Anonymous
The Snow Flower of the Sierras
A Christmas Story
The following tale was printed in the December 26, 1884 Cooperstown Courier in the Territory of Dakota. It was a new paper (1883) in a new city (1882), in a new county (1881); North Dakota wouldn’t become a state until 1889. Frederick H. Adams (1851-1895), an attorney originally from Vermont, became editor and owner of the Courier in May 1884 and may perhaps have authored this story.
On the crest of the Sierra Nevada Range, amid eternal winter, there appears a gorgeous blood-red plant, massed with startling brilliancy against pallid banks of snow. In size and shape, the cloud-flower resembles a hyacinth, but the leaves and stem, as well as the blossoms, are of one vivid crimson hue. Unlike the Alpine flower, of hardy stem and straw-like texture, this plant is succulent and ruddy, but it is a phantom formed of ice and fire. Picked from its cold bed, it drips its life away in your hand, and in a few moments all the fire and color is gone in icy tears, and there remains only a wet, shapeless, colorless film.
The traveler up the Sierras, hears of the strange blossom from returning wayfarers, long before he reaches the heights where it blossoms. No care is able to transplant or even to carry to the lowlands the unique flower. On the altars of the upper air it is laid, where no other flower-shape is found, and he who would see it, must go to that shrine of icy splendor.
In early times, the fire-flower, as it was called, was counted miraculous by the pious few who, on missions of mercy, crossed the icy peaks. More than a hundred years ago, when English, Dutch and French formed a sparse border of civilization on our Eastern coast, the dark-eyed Spaniard entered America by its Western way, and marked his march along the Pacific slope not by forts, but churches, which with their shrines and altars yet stand in decaying grandeur amid gardens of olive and palm. From these outposts, guarded by the sacred cross, missionary fathers in the robes and sandals of the Franciscans, penetrated inland, carrying good will to the savages of the New World. It is said that one of those devoted brothers, seeing on the white summit of a mountain the red snow-flower of the Sierras, sprinkling the snowy field like drops of blood, fell on his knees in wondering adoration, and called the mountain “Sangre de Cristo,” the Mount of the Blood of Christ. This brother died in the wilderness, and it is told that the crucifix which dropped from his lifeless hand was transformed into a marvel among the clouds. For, far lifted above mortal, or wing of bird, towers a great cross of snow against a mountain side known as the “Mount of the Holy Cross.”
The most careless tourist feels a thrill of awe, when, from mid-air, appears the isolated “Mount of the Holy Cross.” Long ago the splendors of Mount Sinai faded into the gray of the past; long ago the priceless drops of the Savior’s blood were shed on Mount Calvary; yet on the wondrous stretches of our mountain ranges, red drops crimson the pale wastes, and, in splendor of diamonds and pearls, gleams the eternal snows in form of the blessed Cross, lifted up, that all, on height or lowland, can see the symbol of Divine and universal love.
In a cabin that had long been roofless and fireless, a mockery of comfort upon the windy summit of the range, there lived, once on a time, my guide told me, a maiden, dazzling and pure as the stars.
It was July when we stood there, but the snows that had drifted over the hearth were unmelted, and the wind roared through the crevices with an angry grief. What the place must have been when winter buried it could scarcely be imagined.
The father of the beautiful girl whose home this had been, had perched his habitation on this crag, not altogether by chance, for in summer he acted as guide to tourists in the Yosemite, and in winter, on his snow shoes, carried mail and messages to scattered cabins and settlements. Silent Jack—so he was known—was a mystery, even among those hidden and mysterious men who find a refuge in the mountain gulches. He was a misanthrope, who had taken the youngest of his four children and fled, leaving their mother and her complainings and struck out, in vindictive sullenness, for the wilderness and peace. The child, he swore, should grow up in quiet, if nothing more. If from the glance of the little girl’s dark eyes he turned in thought, sometimes to other dark eyes like them, which in his early manhood had been lode-stars of destiny; if the fond name, “father,” brought to his remembrance other children who had lisped the same dear word, none knew. He mentioned his old life to no one. He spoke of his wife and children but once during the years of his stay on the mountain.
