I have focused several recent entries on John Muir, his legacy and biography. I have not shared much of his writing. For those of you who are proud owners of The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader: California, pull it out and re-read “A Wind-Storm in the Forests”. That is a classic tale of Muir lashing himself to the top of a Douglas spruce to experience a wild Sierra windstorm in the upper reaches of the Yuba River drainage.
Although not located along the PCT, I have had a personal weakness for Muir’s tales of adventures with his famed canine companion, Stickeen. For those of you unfamiliar with Muir’s mutt of the mountains, here is an abbreviated story of their first meeting. It was the summer of 1880 when Muir and Stickeen shared a death defying experience crossing a glacial crevasse.
“In the summer of 1880 I set out from Fort Wrangel in a canoe with the Rev. S. H. Young and a crew of Indians to continue the exploration of the icy region of southeastern Alaska. The necessary provisions, blankets, etc., had been collected and stowed away, and the Indians were in their places ready to dip their paddles, while a crowd of their friends were looking down from the wharf to bid them good-by and good luck. Mr. Young, for whom we were waiting, at length came aboard, followed by a little black dog that immediately made himself at home by curling up in a hollow among the baggage. I like dogs, but this one seemed so small, dull and worthless that I objected to his going and asked the missionary why he was taking him.
Sailing week after week through the long, intricate channels and inlets among the innumerable islands and mountains of the coast, he [Stickeen] spent the dull days in sluggish ease, motionless, and apparently as unobserving as a hibernating marmot.”
From a camp on Taylor Bay, Muir decides, on a stormy day, to set out to explore a large glacier which extended as an abrupt barrier all the way across from wall to wall of the inlet, a distance of three or four miles.
“I took my ice ax, buttoned my coat, put a piece of bread in my pocket, and set out.
Mr. Young and the Indians were asleep, and so I hoped, was Stickeen; but I had not gone a dozen rods before he left his warm bed in the tent, and came boring through the blast after me. That a man should welcome storms for their exhilarating music and motion, and go forth to see God making landscapes, is reasonable enough; but what fascination could there be in dismal weather for this poor feeble wisp of a dog, so pathetically small? Anyhow, on he came, breakfastless, through the choking blast. I stopped, turned my back to the wind, and gave him a good, dissuasive talk.
“Now don't,” I said, shouting to make myself heard in the storm—”now don't, Stickeen. What has got into your queer noodle now? You must be daft. This wild day has nothing for you. Go back to camp and keep warm. There is no game abroad —nothing but weather. Not a foot or wing is stirring. Wait and get a good breakfast with your master, and be sensible for once. I can't feed you or carry you, and this storm will kill you. . . .”
After ordering him back again and again to ease my conscience, I saw that he was not to be shaken off. . . . The dog just stood there in the wind, drenched and blinking, saying doggedly, “Where thou goest I will go.” So I told him to come on, if he must.”
It was a quintessential Muir outing, equipped with his minimal supplies and an overly ambitious route that took them up and across this massive glacier. Muir and Stickeen found themselves in dangerous circumstances, facing yawning crevasses, and long falls, but pressed on.
“Stickeen came on as unhesitating as the flying clouds,” Muir noted. “Nothing daunted him. He showed neither caution nor curiosity, wonder nor fear, but bravely trotted on as if glaciers were playgrounds.
Muir found himself talking to and relying on his canine companion for company and emotional support as the going got tougher.
“Again and again I was put to my mettle, but Stickeen followed easily, his nerve apparently growing more unflinching as the danger increased… we doggedly persevered and tried to hope that every difficult crevasse we overcame would prove to be the last of its kind. But on the contrary, as we advanced they became more deadly trying.“
Ultimately after summoning the courage to jump a particularly daunting span with no prospects of return, Muir and Stickeen encountered an enormous crevasse that offered only one avenue across – a slender 50-foot ice bridge.
Muir would also come to appreciate his time on the glacier with Stickeen as a gift, but not until completing the seemingly impossible crossing that lay before them.
Muir recounts that Stickeen, “scanned the sliver and its approaches with his mysterious eyes, then looked me in the face with a startled air of surprise and concern, and began to mutter and whine; saying as plainly as if speaking with words, "Surely, you are not going into that awful place." …
Muir crossed ever so cautiously leaving Stickeen stricken on the opposite side. “He screamed louder than ever, and after running back and forth in vain search for a way of escape, he would return to the brink of the crevasse above the bridge, moaning and wailing . . . I shouted encouragement, telling him the bridge was not so bad as it looked . . . But he was afraid to try. I went back to the brink of the crevasse and in a severe tone of voice shouted across to him that now I must certainly leave him. . .
He knew very well what I meant, and at last, with the courage of despair, hushed and breathless, he crouched down on the brink . . . Then, lifting his feet with the regularity and slowness of the vibrations of a seconds pendulum, as if counting and measuring one-two-three , holding himself steady against the gusty wind, and giving separate attention to each little step, he gained the foot of the cliff, while I was on my knees leaning over to give him a lift should he succeed in getting within reach of my arm. . . he was looking keenly into the series of notched steps and finger-holds I had made, as if counting them, and fixing the position of each one of them in his mind. Then suddenly up he came in a springy rush, hooking his paws into the steps and notches so quickly that I could not see how it was done, and whizzed past my head, safe at last!”
Muir found himself rejoicing in their salvation alongside Stickeen, exclaiming, "Well done, well done, little boy! Brave boy!" I cried, trying to catch and caress him; but he would not be caught. He flashed and darted hither and thither as if fairly demented, screaming and shouting, swirling round and round in giddy loops and circles like a leaf in a whirlwind. When I ran up to him to shake him, fearing he might die of joy, he flashed off two or three hundred yards, his feet in a mist of motion; then, turning suddenly, came back in a wild rush and launched himself at my face, almost knocking me down. all the while screeching and screaming and shouting as if saying, "Saved! saved! saved!"
Muir and Stickeen became constant companions after their trip together on the glacier. Although they did not arrive in camp until late that night, they were tired but alive. Stickeen returned a changed dog. Never again aloof, Stickeen was Muir’s constant and loyal companion. “And often as he caught my eye,” Muir recalled, “he seemed to be trying to say, "Wasn't that an awful time we had together on the glacier?"
Read the full account in Muir’s book Stickeen: The Story of a Dog. It can also be found on-line in various places. What a wonderful storyteller and engaging writer Muir was . . . a big part of what made him such an effective and persuasive naturalist and advocate.
