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Umwrctty of IHtuUu^fi
KANSAS CITY, MO. PUBLIC LIBRARY
D DDD1 DE3313b D
A Western Journal
A Western Journal
e 8-
A Daily Log
of
The Great Parks Trip
June 20 July 2, 1938
by
THOMAS WOLFE
1951
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
Copyright, 1951, by Edward C. Aswell,
Administrator, C.T.A. of the Estate of Thomas Wolfe
Note on
"A Western Journey *"
BY EDWARD C. ASWELL
(From the Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 9 1939)
When Thomas Wolfe went to the Pacific Northwest in the
early summer of 1938, he was impelled by a combination of
strong motives. He had just delivered to his publishers a manu-
script of twelve hundred thousand words. He was tired and
wanted a rest* The Pacific Northwest was the only part of the
United States he had never visited. Finally, he had never lost
his small boy's sense of wonder and he wanted to ride on a
streamlined train.
When he arrived in Portland, Oregon, he met two newspaper
men who were planning a trip by automobile through all the
National Parks of the Far West. They invited Wolfe, who could
not drive a car himself, to go with them. He was always avid to
learn all he could about his America, and he could get as drunk
on new geography as on strong liquor. So, his great weariness
momentarily forgotten, he accompanied his two new friends.
On July 4, 1938, the trip was over and Wolfe was in Seattle.
On that day he wrote me a letter in which, for the first and only
time, he spoke of "A Western Journey":
/ am feeling much better already , although I have traveled ten
thousand miles, five thousand in the last two weeks* and seen
hundreds of new places and people. My fingers are itching to
write again. I have already made fifty thousand words of notes on
this journey. I propose to stay here a couple of weeks longer and
get these notes revised y rounded out, and typed in a more com-
plete form. The whole record I am calling simply "A Western
Journey" It is really a kind of tremendous kaleidoscope that I
hope may succeed in recording a whole hemisphere of life and of
America.
This was part of the last letter I was ever to receive from
Wolfe. Two days later he had pneumonia, from the complica-
tions of which he was to die in Johns Hopkins Hospital within
nine weeks.
There in Baltimore, on that sad September fifteenth, a few hours
after Wolfe had died, I sat in the hospital talking with the members
of his family. The question of his unpublished manuscripts came
up* I asked if they knew anything- about "A Western Journey."
His mother undertook to look through his bags. And there it was
a bound ledger of the kind used in simple bookkeeping; it was in
just such ledgers as this that Wolfe had written his first longhand
drafts of everything. The ledger was full to the last page of his
almost illegible penciled scrawl, with the title, "A Western
Journey/ 1 at the beginning. There were not fifty thousand words,
nothing like it. Wolfe always used round numbers loosely. When
he said, "I have written a million words," he meant: "I have
written a lot." When he said, "I have written fifty thousand
words," he meant: "I have written only a little; in fact, I have
just started." It was the last manuscript which that large hand of
the artist would ever write.
Notes on
"A Western Journal^
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
The University of Pittsburgh Press, in January 1950, entered
into a contract with Edward C. Aswell (Administrator, C.T.A. for
the estate of Thomas Wolfe) to publish Wolfe's Western Journal.
This last writing of Thomas Wolfe's had been brought to the
attention of the Press by Lawrence Lee, associate professor of
English at the University of Pittsburgh, who had published a
fragment of the Journal in the summer issue, 1939* of the Virginia
Quarterly Review when he was editor of the Review.
From the Houghton Library, Harvard University, the Press got
photostats of the Journal as it was written in the almost unde-
cipherable handwriting of the author.
The Journal was kept daily from June 20 through July 2, 1938,
while Wolfe was on a motor trip through national parks of eight
western states. It was written with a soft pencil, late at night, after
the long trip of the day was over, on the pages of a record book
(National 17593^). In the book are 300 lined pages, 5% x 8f^,
with one-inch margins marked off in red. Record is impressed In
the middle of the front cover, and the book shows much wear.
For a few pages in the beginning of the book (19) Wolfe wrote
on both left- and right-hand pages. From 9 through 215 he wrote
on right-hand pages (except for 150, which Is a page of figures) ;
from 215 on through to 300 he wrote on all pages, both left- and
right-hand. The sequence of the account of his journey, day after
day, however, Is not always to be read in the order of numbered
pages. The account In sequence Is to be read on both left- and right-
hand pages through to 299, and then back on the left-hand pages
(the even numbered pages) from 300 to 238. In spite of the Jour-
nal's turning back on itself as Wolfe wrote it, the calendar sequence
from Monday June 20 through Saturday July 2 helps make clear
the order and sequence of his writing.
VII
Another confusion results from the writing on pages 4, 6, and
the bottom of page 8. These fragments dated June 31, Spokane,
are written among the records of June 20 and 21, on pages and in
territory Wolfe had left behind many days before he reached
Spokane. It seems probable they were written after the trip was
over and after Wolfe had written on page 238 End of the Trip.
In the first place, there is, of course, no June 31 in the calendar and
there are accounts of June 30 and July 1 in the Journal where they
belong. In the second place, the substance of these fragments dated
June 31 is a kind of summary of impressions and reflections on the
whole trip. For these reasons, the pages 4, 6, and the bottom part
of 8 are printed at the end of the Journal. In any sense, actual or
artistic, the final words on 8 are a more satisfying climax for the
Journal than those on 238.
The Journal is almost never written in complete sentences. It is
a series of phrases, even stray words, usually separated one from
another by dashes. The "ands" which follow almost every dash
or introduce any new impression seem not to be connectives but
rather response to the "rolling of the white Ford" and to the
tumbling eagerness of Wolfe's thoughts and feelings. It is as if
always his mind ran faster than his pencil could.
The punctuation, the capitalization and the paragraphing used
in this book are Wolfe's. The spelling, because of the uncertainty
about some letters and the shorthand method Wolfe often used,
may be edited.
Where Wolfe himself used a question mark to show uncertainty
about the names of towns, mountains, rivers, or the like, the map
was consulted and the right name is given in notes at the end of the
book, on page 7L The faithfulness with which Wolfe has recalled
and recorded every turn in the road makes it not too difficult to
trace on the map the very roads the white Ford traveled.
The Journal is printed here in full and, we believe, just as it was
written. To decipher every word and try to be sure it was the word
Wolfe wrote was the pleasant labor of many hours with my
colleague, Percival Hunt. His unflagging zeal and inspired "sleuth-
ing" is responsible for discovering many words that might have
remained forever a mystery. For both of us, I think, the very
vni
difficulties have made the author's tremendous intensity, his
eagerness, intolerance, gentleness, and elemental poetry a very real
"Itself ness" (as Wolfe might say) an "Itself ness" which is
there to enjoy, apart from any literary form, or lack of it, and apart
from any agreement with the author's opinions.
At least, now that all the work is done after the deciphering,
the transcribing, the arranging, the mapping of the journey the
feeling persists that we have been very close to the power and
genius of this writer and his writing. It has been like being right
there when the spark flashes.
AGNES LYNCH STARRETT
Editor, University of Pittsburgh Press
Special Acknowledgements
The map of Thomas Wolfe's journey was drawn by Dr.
Frances M. Hanson, assistant professor of geography, and
the decorative cartouche was drawn by Jeannette C. Shirk,
periodicals librarian, University of Pittsburgh.