Silent Jack was not an unlettered or vicious man. He taught and cared for the child of his love with morose and pathetic devotion. He taught the little one of God—strange teacher of the word. The Bible was her spelling-book, her geography and story-book;—for the rest she had the grand solitude, the stars near by, and the blossoms in the snow-bank of her home. The miners and trappers of the slope called her, with instinctive homage of man to the beautifying and pure, the Snow Flower of the Sierras. She was to them the object of adoration, as the namesake flower, to the early devotees. Whispers of the divinity shrined in the mountain snows, floated downward along the paths of semi-civilization. Stories of a maiden somewhere, either in cloud, or snow, lithe, brilliant and innocent; strong as the mountain pine, blooming as the mountain flowers, pure as the mountain air, with eyes clear as dew-drops, and voice like the rich gurgling mountain brook.
Before the swarming tourists began pilgrimages Yosemiteward the Snow Flower of the Sierras had brimmed her soul with its beauty. She had seen her pretty eyes looking up at her from Mirror Lake; South Dome had answered her, when she questioned; the Merced River had sung its story of mercy to her while yet she was a child.
At length the trail crossed the range near the cabin, and during the brief summer equestrians appeared on the summit, going down toward the valley. From her hidden post she saw the world’s people pause, with full hearts and brimming eyes, on Inspiration Point, whence is taken the first look into Yosemite. She saw, and understood.
But none who see the valley in summer time gain its full magnificence. One must live with it to grow into the vastness and solitude of its grandest grandeur. The mountain maiden, with the oxygen of the air flaming in her cheeks and lighting her eyes, skimmed on her snow shoes over billows treacherous as the waves of the sea, and was given ideal pictures.
For the solitary blooms the desert rose; for the solitary are upreared the mountain snows. The best of everything is seen in the company only of God. In solitude we are closed with the Most High, and, whether leaf thicket or ice cavern, it is the place of worship and joy. Therefore, the heart of the maiden was stirred deepest, when on a winter’s day, alone in the vast white universe, she peered from Glacier Point, into the frozen crater of jewels. Then the valley shone in a white splendor that its summer worshippers can never see. Down the walls the falls hung dumb and motionless, suspended by an unseen hand, trailing miles of crushed jewels, opal and sapphire, and emerald. El Capital lifted his white plume among the army about him. The exquisite Bridal Veil swept in frosty tissue down the white-robed cliff. The Cathedral Spires rose crystal clear into the blue sky, and on Cloud’s Rest, the white drifting nimbus of the sky caressed their sister snowdrifts of the peaks. The great pines of the valley were cones of amethyst; the very air was set with dazzling jewel points, and the pure solitudes pulsed with imprisoned sparks of heavenly fire.
An artist sketching the picturesque groups of mountaineers, heard of “the girl up yonder”—a girl whose daily haunts were where the clouds and silence wander, a maiden who was seated beside the moon, while the stars twinkled like fireflies about her.
In time he found her. Never flower before bloomed like this snowflower beneath his gaze.
Snows can not smother passion, or stars stir the pulses like the light in nearer eyes. To this ardent poetic soul, with its disregard of fitness, of constancy, or duty, or happiness beyond the present hour, the snowflower gave her life. He had found beauty, he worshipped it. The humble eye is satisfied forever with the shabby print of a Madonna on the wall, but new pictures replace the old on the easel of the artist. His search is always for beauty; having fixed one face upon the canvas his eye roves for a brighter cheek and sunnier hair.
But, for the time, she was his angel. Disregarding the world, society, friends; forgetting education, style, culture—all that he would at another time remember—he took her from the heights where she had been the companion of nature, to show her to a groveling, putrid world.
