Who was Arthur C. Pillsbury?

In 1895 Susan B. Anthony made a tour of the west coast and again stopped in Yosemite after visiting San Francisco. She and her life long friend and fellow worker for abolition and women's suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had made their first visit to Yosemite years before, in 1865.

That same year, a fellow feminist of the new generation made his first visit to Yosemite - by bicycle. He was accompanied by his first cousin, Bernard Lane, also a student at the newly opened Stanford University.

His name was Arthur Clarence Pillsbury

Thanks to the local paper in Palo Alto we know what he took with him on his three week jaunt into the Yosemite; that did not make it into the family stories.

24 May, Friday - Palo Alto News - ``Next Wednesday, A.C. Pillsbury and Frank Watson, `95. Will leave for Yosemite and Kings River Valley on their wheels. They will carry with them their camping outfits, consisting of aluminum cooking utensils, 32 caliber rifle and shotgun combined, blanket, camera and fishing tackle, whole outfit weighing about ten pounds apiece. They expect to be gone about three weeks and anticipate a pleasant trip. Mr. Pillsbury will ride a 16 Lb. Rambler.

The paper evidently left out Bernard. AC was very taken with Yosemite. He arranged to buy a studio there in 1897, dropping the project when his then wife left him because "he wanted to spent the summers in the wilderness."

AC had been busy at Stanford. His interest in photography had led him to design and then build the first panoramic camera. It was this camera that he then took to the Gold Rush in the Yukon, capturing the images that still move us today. His journey from the headwaters of the Yukon River to the ocean was through 3,000 miles of frigid but beautiful land and waterways. Only a panoramic camera could capture the immensity of Alaska. Gold miners bought his photos for five dollars each, paid in gold dust. Back in Anchorage, A.C.'s father, Dr. Harlin Henry Pillsbury, recovered from the ship wreck that they had experienced on their way north, was busy playing chess and practicing medicine, in equal proportions. The next Christmas saw the two back in San Francisco celebrating the season with family and friends. A.C.'s father stayed home the next year when AC returned to Alaska for another season of photography.

Dr. Harlin Henry Pillsbury and his wife, Dr. Harriet Foster Pillsbury, had left their home in New York to settle in Auburn California and start a medical practice in 1883, arriving on March 3rd. They had left behind friends and family. But they were New Englanders and stayed in constant touch through a constant stream of letters and visits. Family was important to them. Throughout their lives, the family met for holidays and vacations whenever, and where ever, possible.

The late 1800's saw many New England families produce thorough genealogies on their family histories. The Pillsbury's were no different. Emily Pillsbury Getchall produced the Pillsbury Family Book while living in the original Pillsbury Homestead House in Newbury, Massachusetts. Dr. Harlin contributed a letter to the book written for the small town in New Hampshire where he drew up.

1902: June - Letter from Dr. HH Pillsbury to Church in Hampstead.

My first membership was with the First Congregational Church at Hampstead. Soon after our marriage we both united with the Kirk St. Church of Lowell, Mass. Two years later we joined Dr. Marvins church at Medford Mass and were members of this church for 16 years or more. Removing to Brooklyn, New York we with our oldest daughter became members of the Lee Avenue Congregational Church under the pastoral of Dr. Edward Eggleson.

Ten years later, 1883, on account of the ill health of our daughter Carrie, we located at Auburn California. Our membership continued with this church 18 years. Our two sons became members at Auburn and as they were educated at Stanford University we were located in that vicinity for several years and became members of the Third Congregational Church at San Francisco and for one year members of the Congregational Church at Oakland. At present we are members of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. This is a large church with a membership over 1,000 has two pastors, Dr. Day and his son. But whether in a larger or smaller church we have felt it our duty and privilege to do the little we can for the Master.