Permission to quote from The Story of a Novel on page x
was given by Charles Scribner's Sons.
IX
Out of the billion forms of America, out of the sav-
age violence and the dense complexity of all its
swarming life; from the unique and single sub-
stance of this land and life of ours y must we draw
the power and energy of our own life^ the articula-
tion of our speech^ the substance of our art.
For here it seems to me in hard and honest ways like
these we may find the tongue > the language y and the
conscience that as men and artists we have got to
have. Here> too,, perhaps y must we who have no
more than what we have y who know no more than
what we know^ who are no more than what we are^
Jind our America. Here^ at this present hour and
moment of my life y I seek for mine.
The Story of a Navel, by Thomas Wolfe.
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936.
* . . the pity,) terror y strangeness y and magnificence
of it alL
A Western Journey v by Thomas Wolfe
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1951,
Storm-herds of thundering Sioux cloud past
in viewless vacancy. Long., long &go y within
the anodes of the timeless Pf^est a man felt y
saw y heard y thought or did he vision them
these things Oh, time.
&
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A Daily Log
of
The Great Parks Trip
Left Portland^ University Club^ 8:15 sharp
Fair day> bright sunlight^ no cloud in sky
Went South by East through farmlands of upper
Willamette and around base of Mount Hood
which was glowing in brilliant sun Then
climbed and crossed Cascades ^ and came down
with suddenness of knife into the dry lands of the
Eastern slope Then over high plateau and
through bare hills and canyons and irrigated
farmlands here and there y low valley, etc.) and
into Bent at 12:45 200 miles in 4.^4
hours
Then lunch at hotel and view of the j Sisters and
the Cascade range then up to the Pilot Eutte
above the town the great plain stretching
infinite away and unapproachable the great line
of the Cascades with their snowspired sentinels
Hoody Adams ) Jefferson, j sisters > etc y and out of
Bend at 3 and then through the vast and level
pinelands somewhat reminiscent of the South
for 100 miles then down through the noble pines
Monday
June 20
(Ciater Lake)
86 miles
STERN JOURNAL
lava masses and then Mount Shasta omnipresent
Mount Shasta all the time always Mt. Shasta
and at last the town named Weed (with a
divine felicity] and Breakfast at Weed at 7:45
and the morning bus from Portland and the
tired people tumbling out and in for breakfast
and away from Weed and towering Shasta at
8:15 and up and climbing and at length into
the passes of the lovely timbered Siskiyous
and now down into canyon of the Sacramento
m among the lovely timbered Siskiyous and all
through the morning down and down and down
the canyon,, and the road snaking, snaking
always with a thousand little punctual gashes,
and the freight trains and the engines turned
backward with the cabs in front
15
down below along the lovely Sacramento snaking
snaking snaking and at last into the town of
Redding and the timber fading, hills fading,
cupreous lavic masses fading and almost at
once the mighty valley of the Sacramento as
broad as a continent and all through the morn-
ing through the great floor of that great plain
THOMAS
like valley the vast fields thick with straw
grass lighter
17
than Swedes hair and infinitely far and
unapproachable the towns down the mountain
on both sides and great herds of fat brown
steers in straw light fields a dry land., with with
a strange hot heady fragrance and fertility
and at last no mountains at all but the great
sun-bright^ heat-hazed^ straw-light plain and
the straight marvel of the road on which the
car rushes
19
on like magic and no sense of speed at 60 miles
an hour At 11:30 a brief halt at to look at
the hotel and great palms now, and Spanish
tiles and arches and pilasters and a patio in
the hotel and swimming pool and on again and
on again across the great y hot y straw light plain >
and great fields mown new and scattered with
infinite bundles of baled hay and
21
occasional clumps of greenery and pastures and
house and barns where water is and as Sacramento
nears a somewhat greener land y more unguent^
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Six
and better houses now*, and great fat herds of
steers innumerable and lighter and more sun
ovenhot towns and at length through the heat-
haze the slopes of Sacramento and over an
enormous viaduct across a flat
23
and marshy land and planes flying^ and then
the far flung filling stations ^ hot dog stores ',
3 Little Pigs, and Ear B~s of a California
town and then across the Sacramento into town
the turn immediate and houses new and mighty
palms and trees and people walking, and the
State house with its gold leaf dome
and spaghetti at the first Greeks that we find \
and on out again immediate
25
pressing on past state house and past street
by street of leafy trees and palms and pleasant
houses and out from town now but traffic
flashing past now and loaded trucks and
whizzing cars no more the lovely 50 mile
stretches and 60 miles an hour but down across
the backbone of the state and the whole backbone
of the state cars and towns and farms
and people
THOMAS WOLFE
Seven
27
flashing by and still that same vast
billowy plain no light brown now the
San Joaquin Valley now and bursting with
Gods plenty orchards peaches apricots
and vineyards orange groves Gods plenty of
the best and glaring little towns sown thick
with fruit packing houses ovenhot, glittering
in the hot and shining air town
29
after town each in the middle of Gods plenty
and at length the turn at toward Yosemite
90 miles away and a few miles from town the
hills again the barren^ crateric^ lavic, volcanic
blasted hills but signs now telling us we carft
get in now across the washed out road save
behind the conductor and now too late already
5 of six and the last conductor leaves
31
at six and we still 50 miles away and telephone
calls now to rangers , superintendents and so
forth j a filling station and hot cabins , and the
end of a day of blazing heat and the wind
stirring in the sycamores about the cabins , and
on again now, and almost immediately the broken
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Elg&t
ground^ the straw light mouldings, the rises to
the crater hills and soon
33
among them climbing, climbing into timber
and down down down into pleasant timbered
mountain folds get no sensation yet and winding
in and out and little hill towns here and there
and climbing^ climbing, climbing, mountain
lodges ', cabins, houses, and so on, and now in
terrific mountain folds, close packed, precipitous,
lapped together and down and over, down again
35
along breath taking curves and steepnesses and
sheer drops down below into a canyon cut a
mile below by great knifes blade and at the
bottom the closed gate the little store calls upon
the phone again, and darkness and the sending
notes, and at last success upon our own heads
be the risk but we may enter and we do
and so slowly up
37
we go along the washed out road finding it
not near so dangerous as we feared and at
length past the bad end and the closed gate and
release and up now climbing and the sound of
mighty waters in the gorge and the sheer black-
THOMAS WOLFE
Nine
nesses of beetling masses and the stars and
presently the entrance and the rangers house
a free pass now and up and up and boles of
trees terrific, cloven rock above the road
W
and over us and dizzy masses night black as a
cloud) a sense of the imminent terrific and at
length the valley of the Yosemite; roads forking
darkly, but the perfect sign and now a smell
of smokes and of gigantic tentings and enormous
trees and gigantic cliff walls night black all
around and above the sky -bowl of starred night
and Curry s Lodge and
41
smoky gaiety and wonder hundreds oj young
faces and voices the offices, buildings stores,
the dance floor crowded with its weary hundreds
and the hundreds of tents and cabins and the
absurdity of the life and the immensity of all
and 1200 little shop girls and stenogs and new-
weds and schoolteachers and boys all, God
bless their
43
little lives, necking, dancing, kissing, feeling,
and embracing in the gTeat darkness of the giant
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Ten
redwood trees all laughing and getting loved
tonight and the sound of the dark gigantic fall
of water so to bed!
