What is a Mountain? (1967)

What is a mountain? A mountain is many things. Forest soaring and free. Rock in staggering shapes and sizes. Water resting for a moment in metal pools. Roaring in frantic haste to mother sea or pausing to nurture flowers of myriad variety. A mountain is weather in primitive form. Rainstorms in infancy. Fog shrouding and feeding all the mountain life. The crisp shafts of sunlight striking this nearest of the earth's surfaces. A mountain is life in beautiful forms. [Music] [Applause] ice, rivers of it in glaciers, snow holding command for months and lingering as a reminder through the [Music] summer. But above all these things, a mountain is mystery. A mystery of time, of power, a luring clue to the very center of earth forces that shaped and shape our earth. This mountain we call Reneer. How many years beyond number did she tower here over the mighty Cascade Range before Captain George Vancouver sailed the English survey ship Discovery into a sound named Puget and gave us a date we can cling to. Today is May 8th in the year of our Lord 1792. The weather is serene and pleasant, and the country continues to exhibit between us and the eastern snowy range the same luxurant appearance. At its northern extremity, Mud Beggar bearing by compass north 22 east, the round snowy mountain now forming its southern extremity, and which after my friend Rear Admiral Reineer, I distinguish by the name of Mount Reineer, bearing north, south, 42 east, a day, a date, a pen scratch by which we measure events. A name to mark a map. The name of a British admiral never fortunate enough to see his namesake. Before Reneer, this mountain was called Toma by the Indians who lived near her slopes. Tacoma, God, a thing to fear. In their memories were the stories of their ancestors of the time when smoke and flame belched forth from the top of Toma. Sure evidence of a devil god's wrath before their ancestors in a time of no memory. This great mountain did not exist. Here 60 million years ago stretched a broad coastal lowland dotted with lakes and ocean bays. Then volcanoes venting fiery lavas from the inner earth blanketed this land with volcanic rock. The twistings of the earth falted and crumpled this rock lifting it into mountains. These northwest mountains cut by water into low hills were to be the foundation of the great cascade range of today. [Music] 13 million years ago, these cascades were lifted in great folds and carved into the shapes we see. A suitable place for the great fire peaks of the Northwest. And here they were born a million years ago when seething molten lava again found weak spots in the earth's crust spewed out spread and form the cones that are Mount Reneer and other volcanic peaks of the Pacific coast. Reneer's cone rose to a height of 3 mi until explosions caused the top few thousand ft to slide into valleys just 5,000 years ago. Avalanches and glaciers carved and sculpted the sides of Mount Reneer into the towering cliffs, U-shaped valleys, and bowlike circs of today. 60 million years, an incomprehensible moment in time. How is it measured? How is it understood? That is a part of the mystery of a mountain. The lure that drew men who wanted to know this land. Men who have given us their discoveries. Men who, having seen Mount Reneer, simply had to climb to the summit, study the plants, the rocks, the wildlife. Each of these men in his time and his way moved into an area with little or no human history, a new fresh land where there were no great names to conjure with, no weight of the past. to balance the present. And each of these men contributed something, something precious to us today. They are not famous men as we measure fame, but each gave us a start toward unraveling the tangled scheme of nature's work. Pause a moment on a trail and sense the feelings these men must have had as they saw the beauty of this wilderness. It is much the same today. The discipline of nature stands revealed, inviting exploration just as it did for these first men. Striding through the lower slopes of cathedral-like forest, western red cedar, western hemlock, Douglas fur, a lush verdant land. and higher the fur trees called Pacific, silver and noble. Here too is the Alaska cedar. Higher yet the subalpine fur and mountain hemlock cluster in groups right up to timberline. And underfoot, nurtured by the volcanoorn pummus soil, wild flowers carpet meadows and slopes in several hundred varieties. as wild and beautiful as the meadows of Scotland as ever I've seen. I'm Dr. Frasier Toli. In 1833, I was detained at Fort Nquali by matters of medical consequence. In the fall, after I had completed my medical duties, I embarked upon a botonizing expedition, probably the first on the nearby Great Mountain. The forests were huge and grand. I gathered herbs and noticed carefully the species of many plants. I found some strange plants which I examined and with the assistance of my native Indian guides, I packed them for transport back to the fort. One was a saxopra I believe had never been seen before. Dr. Toli was possibly the first botonist to explore the slopes of Mount Reneer. But his faint trail has been followed by many others seeking to know more of these most beautiful of plants, the alpine wild flowers. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] always above. of the meadow. The beckoning peak calls to come and see the world spread at his feet. Finally, in 1857, a young army lieutenant stationed at Fort Steelum could resist no longer. And on July 8th, Lieutenant August Vouch set out. It was a great day. All the officers of the fort had decided I would never ascend Rineer and had long since given up. There were seven of us, four soldiers, Dr. Craig Wowi, our Indian guide, and myself. The ascent was a two-week ordeal that none of the seven would ever forget. They fought their way through forests of terrible solitude, endured days of rain, turned back only 500 ft from the real summit when the water froze in their cantens. But not before Couts had seen the snowy peaks of St. Helens, Adams, and Hood looking like pyramidal icebergs above an ocean. Imagination can glimpse Couts with his red stocking cap, returning through the alpine meadows, exhausted but victorious, to call the turn on his fellow officers. 