Cedar Mountain turned out strong. Three was the hour named, and at four the parsonage was full. Belle was dressed in the simple gray that intensified her colour, her brown eyes and gold-brown hair were shining; standing at the end of the parlour she looked very lovely, and all Cedar Mountain glowed with pride in her.
Jim was in his glory. ”

“ Cedar Breaks is a series of vast amphitheatres eroded to a depth of 2,000 feet into the Pink Cliff formation at the summit of the Markagunt Plateau and covering an area of approximately sixty square miles in the Sevier National Forest. Its forested rim, 10,300 feet in elevation, has been etched back into Blowhard Mountain and adjacent eminences; and a short distance to the north the blunted volcanic crest of Brian Head rises 900 feet higher, affording a panorama of practically all of southern Utah, Nevada and northern Arizona. ”

“ Five miles from Cedar Mountain is Fort Ryan and to the south of it a plain, where every year in the first week of July the Indians gather in their tepees and the whites in tents and prairie schooners for a sort of fair, in which are many kinds of sin on the largest scale. Herds of horses are there, and racing is a favourite sport. It was here on the Fourth of July that an Indian on a rough-looking buckskin pony had won, over all the field that year, a purse containing five hundred dollars. ”

“ Fear seemed to rob them of power as Blazing Star dashed in among them. The bright-eyed pronghorns swerved; and the band split wide, and the horse dashed through. As he wheeled and galloped back, he shouted: "You saw that, Belle? You saw it? It has never been done before. In a fair race, on open stretch, they had two hundred yards' start and I caught them in a mile. Now I know what Blazing Star is. No creature on legs can beat him; no horse in the West can match him."
In a little while the riders turned again to Cedar Mountain. Hartigan led the way—and the talk. ”

“ Every ravine was filled by mountain streams' foam—white with speed.
We descended all day and the weather grew more and more summer-like each mile. Ripe strawberries lured us from the warm banks. For the first time we came upon great groves of red cedar under which the trail ran very muddy and very slippery by reason of the hard roots of the cedars which never decay. Creeks that seemed to me a good field for placer mining came down from the left, but no one stopped to do more than pan a little gravel from a cut bank or a bar. ”

“ Two days later Jim and Belle were again on the Deadwood trail. It seemed that each new chapter of their lives must begin on that trail. They were in a new buckboard, the gift of Pa Boyd, driving Midnight in harness. That same morning Charlie Bylow had left for Deadwood with his team and wagon. The latter was loaded with gifts from Cedar Mountain friends, some of them sufficiently absurd—for example, framed chromos, a parrot cage, a home instructor in Spanish, and a self-rocking cradle—but there was also a simple sufficiency of household furniture. ”

“ There they tied the horses and climbed on foot to the upland. The grass among the rocks was yellow now, and high gentians seized on the rare moment to flaunt their wondrous blue against that perfect background. A flock of autumn birds rose up and flew on, as the climbers, reaching the Spirit Rock, paused and turned to look out over the golden plains to the east, over the blue hills to the north, and into the purple glow that the waning sunlight left on all the west. ”

“ A short distance farther up the gorge soars a slender, ethereal cone of pink and 19 white, a peak of such appealing symmetry and delicate tints, so lofty and aspiring, that it evokes a cry of admiration. It is the Mountain of Mystery.
One of the Amphitheatres of Cedar Breaks
The Wet Trail
The Canyon continues some eight miles farther, but its exploration is only for the adventurous few. There is no trail but the winding river which reaches from wall to wall; sudden rainstorms send between the scarred and splintered cliffs a resistless torrent of water. ”

“ The cup-like summit of the highest is 13,000 feet above the sea, and snow always lies on the north escarpment. Rising about 6000 feet above the point of view of the great plateau, it is from all sides a noble object, the dark rock, snow-sprinkled, rising out of the dense growth of pine and cedar. We drove at first through open pine forests, through park-like intervals, over the foot-hills of the mountain, through growths of scrub cedar, and out into the ever-varying rolling country to widely-extended prospects. ”

“ Cedar City is the last settlement. We’ll have to go on, that’s all, and thank our stars we are quit of them. Two days’ journey beyond is good pasture, and water. They call it Mountain Meadows. Nobody lives there, and that’s the place we’ll rest our cattle and feed them up before we tackle the desert. Maybe we can shoot some meat. And if the worst comes to the worst, we’ll keep going as long as we can, then abandon the wagons, pack what we can on our animals, and make the last stages on foot. We can eat our cattle as we go along. ”

“ A noble thing in itself, a necessary vent, perhaps, for the untamed spirit's love of untrammelled motion but it was inwrought with dangers. Most men in the West in Hartigan's day—as now—were by nature horse-lovers; but never, so far as Cedar Mountain knew, had there been a man so horse-crazy as the Rev. ”

“ In the sand lies a dead cedar. Torn from the mountain top and crashing down the canyon, it was carried by the rushing waters out on to the beach and deposited in the sand. Sitting on a branch of this cedar is an old woman. ”

“ The Mount Atlas cedar, which forms great forests in the mountain ranges of Morocco and Algeria at high altitudes, is far more erect in growth, and has less tendency to wide branching, than the cedar of Lebanon. The glaucous variety, with foliage of a charming silvery bloom, is one of the loveliest conifers that can be planted, provided it is raised from seed ”

“ The Alaska cedar ranges on the mountain slopes from 3,500 feet up to 6,000 feet altitude. It is far more abundant on the north side of the peak than on the south. Few, if any, specimens exceed four feet in diameter, and where the trees are most abundant the trunks are only one or two feet through. ”