And 535 miles today!
45
Wed Woke at 7:00 after sound sleep water falling
J une <- gf r / s voices y etc Breakfast and good one at
cafeteria after that visited waterfalls took
photographs 5 talked to people,, visited swell hotel
sent post cards, etc, and then on way out
by the South Wawona entrance then beautiful
rockrim drive down through wooded Sierras to
foothills the brilliant leafage of scrub pine
then the bay-bright gold of wooded big barks
then the bay-gold plain and bay-gold heat a
crowded lovely road and Clovis lunch there
then the ride up to the mountains again the
same approach as the day before the bay-gold
big barks then cupreous masses then forested
peaks then marvelous and precipitous ride
upward and the great view back across the vast
tangle of the Sierras then Gen. Grant and the
great trees the pretty little girls then the jo
mile drive along the ridge
47
to the Sequoia and Gen* Sherman and the
giant trees then straight thru to other entrance
THOMAS WOLFE
Eleven
then down terrifically the terrific winding road
the tortured mew of the eleven ranges the
vertebrae of the Sierras then the lowlands
and straight highroad no bends and Visalia
then by dark straight down the valley to
Eakersfield then East and desertwards across
the Tehachapi range the vertical brightness
of enormous cement plants and now at i:jo in
Mohave at desert edge and tomorrow across the
desert at 8:00 o'clock and so to bed and about
miles today.
46
At Eakersfield enormous electric sign Frosted
Milk-shakes A "Drive-Inn and girls in white
sailor pantys serving drinks / drank Frosted
Lime, Miller a Coco-Cola float > etc.
49
Up at 7 o'clock in hotel at Mohave and
already the room hot and stuffy and the wind
that had promised a desert storm the night before
was still and the sun already hot and mucoid on
the incredibly dirty and besplattered window
panes and a moments look of hot tarred roof
and a dirty ventilator in the restaurant below and
no moving life but the freight cars of S.P. rr
Thursday
June 23
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Twelre
and a slow freight climbing fast and weariness
so up and shaved and dressed and gripped the
zipper and downstairs and the white-cream Ford
waiting and the two others in the car and to
the cafe for breakfast eggs and pancakes ^
sausages most hearty and a company of r.r.
men So out of town at 8:io and headed straight
into the desert and so straight across
51
the Mo have at high speed for four hours to
Earstow so in full flight now the desert yet
more desert blazing heat 102 inside the filling
station the dejected old man and his wife
and so the desert mountains 5 crateric y lavic and
volcanic, and so more fiendish the fiend desert
of the lavoid earth like an immense plain of
Librea tar and very occasionally a tiny
blistered little house and once or twice the
paradise of water and the magic greenery of
desert trees and
yet hotter and more fiendish through fried hills
cupreous , ferrous y and denuded as slag heaps
and so the filling station and the furnace air
fanned by a hot dry strangely invigorating breeze
THOMAS WOLFE
Thirteen
and the filling station man who couldn't sign
"I'm only up an hour and my hands shake so
with the heat" and Needles at last in blazing
heat and the restaurant station and hotel and
Fred Harvey all aircooled^ and a good luncheon 3
and an hour here
55
so out again in blazing heat 106 within the
strolling of the station awning 116 or 120 out
of it and so out of Needles and through heat
blasted air along the Colorado 15 miles or so
and then across the river into Arizona pause
for inspection, all friendly and immediate
then into the desert world of Arizona the
heat blasted air the desert mountain slopes clear
in view and more devilish
57
the crateric and volcanic slopes down in and up
and up among them, now and then a blistered
little town a few blazing houses and the fronts
of stores up and up now and fried desert
slopes prodigiously and into Oatman and the
gold mining pits , the craterholes, the mine shafts
and the signs of new gold digging Mexicans
half naked before a pit and up and up and
only up and up to Goldcrest?
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Fourteen
58
Across the Mohave the S. P. fringed with black
against the blazing crater of the desert sky snakes
on, snakes on its monotone of forever and of
now moveless Immediate
59
and at last the rim and down and down through
blasted slopes, volcanic "pipes" and ancient
sea erosions y mesa table heads ^ columnar swathes ^
stratifications > and the fiendish wind y and below
the vast pale > y lemon-mystic plain and far
away immeasurably far the almost moveless
plume of black of engine smoke and the double
header freight advancing advanceless moveless
moving through timeless time and on and on
across the
61
immense plain backed by more immensities of
fiendish mountain slopes to meet it and so almost
meeting moveless-moving never meeting up and
up and round and through a pass and down to
Kingman and a halt for water and on and on
and up and down into another mighty plain,
desert growing grey-green greener and some
cattle now and always up and up and through
fried blasted slopes and the enormous
THOMAS WOLFE
Fifteen
63
lemon-magic of the desert plains ^ fiend mountain
slopes pure lemon heat mist as from magic
seas arising and a halt for gas at a filling
station with a water fountain "Please be careful
with the water we have to haul it 60 miles"
5280 feet above and 4800 feet we've climbed
since Needles and on and on and up and the
country greening now and
65
steers in fields wrenching grey-green grass among
the sage brush clumps and trees beginning now
the National Forest beginning and new
greenery and trees and pines and grass again
a world of desert greenness still not Oregon
but a different world entirely from the desert
world and hill slopes no longer fiend troubled
but now friendly y forested familiar j and around
and
67
down and in a pleasant valley Williams and
for a beer here where I thought I was 3 years
ago bartender a Mexican or an Indian or
both and out and on our way again only the
great road leading across the continent and 6 or
7 miles out an off turn to the left for the Grand
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Sixteen
Canyon and not much climbing now, but up
and down again the great -plateau JOQO feet
69
on top and green fields now and grass and steers
and hills forested and cooler and trees and on
and on toward (levelly) the distant twin rims
blue-vague defined of the terrific canyon
the great sun sinking now below our 7000 feet
we racing on to catch him at the canyon ere he
sinks entirely but too late, too late at last
the rangers little house y the
71
permit and the sticker \ the inevitable conversations,
the polite goodbyes and (almost dark now)
at 8:35 to the edges of the canyon to Bright
Angel Lodge and before we enter between the
cabins of the Big Gorgooby and the Big
Gorgooby there immensely 3 darkly y almost
weirdly there a fathomless darkness peered at
from the very edge of hell with abysmal starlight
almost unseen -just
73
fathomlessly there So to our cabin and
delightful service and so to dinner in the Lodge
THOMAS WOLFE
Seventeen
and our rudeeleven in jodphurs, pajamas ,
shirts., and country suits , and Fred Harvey's
ornate wigwam and to dinner here and then
to walk along the rim of Big Gorgooby and inspect
the big hotel and at the stars innumerable and
immense above the Big Gorgooby just a look a
big look so goodnight and 500 miles today
75
At daybreak a deer outside the window Friday
crowing grass. June 24, 1938
Rose Grand Canyon 8:15 others had been
up already for an hour wakened at four or
thereabouts by deer grazing, and by its hard
small feet outside of window Then Miller in at
8:30 but let me sleep so bathed^ dressed^ to
coffee shop by G and good breakfast then packed
and with Miller Con way and the Ranger to
Administration offices y met the Ass't Super.
