Bulletin - July 1956 - North American Rock Garden Society

BULLETINof theC. R. Worth, EditorVol. 14 JULY, 1956 No. 3SUMMERLAND AND BEYONDALBERT M. SUTTON, Seattle, WashingtonSINCE EILEEN, my garden-happy wife, and I are members of a rock gardensociety it seems quite natural that we should have a rock garden. We do haveone of sorts, one with a heavy clay soil and with it we encounter problems galore.When we grow weary of wrestling with these problems we find it quite simpleto drop our garden tools and our cares and spend a week-end in the mountainsthat are so easy to reach from our Puget Sound home. This time we chose to gosoutheast to Mt. Rainier in the Cascade Range.To a great many people Mt. Rainier is no more than a beautiful andmysterious phenomenon on the far horizon. Many others follow the windinghighways, when summer comes, to Paradise Valley or Sunrise Park wherepavements end and trails begin. There most of them congregate in the shadowof the steep-roofed inns to view the "Mountain that was God" with touristiceye and clicking camera. Some even venture a way on the trails but soon return.To these people the great mountain is not to be too closely approached nor is ittheir desire to linger overlong where such majesty dwells.Somewhere in their collective sub-consciousness a warning is sounded. Theydare not linger lest the spell of the mountain be upon them. They must hurryback to their urban homes, to their crowded streets and teeming buildings, backto the meager pleasures and uninspired amusements that loom so large in thescheme of their everyday lives. Life for them, of necessity, must contain muchthat is ordinary, dull and sometimes sordid and that such a life may not becomeinsupportable they have encased themselves in a synthetic contentment that is notproof against the shattering influence of great beauty or transcending glory. So intheir swift machines they flee lest the great mountain pierce the armor of theircompalcency with the sharp arrows of discontent and so claim them for its own.Once claimed they may never escape.Long ago Eileen and I fell under this spell and we have not escaped norhave we wanted to. It brings us back to our mountain every year and many timeseach year. We seldom go to the crowded areas but rather seek out the lonelierplaces where the snowy peak is our only companion and where a wonderful and atruly personal religion can be nurtured, for not without reason did the understandingIndians call this shining one the "Mountain that was God."65