I like that name the Indians give to the mountain of Lone¹ Pine, and find it pertinent² to my subject,—Oppapago, The Weeper. It sits eastward³ and solitary⁴ from the lordliest ranks of the Sierras, and above a range of little, old, blunt hills, and has a bowed, grave aspect as of some woman you might have known, looking out across the grassy⁵ barrows of her dead. From twin gray lakes under its noble brow stream down incessant⁶ white and tumbling waters. "Mahala all time cry," said Winnenap', drawing furrows⁷ in his rugged⁸, wrinkled cheeks.  
The origin of mountain streams is like the origin of tears, patent to the understanding but mysterious to the sense. They are always at it, but one so seldom catches them in the act. Here in the valley there is no cessation of waters even in the season when the niggard frost gives them scant⁹ leave to run. They make the most of their midday hour, and tinkle¹⁰ all night thinly under the ice. An ear laid to the snow catches a muffled¹¹ hint of their eternal busyness fifteen or twenty feet under the canon drifts, and long before any appreciable¹² spring thaw¹³, the sagging¹⁴ edges of the snow bridges mark out the place of their running. One who ventures to look for it finds the immediate¹⁶ source of the spring freshets—all the hill fronts furrowed¹⁷ with the reek¹⁸ of melting drifts, all the gravelly flats in a swirl²⁰ of waters. But later, in June or July, when the camping season begins, there runs the stream away full and singing, with no visible reinforcement other than an icy trickle²¹ from some high, belated dot of snow. Oftenest the stream drops bodily from the bleak²² bowl of some alpine²³ lake; sometimes breaks out of a hillside as a spring where the ear can trace it under the rubble²⁴ of loose stones to the neighborhood of some blind pool. But that leaves the lakes to be accounted for.
 
The lake is the eye of the mountain, jade²⁵ green, placid²⁶, unwinking, also unfathomable. Whatever goes on under the high and stony²⁷ brows is guessed at. It is always a favorite local tradition that one or another of the blind lakes is bottomless. Often they lie in such deep cairns of broken boulders²⁸ that one never gets quite to them, or gets away unhurt. One such drops below the plunging²⁹ slope that the Kearsarge trail winds over, perilously³⁰, nearing the pass. It lies still and wickedly green in its sharp-lipped cap, and the guides of that region love to tell of the packs and pack animals it has swallowed up.
 
But the lakes of Oppapago are perhaps not so deep, less green than gray, and better befriended. The ousel haunts them, while still hang about their coasts the thin undercut drifts that never quite leave the high altitudes. In and out of the bluish ice caves he flits and sings, and his singing heard from above is sweet and uncanny like the Nixie's chord. One finds butterflies, too, about these high, sharp regions which might be called desolate³¹, but will not by me who love them. This is above timber-line but not too high for comforting by succulent small herbs and golden tufted grass. A granite³² mountain does not crumble³³ with alacrity³⁴, but once resolved to soil makes the best of it. Every handful of loose gravel¹⁹ not wholly water leached³⁵ affords a plant footing, and even in such unpromising surroundings there is a choice of locations. There is never going to be any communism of mountain herbage, their affinities³⁶ are too sure. Full in the tunnels of snow water on gravelly, open spaces in the shadow of a drift, one looks to find buttercups, frozen knee-deep by night, and owning no desire but to ripen³⁷ their fruit above the icy bath. Soppy little plants of the portulaca and small, fine ferns shiver under the drip of falls and in dribbling³⁸ crevices³⁹. The bleaker⁴⁰ the situation, so it is near a stream border, the better the cassiope loves it. Yet I have not found it on the polished glacier⁴¹ slips, but where the country rock cleaves⁴² and splinters in the high windy headlands that the wild sheep frequents, hordes⁴³ and hordes of the white bells swing over matted, mossy foliage⁴⁴. On Oppapago, which is also called Sheep Mountain, one finds not far from the beds of cassiope the ice-worn, stony hollows where the big-horns cradle their young.
 
These are above the wolf's quest and the eagle's wont⁴⁵, and though the heather beds are softer, they are neither so dry nor so warm, and here only the stars go by. No other animal of any pretensions⁴⁶ makes a habitat of the alpine regions. Now and then one gets a hint of some small, brown creature, rat or mouse kind, that slips secretly among the rocks; no others adapt themselves to desertness of aridity⁴⁷ or altitude so readily as these ground inhabiting, graminivorous species. If there is an open stream the trout⁴⁸ go up the lake as far as the water breeds food for them, but the ousel goes farthest, for pure love of it.
 
Since no lake can be at the highest point, it is possible to find plant life higher than the water borders; grasses perhaps the highest, gilias, royal blue trusses of polymonium, rosy⁴⁹ plats of Sierra primroses⁵⁰. What one has to get used to in flowers at high altitudes is the bleaching⁵² of the sun. Hardly do they hold their virgin⁵³ color for a day, and this early fading before their function is performed gives them a pitiful appearance not according with their hardihood. The color scheme runs along the high ridges¹⁵ from blue to rosy purple, carmine⁵⁴ and coral red; along the water borders it is chiefly white and yellow where the mimulus makes a vivid note, running into red when the two schemes meet and mix about the borders of the meadows, at the upper limit of the columbine.
 
Here is the fashion in which a mountain stream gets down from the perennial⁵⁵ pastures of the snow to its proper level and identity as an irrigating⁵⁶ ditch. It slips stilly by the glacier scoured⁵⁷ rim⁵¹ of an ice bordered pool, drops over sheer, broken ledges⁵⁸ to another pool, gathers itself, plunges⁵⁹ headlong on a rocky ripple⁶⁰ slope, finds a lake again, reinforced, roars downward to a pothole⁶¹, foams⁶² and bridles⁶³, glides⁶⁴ a

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