so to Observation point the Ranger along and
looked through observation glasses at
77
Old Gorgooby and unvital time and Alberdene
the young geologist with crisp-curly hair and
cheery personality who talked and remembered
me from j yr. ago an Arizona PhD and at
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Eighteen
Harvard too but now wants no more teaching
and applies for Philippines so down to Lookout
Tower where the caravan streams in and listens
to lecture by young Ranger Columbia and into
tower and all the people the Eastern cowboy
with Fred Harvey hat and
79
shirt and cowgirl with broad hat, and wet red
mouth y blonde locks and riding breeches filled
with buttock and up into tower and the Painted
Desert and the Small Gorgooby gorge and the
Vermillion Cliffs and down and goodbye to the
ranger and so away and stop over for a look
at Small Gorgooby gorge and on to the desert
and to Cameron and blazing
81
heat and the demented reds again y and lunch
here in an Indian Lodge-ee and an old dog
moving in the shadow of a wall and so away
across the bridge and into the Painted Desert
and blazing heat and baked road and Painted
Desert through the afternoon by the Vermillion
Cliffs and four small Indian girls in rags and
petticoats beside the road awaiting
THOMAS WOLFE
Nineteen
83
pennies (dimes they got) two upon a burro
beer, and photographs and heat incredible and the
demented reds of Painted Desert and away away
again good road bad road good and bad again
by the demented and fiend tortured redness of
Vermillion Cliffs red, mauve, and violet,
passing into red again and now the gorge,
much smaller down, of Big
85
Gorgooby, and the Navajo Bridge and the
Gorgooby, brown-red-yellow a mere looofeet or
so below and on and on across the Big Gorgooby
now through desert land now grey -greening
sagely into sage and stray Indians moving into
road here and there and Indian houses then
the jar lip of the rise, the road rising, winding
into hills, and up and up into
87
the timber and the forest now, and all the lovely
quaking aspens and the vast and rising rim of
sage and meadow land a golf course big and
narrow on both sides rising clearly and
mysteriously to woods and then the big woods
again, and deep dense woods, the rangers house
and entrance, and at last the Lodge, the
mysterious colour^ a haircut^ a clean
A WESTERN JOURNAJL
Twenty
89
shirty and supper with the Browns, and a sweet
waitress, and before this past the sunset
moment the tremendous twilight of the Big
Gorgooby more concise and more collected,
more tremendous here and dimmer then and
darkness and the lights of the South Rim
and later on the moving picture the two Canadian
College quartettes in crimson blazers the
inevitable theatrical performance with the
91
waitresses and bellhops performing Hiawatha
chanting the U.P. and naught but the clog
dancers passable and then Brown and his
colored picture slides Bryce, Zion, the Canyon,
and the Mormon temple *, then the dance, the bar,
Scotch highballs, and good talk with Miller, and
the wind in pine trees, and leave with Miller
to the cabin, and
93
C. still wakeful, rising, reading costs and
mileages excitably from his records he all the
night with them and arguments, agreements,
and accounts again on costs and mileages and
possibilities the moon in jo hrs* is possible
and C taking pride in all our present luxury
THOMAS WOLFE
Twenty-one
because "It makes a better person of you" and
the first time he gave a
95
man a tip and so to bed! And 210 miles today
97
Rose 7:30 cabin North Rim Lodge Grand Saturday
Canyon shave, bath, dressedCabin very June 25 * 1938
luxurious appointed like modern hotel best
we'd seen Sound of waitresses and maids
singing farewell songs "Till we meet again"
etc to passengers departing on buses Traveling
U.P. sentiment and C declared there were tears
in eyes of the passengers and some of the girls
Into Lodge for view from terrace of the Big
Gorgooby in first light and glorious / and
glorious! wrote half dozen post cards in
brilliant sunlight as before then into breakfast
with C and M and
99
the Browns and the inevitable Ranger and the
waitress with the strange and charming smile
and she from Texas and admitted that sentiment^
songs y and kicking her legs for Pony Boy in
night time entertainment all at 8000 feet for
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Twenty-two
dear old U.P. got her wind and at first "made
her awfully tired" So out and by myself again
to terrace then to cabin to pack then to hotel
and with Ranger and C and M to cafeteria for
the inevitable inspection of cabins, cafeterias,
etc and at long last, at II o'clock
101
on our way out and down through the Forest,
and the long sweeping upland meadows and the
deer and cattle grazing, quivering the aspen leaves
in the bright air, and down and down and then
the bottomlands spread below us over again, the
fierce red earth, the tortured buttes and the
Fermillion Cliffs, the Painted desert, and on and
on across the desert and into Utah, and at 1:30,
3 miles past the
103
line, the Mormon town of Kanab at Perry's
Lodge a white house, pleasant and almost
New England, and the fiery bright heat, the little
town, and greenness here, and trees and grass,
and a gigantic lovely cool-bright poplar at the
corner and so out and on along the road and
presently the turn off to the left for Zion's
Canyon and before the mountains rising range
and range, no longer
THOMAS WOLFE
Twenty-three
105
fierce red and vermillion now, but sandy y whitest
limestones,, striped with strange strifes of salmon
pink scrub dotted^ paler Now in the canyon
road and climbing, and now pink rock again^
strange shapes and searings in the rock y and
even vertices upon huge swathes of stone, and
plunging down now in stiff canyon folds the
sheer solid beetling
107
soaplike block of salmon red again deeper yet
not so fierce and strange (as I thought) as the
Grand Canyon earthy and towering soapstone
Hocks of red incredible, and through a tunnel,
out and down and down, and through the great
one spaced with even windows in the rock that
give on magic casements opening on sheer Mocks
of soapstone red y and out again
109
in the fierce light and down round dizzy windings
of the road into the canyons depth and at the
bottom halt inevitable at Administration Offices ,
visit inevitable to cafeteria and cabins, and away
again along the canyon and the Virgin River
(how sweet to see sweet water sweetly flowing here
between these dizzy soapstone blocks of red]
and round
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Twenty-four
ill
the bendings of the river by the soapstone walls of
blank fierce red and into the valley floor and trees
(a little like Yosemite, this valley, yet not so
lush, so cool, nor so enchanted, nor cooled by the
dunblanket of towering pines y but an oasis here,
a glimpse of lodge inevitable and O miracle!
