"Yosemite Fall framed by trees," photographed by Charlie Huang, 2006. Larger.
Sure, Yosemite Valley is an astounding place, but what can you say about it that hasn't been said before?
Iowa native and veteran traveler Lorraine Pratt Immen toured California in 1896. When she visited Yosemite, she decided on a mule trip, and if her description of the experience wasn't entirely original, it had the virtue of breathless intensity.
Monday morning, April 13, at 7:30 a. m., a party of five, two ladies of the number attired in the Nineteenth Century progressive suits for women, accompanied by a guide, started up the zigzag trail on mules and horses for Yosemite Point, 3,220 feet above the valley. Because of my trusty mule, ìJessie,î the guide appointed me captain and I led the way up among the shadows of live oaks, turning short corners which caused, while outwardly calm, an increased beating of my heart, for one misstep of my ìJessieî would have hurled me over the rocks and down, down I would have gone to ----! But I forbear. Enough. Up we go 1,100 feet to Columbia Rock, where horses take a rest and their riders take a view of the eastern end of the valley, where the Upper Yosemite Falls, in all its impressive majesty, comes into view. Over the sharp edge of an escarpment of dark gray granite, and in a water-chiseled channel of its own, 1,600 feet above its base, shoots an angry torrent thirty feet wide, which, at a single bound, leaps down 1,600 feet, then through cascades descends 500 feet more, finally to make another plunge of 500 feet. . . . I have ascended many mountains in Europe, and some in America, by carriage and railroad, but this was my first experience of ascent on a mule and the novel occasion will not soon be forgotten.
Lorraine Pratt Immen's travel letters originally appeared in the Grand Rapids Herald.
below to hear radio segment.
