Mount Shasta Collection

John Muir

Muir, John. "Notes from Shasta." Daily Evening Bulletin [San Francisco] 13 Sept. 1877: 3.

Mount Shasta is a fine refuge this hot weather. The snow and ice is not perceptibly less than is usually found at this season of the year, and the thousand fountains that spring around the base, are flowing as full and icy and blessedly pure as ever. Neither in the vegetation is there any visible recognition given of the hard, dry times that have so afflicted the lowland fields. Their delightful freshness and beauty can scarcely be conceived by those who have seen only the southern and middle portions of the Sierra, where sheep and cattle have devoured and trodden out of existence nearly all the herbaceous portion of the flora, grasses, flowers, and the so-called weeds, as well as the more delicate of the blooming shrubs. Most of this favored region is still rejoicing in primeval wildness untouched by a single hoof.

The number of health and pleasure-seekers is steadily increasing from year to year, and this is speedily becoming a family resort. The hotels have been overflowing full during the months of May and June, and it is strange that in these hot midsummer months the woods are wholly deserted, as if everybody's hope and money had been suddenly exhausted. Hooker and Gray have been here three days exploring the woods and meadows, working and enjoying themselves as only botanists can. This morning they begin their homeward journey. Their labors on this coast done for the present, though they both look hopefully forward among the remaining late years of their life for another big summer in our unrivaled flora. Their efforts have been mainly directed to the coniferous trees, and the light which these masters will now be able to cast upon our unrivaled forests, will appear in the second volume of the California Botany, which Gray tells me will probably be published in about a year from now.

This morning I set out to explore the volcanic region around Lassen's Butte. Shasta looms majestically in the pure ether, capped with a cloud, against whose bosses the early sungold is beating, giving promise of an abundant crop of snow-bloom, and bringing vividly before me a wild storm-night spent upon its summit years ago.