in hot oasis a swimming fool, a bathing house,
and young wet half-naked forms a fool
surrounded
113
by the cottonwoods and walled round, beetled over
by sheer soapstone blocks of red capped by
pinnicles of blazing white pool in cottonwoods
surrounded by fierce blocks of red and temples
and kings thrones and the sheer smoothness of the
bloody vertices of soapstone red did never pool
look cooler, nor water wetter, wetter more inviting
so by
115
the road down to the canyons end and all around
the beetling blocks of soapstone red, and river
flowing, and trees and shade, a tourist party,
and a lecturer and two old friends and one
from Saginaw and one from somewhere else,
and one a coal salesman, and one something else,
THOMAS WOLFE
Twenty-five
and one with an enormous belly and a half-
sleeved shirt, the other with
117
green-msored helmet) and two fingers only on his
hand) and both amiable and voluble and willing
to pose y and talk and act) and awed by nature
dutifully and so amiably goodbye to them) back
to the swimming pool) and snapshots here) and so
away y and a shot at a white lime-cliff on the way y
and up and up again ? and through the tunnel)
and by the
119
strange carved shapes and vertical and punctual
lines ) and to the top and down and down again
a vista of the plain and desert) and the white
sand-lime peaks with the salmon markings
and one strange) Isolate and Painted Desertward
(I think) of salmon red and down and down and
to the main road finally and to the left and up
along it toward Bryce's Canyon on the main
121
road north to Salt Lake City and noW) almost
immediate) a greener land) and grass In semi-
desert fields ) and stock and cattle grazing) and
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Twenty-sis
now timbered hills in contour not unlike the
fields of home ^ and now farms and green
incredible of fields and hay and mowing and
things growing and green trees and Canaan
pleasantness and a river flowing (the
123
Sevier) and (by desert comparison) a fruitful
valley and occasional little towns small
Mormon towns sometimes with little house of
old brick but mostly little houses of * frame ', and
for the most part mean and plain and stunted
looking and hills rising to the left a vista of
salmon pink, Vermillion Cliffs again the
barricades of Bryce and
125
then the turn in and so halted here by road
repair until the convoy from the Canyon passes
out and meanwhile talking to the man with the
red flag "we have no deserts here in Utah"
is Zion then a flowering prairie, and are Salt
Lake and the Bonneville Flats the grassy
precincts of the Kings Paradise and cars
gathered here on bleeding oil
127
from Ohio New Mexico Illinois California
Michigan and presently the other cavalcade
THOMAS WOLFE
Twenty-seven
appears upon the crest and flash downwards one
by one till all are through and then we start
the road good but still oil-bloody to the right for
seven or ten miles and up through sage land
into timber, past corrals, dude ranches etc, into
129
timber on the high plateau, another Rangers
entrance house in view, the stick-candy-whipping
of the flag another sticker seven now and
into the park and up and through the timber past
the Lodge and to the river, where stand in setting
sun looking out and down upon the least
overwhelming, dizzy, and least massive of the
lot but perhaps
131
the most astounding a million wind-blown
pinnacles of salmon pink and fiery white all
fused together like stick candy all suggestive of a
childs fantasy of heaven and beyond the open
semi-green and semi-desert plain and lime-white
and scrub dotted mountains and so back and to
the Lodge with sour-pussed oldsters on the
veranda, trinkets
133
souvenirs, and, methought, some superciliousness
within, so got our keys, and to our cabin, and so
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Twenty-eight
shaved, and to the cafeteria which was clean and
much be-Indian~souvenired betrinketed, somehow
depressing, and expensive pie ten 15 cents and
20 for a bad and messy sandwich and so to the
Lodge and peeked in at the inevitable Ranger and
the attentive
135
dutiful sourpusses listening to the inevitable
lecture Flora and Fauna of Bryce Canyon so
bought post cards and wrote them and so to my
cabin to write this.
And after this to lodge where dinner going on,
and into curio shop where, with some difficulty
bought beer in cans, and had two, feeling more
and more desolate in this most unreal state of
Utah, and
137
struck up talk with quaint old blondined wag
named Florence who imitates bird calls and dark
rather attractive woman, Canadian probably
French, who sold curios and who had life in her
and was obviously willing to share it So
talking with them in lobby until dinner broke up
at 10:30 and young people coming out looking
rather lost and vaguely eager, I thought, as if
they wanted something that wasn't there and
didn't know how
THOMAS WOLFE
Twenty-nine
139
to find it and had some depressing reflections
on Americans in search of gaiety y and National
Park Lodges^ and Utah and frustration^ etc;
so home> where found C busy with his calculations
"if we do so and so tomorrow y we'll have only
so and so much to do on Monday" and wrote
this^ my companions sleeping and so to bed!
About 265 miles today!
141
Arose Bryce Canyon ?:jo dressed, walked with
M to Rim and to observation house on point and
looked at Canyon. Sky somewhat overcast and no
sunlight in the canyon y but it was no less amazing
looked fragile compared to other great canyons
"like filigree work y \ of fantastic loveliness Great
shouldering bulwarks of eroded sand going down
to it made it look very brittle and soft erodes
at rate of I inch a year something the effect of
sugar candy at a carnival -powdery whitey
melting away Old man,, roughly dressed^ and
with one toothy and wife, and daughter >
supri singly smart looking young female in
pajama slacks and smoked goggles talking
geology
143
the words came trippingly off her tongue
* * erosion" "wind erosion" "125 million years
Sunday
June 26, 1938
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Thirty
and so on" There had been argument with
someone whether Canyon had been cut with water
"all canyons cut with water" etc M took
pictures "Look out as if you're looking out"
then quickly back through woods toward lodge and
after last nights rain brightly amazingly pungent,
sweet and fragrant smell of sage y pine needles,
etc So breakfast in lodge and C as usual
engrossed with hotel manager haggling about
prices, rates, cabin accommodations etc wrote
145
post cards and ate hearty breakfast and talked
with waitress who was from Purdue studying
"home economics" and dress designing and hopes
to be a "buyer" for Chicago store observed the
tourists two grim featured females school-
teachers at table next who glowered dourly at
everyone and everything with stiff inflexible faces
and H. says most of the tourists are women and
many school teachers So the tourists rose to
depart, and presently the sound of singing and
the waitresses, maids, bell boys etc gathered in
front of Lodge and by bus singing
147
"Till we meet again" "Good-bye, ladies" etc
and one of the dour looking school teachers
THOMAS WOLFE
Thirty-one
dabbing furtively at eyes, and the bus departing,
and emotional jar ewetts, and the young folks
departing back to their work,, and bragging
exultantly "We got tears out of four of *em this
morning. Oh, I love to see *em cry; it means
business' 9 Then discussing hotel business again
and the art of pleasing guests and squeezing
tears from them and for me the memory of
149
the dour faced teacher dabbing at her eyes and
stabbing pity in the heart and something that
can not be said So into hotel for a final look,
and boys and girls practising the dances of a
show, so to the cabin packed, back to the lodge
and farewell conversation with the curio-saleslady
of last night y and with the managers wife and
so farewell and checked out the gates at 9:45
and down from the canyon
151
through the woods, past the lodge-motor-cabin
Start outside, on to the road-in-construction
slowly, down towards the valley, and finally
(75 miles away) into the main road for Salt Lake
and toward North and Salt Lake from this
point 250 miles away.