Lake Tahoe, California.
Dr. Harlin Henry Pillsbury

Dr. Harriet's family still occupied the original homestead in Andover, Massachusetts. The family had been original homesteaders in what was then Andover Massachusetts and still, today, has in their possession the bill of sale to the land signed by the local Indian tribal chief. Dr. Harriet counted in her own heritage nine of the survivors of the Salem Witchcraft Trials,

This new California branching of the family participated in the writing of the Pillsbury Family book, editing early versions. Dr. Harlin's brother, Daniel, a merchant living in NY City, traveled to the first Pillsbury reunion at the old House, meeting and sharing memories with such figures as Parker Pillsbury, the Stalwart for Abolition and Suffrage who had edited the Revolution for Susan B. Anthony for ten years.

Yosemite had its tiny community of New Englanders who shared a culture and cousinship's and who had participated in the causes of liberty for generations.

Who A.C. was is a question with many answers. He was a dutiful son who spent much of his life in close contact with his parents and brother. He was part of a larger extended group of family and acquaintance who continued to be active on issues such as women's suffrage. He possessed an inquiring mind and had always been fascinated with understanding the world around him. His entire family shared a fascination with the growing body of human knowledge.

His first venture into commerce had taken place in Auburn; raising and selling exotic birds. At Stanford, he helped pay for his education by opening a bicycle store. He built bicycles, designed and built the first motorcycle in California, to the chagrin of the more staid inhabitants on Stanford's campus. Soon, he was running a combined shop, selling and building both bicycles and cameras. For a time, he also used an unauthorized dark room built into the unfinished attic of Encinas on the Stanford campus.

The family had arrived in California across the Isthmus of Panama before the building of the Canal. They had brought with them wagon loads of heirloom furniture, the previously mentioned microscopes, and the crib in which each of them had laid after their births. Relocated to Auburn they both practiced medicine, built a home while living in the barn on their new property, and put in a fruit ranch, planting a variety of different trees. It was hard work; but each family member worked diligently and cheerfully to accomplish their joint project.

Dr. Mrs. Pillsbury took care of purchasing the land, signing the deeds, and oversaw their finances. This was very unusual in the 1900s.

A.C.'s father, Dr. Harlin, was immediately solicited to become treasurer for the Congregationalist Church, a post he filled until relocating to Palo Alto to open and help run a hospital there in the mid 1890s.

AC's adventures during the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire and his near death by balloon in 1907 were family legend. A.C. hit the ground with his camera in him hands on that early morning in 1906 and spent the entire day photographing ensuing events. With no flowing water in San Francisco, he removed to Oakland that evening to develop the resulting film and begin sending the pictures out to papers and magazines throughout the country. He photographed the burning of San Francisco from the doomed Palace Hotel as well and, though he took the exposed negatives with him the camera to the conflagration, having left it in the checkroom at the hotel desk. We will pass over his participation in the First Air Show in Southern California in 1910 from a balloon tethered at 300 feet. Everyone in the family was fascinated by air flight.

In 1911 AC had become a father three times over by adopting the orphaned children of his oldest brother, Dr. Ernest Sargent Pillsbury.

AC lived a life filled with adventure and insights. Here, you can find out more about him.

1897 - Gold Rush in the Yukon

A. C. spent several years in the Yukon, coming home for the holidays, photographing the opening of the mining towns and the rapidly disappearing world of the Native Americans. He took with him the panorama camera that he invented as his senior project at Stanford University in 1897. Shipwrecked on the way in the boat he had purchased, he saved himself, rowing 110 miles, bartering a new boat for his skills as a machinist, he continued on his way. See his partial autobiography for that story.

A.C. use the panorama camera to photograph the opening of the mining towns from a canoe. That trip began at the headwaters of the Yukon River and ended at the Pacific Ocean, nearly 3,000 miles of mostly solitude. He took with him the small books of classics he loved to read.

This article was picked up by an Indiana paper, the Fort Wayne News, Indiana, on September 22, 1899.

A.C. started a short lived business in the Yukon with a man named Cleveland but discovered he was not a reliable business partner.

CAUGHT IN ARCTIC ICE.

