Nevertheless there are certain peaks, canons, and clear meadow
spaces which are above all compassing of words, and have a
certain fame as of the nobly great to whom we give no familiar
names. Guided by these you may reach my country and find or not
find, according as it lieth in you, much that is set down here.
And more. The earth is no wanton to give up all her best to every
comer, but keeps a sweet, separate intimacy for each. But if you
do not find it all as I write, think me not less dependable nor
yourself less clever. There is a sort of pretense allowed in
matters of the heart, as one should say by way of illustration,
"I know a man who . . . " and so give up his dearest experience
without betrayal. And I am in no mind to direct you to delectable
places toward which you will hold yourself less tenderly than I.
So by this fashion of naming I keep faith with the land and annex
to my own estate a very great territory to which none has a surer
title.

The country where you may have sight and touch of that which
is written lies between the high Sierras south from Yosemite--east
and south over a very great assemblage of broken ranges beyond
Death Valley, and on illimitably into the Mojave Desert. You may
come into the borders of it from the south by a stage journey that
has the effect of involving a great lapse of time, or from the
north by rail, dropping out of the overland route at Reno. The
best of all ways is over the Sierra passes by pack and trail,
seeing and believing. But the real heart and core of the country
are not to be come at in a month's vacation. One must
summer and winter with the land and wait its occasions. Pine woods
that take two and three seasons to the ripening of cones, roots
that lie by in the sand seven years awaiting a growing rain, firs