13 years later, in August of 1870, three other men sat at a campfire high on the side of the mountain. Two would climb, the other wait with fear in his heart. For to him the mountain was still Toma, the devil god. Listen to the Indian Slooin. Many years ago, my grandfather, the greatest and bravest of all the Yakima, climbed nearly to the summit. There he caught sight of the fiery lake and the infernal demon coming to destroy him and he fled down the mountain, glad to escape with his life. Where he failed, no other Indian ever dared make the attempt. At first the way is easy. The task seems light. The broad snow fields over which I have hunted the mountain goat offer an inviting path. But above them, you will have to climb over steep rocks, overhanging deep gorges, where a misstep would hurl you far down, down to certain death. You must creep over snow banks and cross deep creasses where a mountain goat could hardly keep his footing. You must climb along cliffs where rock are continually falling to crush you or knock you off into the bottomless depths. And if you should escape these perils, reach the great snowy dome, and a bitterly cold and furious tempest will sweep you off into space like a withered leaf. But if by some miracle you should survive all these perils, the mighty demon of Toma will surely kill you and throw you into the fiery lake. Hazard Stevens and Filimon Van Trump encountered almost all of the perils predicted by Slookin. But instead of a fiery lake, they found an ice cave melted by volcanic steam, which saved their lives by providing overnight shelter to the first two men to stand on Reneer's lofty summit. It was August 18th, 1870, 3 years after Filon Van Trump had first glimpsed Reneer and felt the pull of the peak. I obtained my first grand view of the mountain in August 1867 from one of the prairies southeast of Olympia. That first true vision of the mountain impressed me so indescribably enthused me so thoroughly that I then and there vowed that I would someday stand upon its glorious summit. Stevens and Vent Trump had climbed simply to climb. In October, Samuel Emmens and AD Wilson endured the fall storms to make the second recorded ascent. This time to trace the glaciers and map the higher reaches of the mountain. Science with a dash of adventure is always calling men to Mountaineer. Geologist Bay Willis carved a road into Spray Park in the 1880s and later returned to climb and study. This northern slope of the mountain is very steep and the consolidated snow begins its downward movement from near the top. Little pinnacles of rock project through the mass and form eddies in the current. A jagged ridge divides it and part descends into the deep unexplored canyon of White River, probably the deepest chasm in the flanks of Mount Tacoma. Now the other part comes straight on toward the southern side of Crescent Mountain, a precipice 2,000 ft high. Diverted, it turns in graceful flowing curves and breaks into a thousand ice pyramids and descends into the narrow pass where its beauty is hidden under the ever falling showers of rock. Others Matthysse, Lacant, Kums, Crannle, have searched and probed and spread out their answers for us. And studies go on for the glaciers reshape the mountain daily. Reneer's 40 odd glaciers move tons of rock and mud down the mountain each day. Glaciers are great rivers of ice carrying boulders and debris along to scour and sculpt the flanks of the mountain, cutting deep into the bedrock, forming circs, gouging deep valleys. Glaciers and erosion have laid back great layers of rock for study. Evidence of the massive forces of volcanoes, of the shifting of the earth, and the power of ice and water to hue bedrock into incredible form. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Others came who saw the mountain as a way of life, a place to be. One of the first was James Lawnmire. In 1859, I explored the slopes of Mount Reineer, looking for a route to the east suitable for a road. By 1870, when Stevens and Van Trump asked me about the old trail, I knew I'd have to guide them myself because the trail hadn't been used for several years. And right behind them, I led Emmens and Wilson. From 1880 to 1883, I took in several parties, even though it meant taking time for my farm. I guess I'd always wanted to climb the mountain. I was 63 when Van Trump and George Bailey asked me to go with them. I went and saw the summit for the first time. I was glad I did. I remember the first time I saw the meadow. On the way back from that climb in 1883, we discovered that the horses had wandered from the spot where we left them. I set about to find them. They were in a green, beautiful meadow with springs that that steam like medicine waters. This was where I had to be. I blazed a trail into the meadow and later with my family I built a little log hotel for visitors and the longm became legend to the mountain. To this meadow to their small hotel people came seeking their own answers to the mystery of the mountain. One answer grew in the hearts of many. This place, this mountaineer, must have a rightful place as an American treasure. Men who had climbed, men who had learned from this great peak rallied to the cause. And in 1899, the people of the state of Washington had their national park. Forces of nature ever change, ever shape a land, shape it as nature intends. For constant change is nature. Man alone can destroy wantingly for a time. He can gouge the earth, ravage the forest cover, exterminate wildlife without compensating the earth for the taking. Or he can preserve. Here at Mount Reneer, man preserved because the many men who came wanted only to take away enrichment, learning, adventure. Here, waiting for you is the sum of what they saw, sensed, and learned. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat up [Music] here. Heat. Heat. [Music] What is a mountain? A mountain is and always will be a mystery for each man to seek, to solve in his own way. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music]