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Thirty-two
So all through the morning at good speed upon
fine roads up through a great^ enlarging^ and
constantly growing richer valley at first mixed
with some
153
desert land bald^ scrub dotted ridges on each side
ascending into lovely timber then to granite tops,
and desert land now semi-desert \ semi-green
clumped now with sage and dry, but bursting
marvellously into greenery when water is let in
and the river (the Sevier) refreshing it. Still semi
desert with occasional flings into riper green
the cool dense green of trees
155
clustered densely round a little house, and fields
ripe with thick green > and the warm green of hay,
and fat steers and cows and horses grazing^
apparent men are Mormon Sickling reaping^
mowing hay with reaping machines and fields
strewn with cut mounds of green lemon hay y and
water the miraculousness of water in the west,
the muddy viscousness of irrigation
157
ditches filled with water so incredibly wet the
miracle of water always in the west the blazing
THOMAS WOLFE
Thirty-three
whiteness of the sunlight now, the light hot
blueness of the skies, the filed cumulousness of
snowy clouds and then the dusty little Mormon
villages blazing and blistered in that hot dry
heat and the j or lorn little houses sometimes
just little
159
cramped and warped wooden boxes,, all unpainted,
hidden under the merciful screenings of the dense
and sudden trees the blistered little storefronts^
the wooden falsefronts of the little towns
sometimes the older Mormon houses of red brick
sometimes still more ancient ones of chinked log
sometimes strangely an old Mormon house of
stone but all in that hot dry immensity
161
of heat and light so curiously warped and small
and dusty and forlorn -just a touch of strange-
ness maybe in the set of eaves y the placing of the
tag porchy the turn of the shop gables (temple-wise
perhaps) but of architecture graceless, all
denuded^ with the curious sterility and coldness
and frustration the religion has but the earth
meanwhile
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Thirty-four
163
burgeoning into green and fat fertility the
windbreaks of the virgin poplars, the dense cool
green of poplars in the hot bright light and the
staunch cool shade of cottonwoods and the
valley winding into Canaan and the Promised
land the fields lush now with their green, their
planted trees, the great reap of their mowings
strangely Canaan
165
now hemmed by the desert peaks the hackled
ridges on both sides denuded and half barren,
curiously thrilling in their nakedness and
Canaan magical, the vale irriguous below The
marvellous freshness and fecundity of the great
Sevier valley now and in the midst of the great
plain of Canaan the town of Richfield (so named
because of the
167
fat district) a stop here so on steadily into
growing fertilities a blessed land of Canaan
irriguous by L.D.S. made fertile, promised,
and 'This is the place 9 Jacob, Levan, Nephi,
Goshen the names Biblical in Canaan or
Spanish Fork and American Fork names like
the pioneers but ever the towns arising from
the desert
THOMAS WOLFE
Thirty-five
169
now the lightness of new brick the stamped
hard patterns of new bungalows and in the
bright hot light clear wide streets, neat houses, an
air of growing and of prosperousness but still
a graceless lack of architectural taste but now a
kind of cooler sterner magic in the scenery
(impassionate, granite, clearly barren in the
171
hackled ridges of the limestone peaks, the austere
blackness of the timber) and the great valley
floor burgeoning with Canaan in between the
cool flat silver of the lake at Provo and the full
fat land of plenty now cherry orchards groaning
with their fruit, fields thick with grain and hay,
and
173
fertile tillages betwixt the granite semi-arid
clearness of the desert peaks Provo its
thriving look the immense smelter plants in
hot bright air the hot bright sunlight of the
business street, the ugly sparseness, stamped out
smartness of the stamped brick bungalows the
marvellousness of poplars and of cottonwoods,
the
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Thirty-six
175
dazzling brightness, richness, fragrance of the
rambler roses and full fat land of Canaan all
away great canning -plants now, and fine wide
roads, and flashing and increasing traffic and
Brighams great vale irriguous of Canaan and of
plenty is marching, marching Northward between
hackled peaks, is sweeping, sweeping Northward
177
through the backbone of the Promised Land, is
sweeping onward, onward toward the Temple
and the Lake and by a rise approaching the
barriers of 'the hackled peak, up, up, around the
naked shoulder of a gravel mountain and down,
down into the salt plain of Salt Lake half-
desert still, half burgeoning to riches and
179
the irriguous ripe of the sudden green, and walled
immensely on three sides by the hackled grandeur
of the massive hills but to the West, the missive
peaks also but desert openness and the saline
flatness, the thin mist lemon of the Great Salt
Lake so now the houses thicken on both sides
another town with hot bright
181
central street, and stores, and city hall and, like
the others, a denuded absence of humanity
THOMAS WOLFE
Thirty-seven
then down Jour miles away to Salt Lake City
the bungalows close-set now on both sides
suddenly heat heat-misty on its splendid rise
and facing the approach backed by the naked
molding of the hills the Capitol with its
183
dome looking like a capital and dome always
do So into Salt Lake skyscrapers, hotels ,
office buildings, an appearance of a City greater
than its growth and in 4 directions the broad
streets sweeping out and ending cleanly under
massed dense green at the rises of the barren magic
hills so into town, past a fantastic dance hall,
"the worlds
185
biggest" storeSy streets, blocks 600 feet in length
and Sunday hotness, brightness \ emptiness the
old feeling of Mormon coldness, desolation the
cruel, the devoted, the fanatic, and the warped
and dead.
So for a hearty dinner at Rotisserie, then to
the gleaming whiteness of Utah Hotel, the ornate
hotel lobby, and mail for C and M. Then out into
the garden around
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Thirty-eight
187
the Temple the harsh ugly temple, the temple
sacrosanct, by us unvi sited, unvisitable, so ugly,
grim, grotesque, and blah so curiously warped,
grotesque, somehow so cruelly formidable then
the great domed roof of the Tabernacle like a
political convention hall the statues of the twin
saints Brothers Smith, with pious recordings of
their fanaticisms
189
the museum, the first cabin, etc the pomposities
of bronze rhetoric the solemn avowals of "the
finding of the plates" for the Book of Mormon,
etc a visit to The Lion House, The Bee Hive,
and so forth and enough, enough, of all this
folly, this cruelty and this superstition into
the white car now and out of town almost
191
immediate the clear and naked hill beside and to
the left the vast meadows sloping to pale flatness,
and the saline, citric flatness paleness of the lake
And Land of Plenty now indeed to the right
the hackled, semi karren ridges, and a strip of
arid land, then marvellously the orchards, on both
193
sides the orchards lusty with their fruit, their
vineyards growing with their cherries, and
THOMAS WOLFE
Thirty-nine
greenery, lustiness, watery fertility, the like of
which was never seen before, flanked in the
distance by the 'pale and misty flatness of the
lake, the land merging into saline flatness at
the margin and beyond the misty range of the
hackled peaks aye,
195
with the cruelty of Mormon in it, but with a
quality its own that grips and holds you now
and thriving towns Ogden "the fastest growing
city in Utah" and flashing brightness and an
air of prosperousness and the clear elevation of
the bald and hackled peaks and ever greater
orchards groaning with their fruit, and canning
plants,
197
and lush fertility and Brigham, another
thriving and exciting lively town the strange
tabernacled form of the Mormon temple with
its 8 gables on each side but before we enter the
lively main street just before us a turn-off to
the left and almost immediate a climb up to the
hills and over them
199
and down the canyons toward Logan and now
the greatest beauty of the day the swift mounting
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Forty
up the canyon among bold and greening knobs,
a sense of grandeur, sweetness and familiarity ,
and suddenly,, cupped in the rim of bold hills , a
magic valley plain, flat as a floor and green as
heaven and more
201
fertile and more ripe than the Promised land
then down and winding down the lovely canyon
and cattle, horses, and houses sheltered by the
trees, and then below the most lovely and
enchanted valley of them all the great valley
around Logan a valley that makes all that has
gone before fade to nothing the
203
very core and fruit of Canaan a vast sweet
plain of unimaginable riches loaded with fruit,
lusty with cherry orchards, green with its thick
and lush fertility and dotted everywhere with the
beauty of incredible trees clumped cottonwoods
and lines and windbreaks of incredible poplars
205
a land of peace and promises of plenty and then
Logan, a thriving, light town, blazing with electric
light and an air of cheerfulness the fresh
THOMAS WOLFE
Forty-one
bungalows and cottages and the more expensive
houses the tabernacle > and with a curious
tightening of the throat, a thought of little
Alladine who lived here, loved it and its canyon^
207
and went out like a million other kids like her y
from all this Canaan loveliness to her future ',
fame and glory in the city and so out and on y
light climbing now y and along that valley
incredible^ and at length across the line to Idaho,
and into Preston^ blazing with Idaho's electric
light and here perhaps lost the true road y for
209
we entered now a very rough one "under con-
struction for twenty miles" and hunted in the
darkness with a sense of strangeness and it had
rained here and to the North the sky was murky
rent with gigantic flashes of Western lightning
and the road perilous and slippery , too, the car
sliding sideways as on hills of snow but we
slogged
211
through it to the good road and so on y between
hogback ridges that had closed on us y through
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Forty-two
what was now, I suspect, desert country, towards
Pocatello on a splendid road where we arrived
just before eleven registered at the Bannock
hotel out in brightly lighted streets and colorful
victuallers for food a sandwich and some beer
so home
213
most tired the others sleeping soundly now
perhaps somewhat too fatigued by the crowded
beauty, splendor and magnificence of this day
to write it down and so to bed!