___________

Thrilling Adventures of an Artist

In Alaska

__________

BUCKING AGAINST A BLIZZARD

---------------

A Cold Swim to – Being Crushed Between Walls of Ice – Dodging and Avalanche and Hanging to a Glacier in Midair.

Of all the tales of almost miraculous escapes from instant death that have come from Alaska this year the experiences of Arthur Pillsbury are the most thrilling, says the San Francisco Call.

Pillsbury is the Stanford student who went on a photographing tour through unknown parts of the new gold region last year and brought back a large number of wonderful views. This year young Pillsbury returned to Alaska and was appointed by the United States government to make a series of panoramic views of the coast and the banks of the Yukon. Pillsbury has only been on this work a few weeks, but has already had a number of adventures.

“ I suffered more on the White Pass than I did at any other time during all my stay in Alaska.” Student Pillsbury writes to his brother, Dr. Pillsbury of San Francisco. “I had to go into the Altin country to get some views before the snow was all gone and the bicycle was the only way to make the trip.

“I made the trip over the pass and got my views alright, but it was when I started back that I got into trouble. I left the settlement at the foot of the pass early in the morning, and, from all indications, the weather was going to be fine. The air was clear and bracing and not too cold. But you can’t tell what is going to happen in Alaska.

“Before I was half way up the pass there was a sudden change, and I came near making up my mind to go back. The air got cold, and a light fog came in from the sea. My better judgment told me to go back, but the thought that my journey would be ended if I got over on the other side urged me on.

“When near the summit, it commenced to snow, and the wind blew a hurricane. Then I wished I had gone back, but it was not out of the question. All I could do was to find a place somewhat sheltered from the wind and crawl into it.

“When I was as comfortable as could be expected under the circumstances which was not very comfortable. I put my hand in my pocket for my lunch, but it was not there. I suppose it must have fallen out on the road when I was bucking against the blizzard.

“Then my sufferings commenced.

“I tucked the blankets as tightly around me as possible, but could not keep out the snow. I got as cold as ice and got up and ran about in the effort to keep warm, but it was all no use. So I crawled back into the blankets and shivered. All night I lay there almost numb with cold. The wind blew harder and harder, and the darkness was intense. I began to wonder if I would ever see San Francisco again, and the sufferings of hunger almost drove me crazy. But the longest night always comes to an end even if it did seem to some of us like an eternity. Toward morning the wind went down and when the sun rose the air was clear and cold. With difficulty I arose and stood on my feet. I was so stiff I could scarcely move and in the effort to get on my wheel took a severe tumble. But it did me good by shaking me up and got me in condition to ride. The road was fine and all down hill, and it didn’t take me long to strike a place where I got warm and something to eat. Then I was ready for another tussle with the elements.

“My experience on the glacier was most terrifying and frightened me considerably, but otherwise did no harm.

“I had been working on a point that to all appearances was as solid as a rock, and so it was for the time being. I cut my picture done and had my camera over my shoulder, ready to go down to the boat that was tied up a few hundred feet below.

“Suddenly I felt a tremble in the glacier and instinctively stepped back from the edge. The tremble became more and more violent, and I went on a run for a big rough spot that looked solid, but I was too late. Just as I was about to step on it the ice under me gave way. I clutched at anything I could reach and soon found myself hanging in the air with one hand tight on a projecting piece of ice.

“Beneath me tons and tons of ice went thundering into the sea, several hundred feet below. Then the portion of the glacier to which I was hanging shifted its position and turned so that I could climb up to a safe place, but it was a narrow escape.

“The next day I was working in the same neighborhood and had occasion to row through a canal between two ice-burgs. I had rowed through the same place before and never thought of danger. On this occasion, when I was about half way through, I was horrified to see the two walls of ice slowly coming together. My Indian helper got dreadfully excited, and it was all that I could do to make him sit in the boat and pull at the oars. As we worked along, each second seeming like a year, the icy walls got closer and closer together. Soon the walls were so near we could not use our oars and had to take them out of the rowlocks and use them as paddles.