Alas! Snowflower of the Sierras! Alas, that fatal name—that pure and fatal name—flower of the snows!
Did Fate christen thee, child of the upper air? Hast never seen the beautiful sunflower drained of its rosy beauty, by ice-dripping tears? Dost thou not know that the plant of the clouds has never been transplanted to lower fields?
The father talked wildly to the wayfarers who came now and then to lift his latch-string for a night’s shelter by the cabin fire. He repeated, in wretchedness, that retribution had overtaken him. As cruelly as he had fled from the wife of his youth, his girl had gone from him. Not all his love or care could prevent her from giving the blow which fate had reserved for him. Muttering, or silent and glowering, the weeks and months found him, until at last he disappeared from his home and was lost forever to human view.
This is the story the guide told me as we stood by the fireless hearth of that deserted home.
She died, poor girl—died of a broken heart.
For those who dwell in lowlands, the roses bloom; for creeping things there are the mosses and the violets. Each plane in life has its own corresponding, recompensing loveliness. Let him who lives in rose-thickets be content, nor seek to pluck the blossoms of the crags; nor he who roams the snows think to keep in its freshness the rose that nature left in warmer climes.
She died, so the story runs, on Christmas Eve. Many years ago at Christmas time, in the dazzling radiance of a moonlight night, wanderers on the snow slopes saw a phantom gliding on the pearly snowshoes over the glittering peaks. She was shrouded in white, and out of her pale face her eyes gleamed like midnight stars. From mountain to mountain she wandered, and her hands were full of blood-red blossoms, that she kissed with lips as cold as they.
Every year since her earth life ended the dead girl revisits her early home. On those fields of snow, fit for an angel’s feet, before the Christmas morn breaks in the East, this unforgetting spirit walks on high. Sometimes she is seen muffled in clouds; sometimes the blossoms in her hands make ruddy patches in the wintry sky. Her voice is heard in the wailing songs of the restless winds, and the fall of her snowshoes echoes like silver sleet down the mountain side.
That the Divine Jesus, whose birthday we celebrate, brings holy thoughts to men by devious means is not unlike. Whatever makes men lift their eyes raises the soul; whether the sweep of wings that startled the shepherds, or the dying color on the distant cloud, turns the face upward to the gaze of God.
Lo, not unmeet is it that at the time when, of old, the angel-heralded Christ-child came, all along the sides of the solemn Sierras, the lowly, the lonely, the wretched, the wicked, gaze upward, for the form of the pure maiden, who loves and haunts the snow-range of the air.
Children are told to be good that they may see the beautiful lady who was taken from her home on high, treated so cruelly, and killed by wicked men. And at midnight, along the western peaks, eyes dim, patient or bleared look upward into the lonely night for the sweet spirit form of the “Snow Flower of the Sierras.”
THE GHOSTS WERE THERE.
——
An Enthusiastic Scribe Writes and Describes a Ghost Party.
At the residence of Dr. Judson Davie, at “Old Spring Hill,” on the evening of Dec. 30th, a Christmas entertainment was given in the shape of a Ghost Party, which was one long to be associated with the jollities and gayities of a merry Christmas. Although the night was a bitter cold one there were twenty couples present and all were in high praise of the pleasure of the occasion. The house was beautifully decorated with evergreen and flowers while the young ladies were indeed a palm of loveliness. Of course the boys—. At ten o’clock an elegant repast was served when all were unmasked and some fellows had their best girl and some didn’t, while a young Eufaulian found to his surprise he had Mr. Robert Alston. In a very few minutes the young gentleman paid his respects to Dr. and Mrs. D., saying he was quite sick and departed for home. After satisfying the inner-man there was lots of music, banjo and guitar duets. Miss Annie Davie’s piano solo deserves special mention. No one but a musician both by nature and training can handle the keys as she does. Dr. and Mrs. Davie entertain in an elegant manner and certainly know how to please the young people.
— Ghost.
Eufaula Daily Times (Alabama), January 5, 1893