“ Gabriel Sionita, a very learned Syrian Maronite, who assisted in editing the Paris Polyglott, a man worthy of all credit, thus describes the cedars of mount Lebanon, which he had examined on the spot: “The cedar grows on the most elevated part of the mountain, is taller than the pine, and so thick, that five men together could scarcely encompass one. It shoots out its branches at ten or twelve feet from the ground: they are large and distant from each other, and are perpetually green. The wood is of a brown colour, very solid and incorruptible, if preserved from wet. ”

“ It runs in a southeasterly course, so that its mouth is four miles or more south of a line drawn due east from the point where it deserts the foot-hills on the west side of the valley. The valley, itself, is shut in between the Blue mountains, on one side, and the Massanutten, a spur of the Great North mountain, on the other. It is traversed, from north to south, by a turnpike road, a little to the left of the center, which road crosses Cedar Creek between Middletown and Strasburg. ”

“ Cedar Breaks is twenty-three miles by highway east of Cedar City and four-fifths of a mile nearer the sky. Immediately east of the town the road enters the rugged gorge of Coal Creek, its slopes covered with fine forests of conifers and aspens. The walls assume impressive castellated forms that are especially striking at the mouth of Ashdown Gorge, eight miles distant. Ashdown Gorge is an extremely narrow, tortuous and precipitous rift in the plateau, down which rushes a sparkling stream from the vast furrows of Cedar Breaks. ”

“ Cedar Ridge is a famous look-out. “What you cannot see from there is not worth seeing,” say the neighbors. It rises some three hundred feet above the level of the river, and surveys highlands north, uplands and lowlands south, with Janus-like vision. ”

“ What serene skies—what brilliant sunshine—what tropical wealth of verdure! At every pore the rich earth burst forth into fruit and flower. Two months after the grass had been sunk deep beneath the snow, sheets of strawberries were spread in the woods, an extemporized feast.
One might think that the cottage at Cedar Creek had also bloomed under the fair weather; for when July—hottest of Canadian months—came, the dingy wooden walls had assumed a dazzling white, with a roof so grey that the shingles might have been veritable slates. Resemblance to the lime-washed houses of home was Robert's fancy ”

“ Cedar City has a good hotel, water system, electric lights, a bank, photoplay theatre, well stocked stores, hospital, Carnegie Library, Mormon Tabernacle, a branch of the State Agricultural College, and a new and handsome railway station. On the edge of the town is a band of Piute Indians, the original inhabitants of the country, who sell buckskin gloves, moccasins and other articles. The prosperity of Cedar City is derived from sheep, wool, cattle, agriculture and the recent development of vast deposits of iron in the Iron Mountains, twelve miles away. ”

“ The trail here was so wide that Joe could trot ahead and ask Mills.
“Yes, they are cedars,” Mills said. “They call ’em white cedars, I believe. The wood is much softer than your slow-growing cedar in the East. It’s a great forest, isn’t it?” ”

“ It will be no small feat to move that rock over and if they accomplish it they will be pretty good engineers.”
There were two spades and many hatchets among the camp equipment, and armed with these the Winnebagos and Sandwiches crossed the lake, went along the river until they came to the big cedar tree and from there struck into the woods, where they easily followed the trail they had traveled on that other occasion, for the cedar trees along the way were unmistakable guides. When they saw the rock again they were more certain than ever that it had been marked for some reason. ”

“ Cedar Ranch is on an arm of the Painted Desert, which stretches away towards the east over a wide level plain to the horizon. From this point the road ascends again on an easy grade until it reaches an elevation of eight thousand feet at the Canon.
During the long drive through the pine woods the appearance of the country gives no hint of a desert, but beautiful scenery greets the eye on every hand. The air is filled with the fragrance of pine and ozone that is as exhilarating as wine. ”

“ We proceed through a flat, well-timbered valley half a mile in width. There is a dense growth of cedar, spruce and cottonwood; and such magnificent cedar! Four feet and more in diameter. We have now an undergrowth which is the genuine flora of the Pacific slope. As we advance, dense smoke surrounds us, for we are reaching a region where fires have been burning ahead. With difficulty we continue our advance, hour after hour, in the hope of finding a spot where the horses can pasture, but none is to be seen. There is no alternative but to camp in the midst of the burnt timber. ”

“ On level ground it would be accounted a hill, but in the midst of such a range of snowy giants it emerges only like a tiny heap of earth, and to this day nothing grows on it but the cedar—the finest, darkest, most widely spreading specimens of that noble and fragrant tree are here to be found. ”

“ The sky was a darker blue, the stars burned a whiter fire, the peaks stood looming and vast, tranquil sentinels of that valley, and the wind rose to sigh, to breathe, to mourn through the cedars. It was a sad music. The Indian lay prone, dark face to the stars. Joe Lake lay prone, sleeping as quietly, with his dark face exposed to the starlight. The gentle movement of the cedar branches changed the shape of the bright patches on the grass where shadow and light met. The walls of the valley waved upward, dark below and growing paler, to shine faintly at the rounded rims. ”

“ But, so soon as every human form has disappeared, and man, an imperceptible grain of dust in the desert, finds himself face to face with God, he trembles, for the feeling of his weakness is then revealed to him; he comprehends how insignificant he is before these colossal works of nature, and how insensate is the struggle he must carry on, in order to raise only a corner of the winding sheet of sand gradually settling down on him, and which assails him from all sides at once.
Red Cedar was an old wood ranger. ”

“ The deep ravine over which it sweeps, and through which traverses the beautiful Cedar Creek, is not otherwise easily passed for several miles, either above or below the bridge. It is needful to the spot, and yet so little likely to have survived the great fracture, the evidences of which are visible around, and which has made a fissure of about ninety feet through the breadth of a rock-ribbed hill, that we are at first disposed to reflect upon it as the work of man. It is only when we contemplate its full measure of grandeur that we are assured it is the work of God. ”