And today 467 miles! (and in our first seven
days about 2760 of our journey)
215
Monday Up at 8:IO Pocatello overcast sky dressed,
*3 um shaved, etc down for breakfast in coffee shop
(Banock Hotel) C and M already there so out
of Pocatello and two miles out found we had left
maps, books, etc
So back so finally out about 9:4.5 and the
Sauriac peaks about the town the bold naked
skyways
But all through the morning through the great
fertile valley of the Snake
*c
Jfc- _
THOMAS WOLFE
Forty-tliree
216
Following the train the Yellowstone Express up
through the Snake Valley city streets the
towns the whistling at the crossing the final
stop at ?
The potato storage sheds sod roofed on top
The barns with the open loft door and the
orchard
The piles of dark straw hay the stockades y
the cattle and the farms ^ the
217
most fertile we had seen perhaps the foliage
dense the field green thick and natural beside
the road the thick and vernal greenness 5 lushness,
freshness by the irrigation ditches the thick and
vernal growth almost middle western
218
feel and smell of clay and hay and stockades.
The low sheds unpainted taverns
The little blistered house
The farm buildings curiously forgotten in the
road curious landscape
The towns blistered little blistered houses
farm implement stores the big of grain
elevators etc
and water water everywhere beside the road
in fields, in irrigation ditches y under
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Forty-four
220
bridges wetness of water flowing to the tops full
to the floor of bridges magical full water brown-
mud-yellow marvellous everywhere
At Sugar City the turn off for Jackson Hole
the rises now and then another valley less vast
but irriguous upon the western borders of the
Tetons
"Almost a hole itself says C and truly
almost
222
"holed" but open to one side and find the pass
through then up up up but first through pined
and hemlocked hyperboliac the pleasant foldings
of the hills and pouring waters and then the
steep turnings and the winds the vision of the
timber line and snow and then the Pass and down
below the miracle of Jackson
224
Hole the milky winding of Cottonwood Creek
and the Hole (and wild west enchantments and
the bad-men legendries) terrific and so down to
it and into Jackson the Square of Old West
now beduded the western hands by the filling
station smell of horsewet hay y a thought of
manure^ and giggling kids upon two broncs
THOMAS WOLFE
Forty-five
luncheon in a "coffee shop" the waitress and a
blond rouged wryneck woman and so out and
round the
226
turn again, and up the edges of the valley by the
Tetons and Leigh Lake and ? Lake and
Jackson Lake the park entrance, the museum,
the glacial lake; the vastness and the sweetness
and the Tetons; then through the Teton Forest,
and Moran, and up and through the Forest
hemlock, pine and spruce
228
by winding single road, and out of Forest and
immediate beginning Yellowstone, and the Park
entrance^ and the ride up through pine-hemlock
etc trees and then the Snake River foaming in its
canyon, then a lake with the thick forest round it
then the "Thumb" of Yellowstone, the Paint
Pots and
230
the boiling waters, sinister, grotesque^ curved like
a rhinocerous imbedded moving through hot
oatmeal then by narrow road to Old Faithful,
and a bear by privy and the woods, and smoke
boiling from the ground, and then the vast
bouquet of Old Faithful^ the enormous Inn, the
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Forty-sis
232
tremendous lodges ', the cabins our run by the
small fast flowing river and the Crater lid,
volcanic, the earth smoking from a hundred holes,
and old Geyser and the people waiting, the hot
boiling overslopping of the pot, and then the vast
hot plume
234
of steam and water and the people watching
Middle-America watching kids, old men,
women, young men, women all and the hot
plume, the tons of water falling and the hot plume
dipping so to supper at the Lodge and drinks
first and all the supper one could eat $1.00
and from the window
236
the hot plume again and then the expectation
entertainment in the vasty hall and roaring fire
in lobby and old people reading and so
goodnight to Ray and then to dance and people
dancing so to the Great Inn to the bar like
liner shipboard bar more merriment here and
people more prosperous less cultured and singing
"We don't give a damn for the whole state of
Utah"
238
and so talking and drinking with M. and
present the bar doses midnight and the rain
ceased the night cleared to heaven and a billion
stars and to our lodge and to our cabin Ray
awake and talking all together so to bed.
THOMAS WOLFE
Forty-seven
239
Up at 8:40 chill and cold and maids talking
at cabin door and M in to wake me So dressed
and to cafeteria and C waiting outside cabin
making notes in book (his closeness,, unstinting
watchfulness ) irked me) to cafeteria with him
then he having eaten then all to Old Faithful
where people coming in as from 1892 and talking
to a man from Kansas, then Old Faithful
squirted. So on our way along
Tuesday
June 28
241
the crater basins the hot fiery bubblings of the
tormented bowels of earth the Sapphire Pool
etc people people people ("Don't lean on that.
Til have a parboiled boy" said man) to geyser
swimming pool before father teaching child to
float, etc on our way to middle Basin, and on
to Norris basin and Museum (not staying long
here} so cars by Canyon
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Forty-eight
243
road, enchanted country -, and green meadows > and
pine hemlock spruce aspen forests bears
upon the road and lovely streams and water
water in the west Virginia cascades cascading
and the meadows and the Elk feasting and the
bears now prowling on the road all cars
stopping drivers automobiles stepping out to
photograph a bear so picked
245
up parking couple for a photo. She worked at
Canyon hotel so to Canyon Cafeteria where
lunch and so across the Bridge to see the mighty
falls of Yellowstone and water falling boiling and
the rushing current of the Canyons loveliest
stream so clear and bright and pure compared
to Colorado so photographs and Ranger posing
(for himself perhaps} with opera glasses
247
the steep wooded depths y the somewhat yellow
walls (hence Yellowstone) So back across the
Bridge (no stopping for Bear Feeding now no
time) and then to Inspiration Point and the
walk out over wavering upon the dizzy wooden
Bridge so on toward Mammoth Hot Springs
and the great climb and enchanted mountain
country
THOMAS WOLFE
Forty-nine
249
now and great peaks to the west, and the climb y
the patched dirty snow beneath the trees and then
the rising eminence of Mount Washburn (?)