“It was not more than 100 feet to open water, but it seemed unreachable as we struggled madly ipt the canal. Now it was 50 feet, and the sides were so close together we could barely paddle, but forced our boat along pushing on the walls of ice.

“When the entrance was only ten feet off, the ice walls touched against the sides of the boat and behind us the way was blocked.

“With one good shove we sent the boat flying ahead, but not quite fast enough for the end was caught between the two icebergs and crushed to splinters.

“of course my Indian helper and myself both jumped into the icy water and had a long swim to find a place where you could climb out.”

1900 - Discovering Tahoe - and making your own skiis

Camera Craft

A photographic monthly

Vol. IV SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, APRIL, 1902 No. 6.

THROUGH THE HIGH SIERRA ON SKIES

BY ARTHUR C. PILLSBURY

ILLUSTRATED BY THE WRITER

When the porter scratched on my curtain and whispered, “Be in Truckee in twenty minutes,” it took me a full tenth of that time to realize just why I was to get off at Truckee. I touched my window curtain and it went up with a stir that startled me even as much as the sight that met my sleepy gaze. As far as the eye could reach through the interstices of the great snowsheds a blinding stretch of snow-covered hills flitted by. The differences from the day before, from balmy breezes to the land of snow, my sound sleep and sudden wakening combined to impress me with the fact that I was still in the land of the living, and that it was “an idle dream.” But the whirling clouds of steam, issuing out in the frosty air and clinging to the sides of the sheds, the slant of sunlight through the roof of the covered track began to have its effect, and in another minute I was wide awake and full of the anticipation of the native Californian when he approaches snow-covered fields and hills.

At Truckee I piled off the sleeper, my shoulder encumbered with the varied paraphernalia of the photographer, and began to get accustomed to the gaze of the sun as it peeped over the hills. The engine puffed and blowed, leaving great balls of stead to circle about in the distance. By the side of the station stood the sleigh, which was to carry me to Tallac, the four horses steaming and pawing the snow in their impatience to be on the move. Nothing could be soon of the narrow gauge track over which the pleasure-seekers throng to Tahoe in the summer. Four feet of snow hid it, and all of the rough land marks familiar to the summer visitors from view.

The drive to Tahoe was one that I shall always remember. Nothing could have been more invigorating, more bracing, than the clear, cold atmosphere of the Sierras. At the hotel I met a warm welcome not unmixed with surprise. Visitors to Tahoe in the dead of winter are not numerous, and host and attendants talked with me as if with a visitor from an outside world. Still, it was pleasant, and when I told then that I came to make pictures of the snow their interest increased. All the day we were making plans. Toward night it began to snow, and the next morning the big white flakes were still scurrying down I came just in time. It snowed for three days, and when the sun finally peeped through the flying clouds the inhabitants said that it was the heaviest storm in many years.

During the storm I busied myself in the shop of the carpenter making a sled for my camera, and under the supervision of the carpenter himself, made a pair of skies out of tough oak. It was a job that I was proud of, for a lighter pair and a more serviceable one was not to be found in the whole of the Sierras. So the carpenter said. But learning to use them was another matter. Of course, you couldn’t hurt yourself by calling in the snow, but it was not a comfortable experience. The skies I made were about eight feet in length, but before I was finished performer I thought they were a hundred. After I learned the peculiar sliding motion indulged in by the natives I began to get along better. In a short time I was an expert and managed to keep abreast of the youngsters who served as my instructors. On level snow it is an easy operation. You shuffle along at an ordinary walking gail. The stride takes you about three feet, then you slide about a foot. Down hill you simply let go, then greased lightning couldn’t catch you. Up-hill going consists of a series of tacks, much in the manner of a wind-jammer caught in the teeth of a gale. During the progress of the storm I made many trips from the hotel, on several of which was accompanied by a large body of the inhabitants, who enjoyed the fun fully as much as I did. After the return from one of these trips I stood the whole party of the store front and made a picture of them. The snow was drifting down in a business-like fashion, and occasional gusts whirled the snow over the camera and my subjects. Little did the hardy mountain people mind this however, and although I experienced a peculiar sensation such as you feel when you are not quite sure you are doing the proper thing, I made the exposure and we continued on our way.

