ker_

SWITCHBACKS ON THE TRAIL (GLACIER NATIONAL PARK) 160
_Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_

WATCHING THE PACK-TRAIN COMING DOWN AT CASCADE PASS 174

A FIELD OF BEAR-GRASS 182
_Photograph by Fred H. Kiser_

TENTING TO-NIGHT

I

THE TRAIL

The trail is narrow--often but the width of the pony's feet, a tiny path
that leads on and on. It is always ahead, sometimes bold and wide, as
when it leads the way through the forest; often narrow, as when it hugs
the sides of the precipice; sometimes even hiding for a time in river
bottom or swamp, or covered by the debris of last winter's avalanche.
Sometimes it picks its precarious way over snow-fields which hang at
dizzy heights, and again it flounders through mountain streams, where
the tired horses must struggle for footing, and do not even dare to
stoop and drink.

It is dusty; it is wet. It climbs; it falls; it is beautiful and
terrible. But always it skirts the coast of adventure. Always it goes
on, and always it calls to those that follow it. Tiny path that it is,
worn by the feet of earth's wanderers, it is the thread which has knit
together the solid places of the earth. The path of feet in the
wilderness is the onward march of life itself.

City-dwellers know nothing of the trail. Poor followers of the
pavements, what to them is this six-inch path of glory? Life for many of
them is but a thing of avenues and streets, fixed and unmysterious, a
matter of numbers and lights and post-boxes and people. They know
whither their streets lead. There is no surprise about them, no sudden
discovery of a river to be forded, no glimpse of deer in full flight or
of an eagle poised over a stream. No heights, no depths. To know if it
rains at night, they look down at shining pavements; they do not hold
their faces to the sky.

[Illustration: _Trail over Gunsight Pass, Glacier National Park_]

Now, I am a near-city-dweller. For ten months in the year, I am
particular about mail-delivery, and eat an evening dinner, and
occasionally agitate the matter of having a telephone in every room in
the house. I run the usual gamut of dinners, dances, and bridge, with
the usual country-club setting as the spring goes on. And each May I
order a number of flimsy frocks, in the conviction that I have done all
the hard going I need to, and that this summer we shall go to the New
England coast. And t