Читать книгу Norman Clyde - Robert C. Pavlik - Страница 7

Introduction

The old man sits on the ground, without benefit of a chair to hold him up off the earth. Around him are scattered a lifetime of writings and photographs, remnants of a life lived in the mountains of California and the West. Carefully he reads them, sorts them by subject, and lays their onionskin pages one on top of another. His clothing is neatly pressed, patched, and clean. The collar and cuffs show signs of wear, and the color has faded from the fabric. Perched on his head is a ranger-style campaign hat, a four-dimpled crown surrounded by a wide, flat brim that protects a weathered face from the bright spring sunshine. His sun-scarred hands gently hold the documents before his one good eye, the orb darting over the handwritten pages, his mind traversing the years and miles contained in those few, precious pieces of writing.

The old man is Norman Asa Clyde; the year is 1970. Along with his friend Dick Beach, Norman had returned to his Baker Ranch cabin, above the Owens Valley town of Big Pine, to sort through his belongings. Illness and old age have forced a retreat from his rustic home. When local hoodlums had heard about his absence, they ransacked his cabin in search of a gun collection. The crumpled papers and photographs are among the casualties of their looting spree.

In earlier years Clyde would have begun his day quite differently—perhaps with a walk up the creek to witness the changing weather patterns, or with skis strapped to his feet, to make a daylong exploration of the mountain peaks that surrounded his winter den. Perhaps he would clean and oil one of the many firearms, fresh from a round of target practice. There was always work to be done: repairing a broken camera, organizing fly fishing equipment, splitting and stacking firewood, penning an article for a newspaper or magazine. And there was always the need for physical exertion—a walk, a climb, skiing or snowshoeing in winter, multiday excursions in the summer and fall.

These weren’t only pleasant pastimes. Clyde didn’t just visit the mountains, he lived in them. As he told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, “I sort of went off on a tangent from civilization and never got back.”¹ It was there he made a modest income, writing about his activities in the surrounding region, and guiding those who came to enjoy this spectacular and rugged country. For sixty years he called the Sierra Nevada his home, first as an ardent amateur, and later as a knowledgeable resident and traveler who came to know this range better than any other human being, John Muir included. When old age and infirmity finally forced him to move to the sanitorium in Big Pine, he grudgingly went, but his heart and his mind remained in the high country. Upon returning to his disheveled cabin on Baker Creek, he gathered up papers and photographs, and restored them to order.

In effect, that is the purpose of this book: to pull together the loose threads of one man’s life, and to make some sense out of a wide and disparate variety of outlooks, opinions, and viewpoints. Norman Asa Clyde lived for eighty-seven years, coming of age at the end of the nineteenth century and passing away in the third quarter of the twentieth. He learned his skills and practiced his mobility before the age of the automobile, and he lived to see modern-day explorers walk on the moon.

During his lifetime he explored and ascended hundreds of peaks in the mountain ranges of western North America, from Mt. Robson in the Canadian Rockies to El Picacho del Diablo in Baja California. He honed his outdoor skills over a lifetime. He was remarkably self-sufficient and skilled at a variety of tasks, including not only rock climbing and mountaineering but skiing, snowshoeing, fishing, hunting, axemanship, and mountain rescue. Clyde was more than just a mountain explorer. He was an educated man with a keen intelligence and a probing mind. He was well-read, and knowledgeable in a broad spectrum of disciplines—in the arts and humanities as well as the natural sciences. A prolific author, he wrote many articles for the popular press and for mountain journals. And, contrary to popular belief, he was not a hermit, and in the winter season could often be found in the Los Angeles or San Francisco Bay regions, visiting with friends, replenishing his supply of reading material, and planning new excursions. He could also be volatile, his anger and frustration erupting in unpredictable ways that had serious consequences for the strong-willed individualist.

In his biography in Who’s Who in America, Norman Clyde described himself as an “expert on high altitude flora and fauna (Hudsonian and Arctic Alpine zones of the Sierra Nevada), geological history and structure of mountain ranges of Western U.S., ski mountaineering, classical scholar, linguist.”² He could have added author, fisherman, teacher, mountain guide, rescuer, and recluse to the list. His unlikely mix of interests and accomplishments reflected a lifetime effort to combine bookish scholarship with wilderness experience, a love of learning with a zealous need for the strenuous life. This mix of ideas and action was the culmination of his lineage combining with opportunity and open space in the New World.

Among climbers and skiers his legend has outdistanced him; among the general population he has been forgotten. Clyde’s contributions to the exploration and description of the Sierra Nevada and to the field of mountaineering have been important and long-ranging, and deserve to be known by a wider audience. He was the first person to ascend more than one hundred and thirty peaks throughout western North America, literally standing where no other human being had ever been. He eventually climbed more than one thousand peaks in his lifetime, some several times over. He had a deep and abiding love of the outdoors, fostered at a young age in the woods of western Pennsylvania and Canada. As a teacher he shared his love of the natural world with others. His exploits as a searcher for lost climbers include some of the most dramatic stories of tragedy, triumph, and heroism that have ever taken place in the annals of California history. And, as a pioneer of a then obscure endeavor better known in Europe than in the United States, his record of accomplishments and his promotion of the sport bears examination.

Clyde lived in a world of dazzling granite and glacial ice, deep blue sky and ominously towering thunderheads. He was often alone in this rugged world with only the sound of the wind, his boots on rock and snow, and his slow, steady breathing. He left behind some weathered notes in makeshift summit cairns, his articles and photos, numerous entries in various climbing guides, and tangible memories among a number of friends and acquaintances. This is the story of Norman Clyde, mountaineer, nature writer, and guide.