When the storm ceased I loaded my camera and outfit n the sled and, accompanied by several of the hotel people, made my first trip for pictures. We attached a long rope to the sled, and catching hold, we strung out across the snow. No one who had not spent a day n the high country when it is full of snow can appreciate the beauty and awe of the trees and hills. Every branch on every tree held its great ball of snow, the ugly fissures and projections were smoothed over by the white carpet, and wherever you went it mattered not. One moment we were on the top of a drift fully a hundred feet deep; at another we were gliding under tall trees that bent in low obeisance to the majesty of winter. At the falls the scene was different. Stalactites of blue-green, ice-bordered, the tumbling mountain stream and the great white frame around the whole made the water look dark and disagreeable. The falls in winter are not so pleasant as in summer, but there is a mystery about them that is fascinating.

The next day I made the trip to Emerald Bay. I was the first visitor since December, and they welcomed me with open arms. At Glen Alpine we struck snow tht covered old Mother Earth eighteen feet deep. On this trip I carried my camera over my shoulders with a pack strap, a trick I learned in Alaska. This left both hands free and there were times when I needed both of them.

I made many pictures on these trips, and on a number of them carried a portable darkroom, so that I was sure that I had what I wanted before leaving the scene. A four hours’ trip through the snow without results is not satisfactory to a fellow’s peace of mind. This portable darkroom plan is one that I am never going to neglect in the future. Fully half the pleasure in Photography is lost when twenty-four hours elapse between the time of exposure an the development. Although accompanied by many difficulties the pleasure of seeing what you hve almost immediately amply repays you for it.

On all the pictures reproduced I used Seed’s cut film. Goetz lens, dense color screen and a small stop. The tripod I managed to keep above the now by planting the legs on my skies.

Some day the Southern Pacific will run winter excursions to the lake, and the hotels will keep open all winter. Then the city man who wants to get out of the world for a few days will have the pleasures that I have merely hinted at. He will thank me if he follows my advice and takes a camera and a gun along. The hunting, although not varied, is full os sport. Rabbits there are in plenty, with duck and geese to spare.

1903 - Teddy Roosevelt Visits Yosemite

When Teddy Roosevelt visited Yosemite AC was there to record the event - and make postcards for sale. Here is President Roosevelt at the Grizzly Giant with the group he had left being the night before to send time around the camp fire in the Mariposa Grove with John Muir and Galen Clark.

1903- AC photographs John Muir for Camera Craft

At the same time that Arthur C. was taking the train to Tahoe to build his own skiis and wrote the article about the beauties of Tahoe in the winter he took this picture of John Muir holding up a branch of Mountain's Heart Ease, an illustration for an article appeared in the same year in Camera Craft. His name is in tiny print next to the lower edge of the photo.

Later, AC would become the photographer who went with the Sierra Club on its yearly ventures back into the wildernesses of Yosemite. When the Kids arrives they would accompany him, having a great time.

The photo and its subject matter show that AC and Muir knew each other in 1900.

1906 - The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire

“The morning of April 18th was a memorable one. The earth quake shook me out of bed. It did some light damage to the house. I grabbed my cameras and started for San Francisco. Fortunately I had saved my press badge when I left the Examiner and knowing all the police in the city I could go everywhere. That Wednesday I covered the entire city, making 5 X 7 Graflex views and panoramas of the burning city. ”

His name was Arthur Clarence Pillsbury and the cameras he grabbed as he hit the floor would record most of the pivotal moments as the City of San Francisco was consumed in walls of fire. On that first day Pillsbury shot over 70 snap shots and two panoramas, one from the top of the Merchants Exchange Building covering the wholesale section just at noon, and one from the top of the St. Francis Hotel showing almost the entire city in flames.

