The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [106]
The moon was full the night I slept there, it was dancing on the waters. One of the lookouts said “The moon is right on the mountain, when I see that I always imagine I see a coyote silhouettin.”
Finally came the gray rainy day of my departure to Desolation Peak. The assistant ranger was with us, the three of us were going up and it wasn’t going to be a pleasant day’s horseback riding in all that downpour. “Boy, you shoulda put a couple quarts of brandy in your grocery list, you’re gonna need it up there in the cold,” said Happy looking at me with his big red nose. We were standing by the corral, Happy was giving the animals bags of feed and tying it around their necks and they were chomping away unmindful of the rain. We came plowing to the log gate and bumped through and went around under the immense shrouds of Sourdough and Ruby mountains. The waves were crashing up and spraying back at us. We went inside to the pilot’s cabin and he had a pot of coffee ready. Firs on steep banks you could barely see on the lake shore were like ranged ghosts in the mist. It was the real Northwest grim and bitter misery.
“Where’s Desolation?” I asked.
“You ain’t about to see it today till you’re practically on top of it,” said Happy, “and then you won’t like it much. It’s snowin and hailin up there right now. Boy, ain’t you sure you didn’t sneak a little bottle of brandy in your pack somewheres?” We’d already downed a quart of blackberry wine he’d bought in Marblemount.
“Happy when I get down from this mountain in September I’ll buy you a whole quart of scotch.” I was going to be paid good money for finding the mountain I wanted.
“That’s a promise and don’t you forget it.” Japhy had told me a lot about Happy the Packer, he was called. Happy was a good man; he and old Burnie Byers were the best oldtimers on the scene. They knew the mountains and they knew pack animals and they weren’t ambitious to become forestry supervisors either.
Happy remembered Japhy too, wistfully. “That boy used to know an awful lot of funny songs and stuff. He shore loved to go out loggin out trails. He had himself a Chinee girlfriend one time down in Seattle, I seen her in his hotel room, that Japhy I’m tellin you he shore was a grunge-jumper with the women.” I could hear Japhy’s voice singing gay songs with his guitar as the wind howled around our barge and the gray waves plashed up against the windows of the pilot house.
“And this is Japhy’s lake, and these are Japhy’s mountains,” I thought, and wished Japhy were there to see me doing everything he wanted me to do.
In two hours we eased over to the steep timbered shore eight miles uplake and jumped off and lashed the float to old stumps and Happy whacked the first mule, and she scampered off the wood with her doublesided load and charged up the slippery bank, legs thrashing and almost falling back in the lake with all my groceries, but made it and went off clomping in the mist to wait on the trail for her master. Then the other mules with batteries and various equipment, then finally Happy leading the way on his horse and then myself on the mare Mabel and then Wally the assistant ranger.
We waved goodbye to the tugboat man and started up a sad and dripping party in a hard Arctic climb in heavy foggy rain up narrow rocky trails with trees and underbrush wetting us clean to the skin when we brushed by. I had my nylon poncho tied around the pommel of the saddle and soon took it out and put it over me, a shroudy monk on a horse. Happy and Wally didn’t put on anything and just rode wet with heads bowed. The horse slipped occasionally in the rocks of the trail. We went on and on, up and up, and finally we came to a snag that had fallen across the trail and Happy dismounted and took out his doublebitted ax and went