It was these photos that went out to newspapers all over the world because the destructive might of the Earthquake and Fire had shattered the other facilities that photographers used to develop their film. At the Pillsbury home in Oakland there was running water. Faced with the problem of continuing supplies, Pillsbury sent buyers out to towns as far as 500 miles away to meet the demand for the images. Over the next weeks prints from a single negative of one of the panoramas taken that first day would bring in from $500.00 to $700.00 a day. The photos would also appear in the new San Francisco Magazine, the lay out of images catching the despair and desolation coming on the heels of the erupting inferno.

The panorama negatives measured 44 inches in length and could be blown up to lengths greater than nine feet, showing incredible detail.

At the end of the first day, Pillsbury left his panorama camera, a large and unwieldy mechanism, in the cloak room of the St. Francis Hotel and that night and it was consumed along with the hotel. The film had gone with him, tucked in the pocket of his jacket. The shots taken with the Graflax camera included a shot of the Palace and Grand Hotels coming down, drenched in flame, caught as it seemed to dissolve before your eyes. He reported in his autobiography that the heat was so intense that while taking the picture it scorched the lens making the balsum run and so spoiling the photo. The bellows soon dropped to pieces, he said.

Included in the hundreds of images made by Pillsbury over the next few weeks were scenes filled with destruction, shock, and courage, showing the City as it continued to burn and the people as they struggled to survive and then began the long, slow, painful process of rebuilding. While taking photos and following the course of the struggle to stop the fire Pillsbury also found time to ensure that friends and acquaintances were safe. Some he sent on to his home in Oakland, where many camped out for weeks afterwards. Among these was the woman he would marry. Dragging the single trunk they had been able to save from her home in San Francisco to the ferry proved to be a one way trip for the lady. The two were married six weeks later in a small ceremony attended by both families from several parts of California.

The previous month, March, 1906, Pillsbury had left his three year employment as the head of the photographic department at the San Francisco Examiner. He had been offered the job by Mr. Williams. He had no formal training as a photojournalist but he had lots of experience. His employment at the Examiner followed his invention of the circuit panorama camera and his chronicling

Pillsbury-Foster

of the opening of the mining towns in the Yukon. He had accomplished this by installing a mobile dark room in his canoe and taking it from the headwaters of the Yukon River nearly 3,000 miles to the Pacific Ocean. He sold the photos to miners in the towns, developing them along the next segment of his trip and sending them back to their delighted owners. The price of $5.00 each was paid in gold dust.

That was a credential respected by professionals. His panoramas of the newly discovered Nome, Alaska, were published the world over, even the Ladies Home Journal had put out an edition in featuring the photos rendered in color.

Arthur Pillsbury had returned to San Francisco, a city he loved, from his adventures in the Yukon and before that from Stanford University, where he had studied Mechanical Engineering, quiting in his senior year when his adviser told him his design for the circuit panorama camera he had done as his senior project could not work. Pillsbury went ahead and built it. It worked. He quit school and after a closing out sale at his combination Bicycle and Camera store near the entrance to the campus purchased a a 22 foot gasoline launch and headed out to Alaska. The local paper covering the event reported Pillsbury as an intrepid and experienced navigator. Actually, he had almost no knowledge of boating but had cheerfully purchased navigational charts for the journey.

Arthur's reaction to the comments by his professor marked an end to his formal education but the beginning of a life long romance with the technology of photography. His romance with San Francisco was also intense and punctuated with exciting events and long association as he had studios there in several different locations over the years.

1906 - The Studio of the Three Arrows

With the money he earned from from photographing the San Francisco Earth Quake and Fire AC was able to turn his attention to something that he has always loved. Yosemite.

Late in 1906 AC arranged to purchase a studio in Yosemite Village; it was the second time he had bought a studio there, the first time was before he went to the Yukon in 1897. That had broken up his marriage; his new bride refusing to spend time in 'the wilds' so this time he assured his new wife that he would go alone, and so he did every year.

At the Studio of the Three Arrows AC would begin showing the first nature movies in 1909 and in 1912 would invent the first lapse-time camera that could capture the images of a flower raising its head to the sun in human time.

Sundaying and Everydaying in Yosemite - from A Tour of Old Village

"On Sundays several things happened. First, the family did not work. We usually went to Chapel, conveniently located between the Studio and my bedroom/tent, or had a Sunday School session with someone in the Village, and then we went Sundaying. Sometimes in church Uncle would fall asleep and when that happened I would pat his knee to wake him. Breakfast was served after church and since that was Mrs. Bishop’s day off we did the preparations ourselves. Uncle made the biggest, fluffiest pancakes I ever had and they always smelled of buttermilk and something exotic and special that I never could quite catch. I would watch him put together the ingredients but he always managed to keep me from seeing what exactly he did. It was his ‘secret recipe,’ he said. Uncle liked his maple syrup to be hot and so did I. At breakfast we made a toast, lifting our glasses of orange juice, the appropriate drink for a White Feather family, he would say, “Happy Days,” reminding us that each day was a special place in time to fill with memories and interesting discoveries.

Sundays were a different kind of fun than the rest of the week because we always went someplace. We packed up a luncheon and headed out to someplace wonderful,like Glacier Point, with everyone who wanted to come in tow. There was always a group of us, hiking and laughing and joking and sometimes listening to stories when we could get Uncle to tell us about one of his adventures or talk about something else.

Uncle did not brag, and for the most part I heard the astonishing stories of his various adventures from other people, for instance I had heard many of these from Dr. Grandma before she died.

Aunt AEtheline told us stories when Uncle was not around, like the one about the Stanford Rush. We always remembered that her stories could be very different from the one that Uncle would tell, if we asked him. A lot of this really was perspective; things do look different to each of us.

One of our first Sunday journeys, so early that it was only the three of us kids and Uncle was to Mt. Watkins. It was my first real climb up the walls of the Valley. We packed a nice lunch with sandwiches cut from fresh baked bread and thick slivers of beef, cooked long and slow over the camp fire the night before. Uncle had a recipe for beef he had learned from an old cook up in the Yukon that included berries and whole peppers and fresh herbs, rubbed in well and left to steep. To that he added the thinnest possible slivers of an onion, so thin you could see light through them. Then Uncle would put just the merest increment of salt right on the onion. We wrapped them up in napkins and tucked them into our knapsacks along with bottles of water or juice. Sometimes, if we were going someplace where we could fish, we took the makings for our favorite way to cook trout. That was seasonings and a lemon. We took the almost still wiggling trout and seasoned them inside and out, wrapping them carefully in leaves and putting them right on the coals. Uncle taught us all about the kinds of leaves to use but the Miwok had also been very good with pointers.

Everything tasted wonderful on Sundays.

It was a long hike up the cliff to the very top of Mt. Watkins that first time, and sometimes I had to listen hard for the Silence but when we arrived at the top and could look down at the Valley beneath us it was like we had found heaven.

We climbed every peak and place in Yosemite. We went up the back of Half Dome the first time when I was eight, and when I was nine we were going up carrying camera equipment on our backs.

One of our climbs up the back of Half Dome was recorded for the National Geographic. Uncle walked out on a tiny ledge about half way up to get us at an angle as we climbed the ropes. He caught my eye while he was snapping the photo and smiled at me as I continued to climb.

Reaching the top of Half Dome was like standing on the top of the Earth. We knew that glaciers had created the dome and the Valley itself and as we sat there catching our breath and feeling the beads of sweat dry in the sun Uncle would talk about the ideas people had had in the past about how the Earth had come into being. Everything about the world fascinated Uncle and when he talked about theories and about what we now thought was true he would remind us to always, always question what we accepted as true. .

On the way back down we would think about dinner because after that much climbing we were already hungry. Even being hungry was more fun in Yosemite."