and the timber line, the snow, the dizzy steepness
to the left, and the descent^ the Buffalos like dots
grazing to the right the elk the enchanted
valleys far
251
below now hackled crag peaks to the north and
west, and down and down and then the halt at
Teton Falls ) and the clear smoking silver of the
fall into the river and then on y and buffalo
again and the Elk Creeks and finally below
the whited mined-out bleakness of the Mammoth
Springs and naked
253
cabins huddled into rows^ and the blistered
erosions of the springs, the Lodges, the old Bldgs
of the Army Post, the vast slag-barrenness of
Everts Mountain and a sense of bleakness and
the ranger and the talk the greeting and the
answers and with the ranger up to see the
Mammoth Springs^ the colored rocks y the
255
terraces and all bleak and disappointing and
so down and goodbye the ranger and the Army
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Fifty
Post and elk bones piled in decorative heaps and
post cards written hastily and out and out and
farewell Yellowstone and Gardner a photo of
the car at the stone arch erected in 1872 (twas
said) and Gardner small and somewhat bleak and
257
like the entrance of a Nafl Park with a string of
pullman cars that came up in the morning and
two pullman porters coming down the street, a
few stores advertising camp and fish equipment
and away from Gardner now along the Valley of
the Yellowstone and at first the bleak denuded
hills the rushing river the clear fast fish-
abundant river and
259
then widening^ and the naked hills enlarging into
rocky crags and forested (the timber deeper now
than Utah and the material granite now no
longer limestone) and the valley greener now with
the widening and clear watered rush of Yellow-
stone and an enchanted valley now with upslope
to the East and
261
right and timbered Rockies going into snow and
granite and the crags, nude spaciousness^ and the
THOMAS WOLFE
Fifty-one
valley not so green as Mormon land mayhap
but thick with greenness yellowed somewhat by the
teeth of steers, and the nude ranges going toward
the timbered crags and to the
263
west the miracle of evening light and the celebrated
river called the Yellowstone and trees most green
and marvellous a scene familiar and unknown
and elements like those before in Mormon land
but by some miracle transformed into this Itself -
ness and barns now
265
fainted red upon the upland rank of ranges to
the East and fading light and so to Livingston
like places known and come to before and supper
at the N.P. station and the waitress with the tired
face y and yet with charm > sedateness^ and intelli-
gence , and the strange wood of
267
old trees and the station and in the big room the
free pamphlets of the L.D.S. and Christian
Science and Adventists and outside the walls of
rain (the moaning of full rivers lapping at the
rear) and blaze of neons > bars^ and the bold hills
about so out and to the West y the Yellowstone
and ripe greenery behind now
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Fifty-two
Wednesday
June 29
(Glacier Park]
269
and the bold ridges closing in, the rise across the
Bozeman Pass, a pause to read of Bozeman,
Lewis, Clarke, and then the steep descent, the
N.P. descending steeply with us, and ascending
too, the double header climbing to the right above
the cut, and then the lights of Bozeman the
broad main street
271
ablaze with power of brightness and abundant
light, the hotel and then out with M to Bar and
talk with Earkeep of Montana (and no depression
said he) and so home with M; and said goodnight;
so out again, and to another bar, the power
flashing off, most sinister, the town in darkness
and
273
queer in the bar around me, then out to first bar
again, and then to cafe for hamburger, milk, etc.,
and then home and this, and this and so to bed!
275
Up at seven and downstairs and breakfast
with others then off at 7:20 through valley with
Bridget Mfs. on right, Rockies on left and so
sweeps of range "a long county" and presently
THOMAS WOLFE
Fifty-three
the great range with great sweeps the mountains
fading to the right behind, the giant Rockies to
the right and forestry and the signs and stops
to read them and Helena and the enormous gold
277
dredge in Last Chance swinging up the hill
then through the pass and over and the valleys
and the Gates of the Rockies y etc. and the bank-
full Missouri and so on and at Wolf Creek away
again and climbing and now the vast Range
the mountains to the left the Continental and
past the desert mouldings of the earth to the
right-before the
279
immense and lovely grey green of the range and
great herds grazing the straight backs of the
steers in the bright light and steak grazing on the
rump and the Great American Plain opening
with infinite lift and rise and vastness to the
fore so towards the Rockies and the lift and rise
and heaving of the Earth Mass so the Blackfoot
reservation turn and Browning all confused
281
disorderly and Indian so on and on directly
toward the shining and bright austerity of the
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Fifty-four
mountains now and through the big barks and
into the canyons timber, right away, and in the
mountains and presently the town of Glacier
Lake and a sandwich there at the hotel away
and up the Lake again to Eabb for mail and
back again from St. Mary's crossing and the
cabins along the
283
Going to the Sun Pass and the stupendous
hackled peaks now the sheer basaltic walls of
glaciation, the steep scoopings down below, the
dense vertices of glacial valley slopes and forest
and climbing climbing to the Logan Pass so
down again terrifically, and the glacial wall
beside *, the enormous hackled granite peaks before,
the green steep
285
glaciation of the forest, the pouring cascades, and
the streams below and down and down the
miraculous road into the forest, and by rushing
waters, and down and down to the McDonald
Lake and Hotel and a cabin here beside the
lake and Ed away upon the waiting Lake
steamer and Ray and I to cabin then to dinner
there meeting Mr. Jack
THOMAS WOLFE
Fifty-five
287
Key es Ray's friend then all together for a
space a drink with Keyes and beer for Keyes
and Miller in the cafeteria and then all
departing^ all going, very tired and very sleepy
so to bed!
289
Slept late and soundly woke at eight Thursday
dressed and to hotel for breakfast women feeding J une ^
deer and laughing before hotel The lake mist- lakes]
blue in morning light so back to cabin^ packed^
put things in car talked to waitress sitting in
grass with deer nestling to her pretty picture
good-bye to Keyes y and away about 10 o'clock
The lake marvellous in morning shadow and the
Alpine she erne ss of the granite peaks so
291
dropping down to Belton where looked at Chalet
and rooms and talk with dejected manager; and
boys hunting for elk horns so away and down
to Flathead Lake along a pleasant lovely stream
(McDonald Creek] and around the loveliness of
Flathead Lake for next hour or so a beautiful
blue with the granite masses of the Continental
divide rising on the other side
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Fifty-sis
293
and cedar hills on the right and lumber mills
and trains of logs and much timber like Olympia
again so leave the lake at Poison and so down
into the Missoula valley the Rocky range away
eastward and lower ridges to the west the valley
widening; the district of Flathead Indians, opened
as late as igio for white settlement the river
somewhere away to the right told by a line
of trees
295
but out of sight so down to the junction at ?
and decide on the road to the right by the bison
range instead of Missoula, so along this road
and by the bison camp and Flathead reservation ,
and pick up the stream again, this time a
marvellous glorious viscous emerald green now
known as Clark's Fork (of the Columbia River)
and for 200 miles, to New-port (?)
297
on the Washington state line, along this stream
which constantly enlarges and grows deeper a
lovely ride along a valley, the scenery often almost
Appalachian (save for the darkness of the trees),
the valley, in this pinery and this land of mighty
sweeps surprisingly intimate and narrow now,
THOMAS WOLFE
Fifty-seven
very sparsely settled, but breaking out now and
then into wealths and sweeps of green
299
fertility -, the green glacial stream constantly being
fed by others^ drawing all the water from the hills
into itself, being widened and thickened but
muddied by the confluence of the Bitter Root
River a strange sight now the left side of the
river glacial green, the right side muddy brown,
the country now most thickly forested with dark
and lordly trees
300
and back at Thompsons Falls the blistered
little town (the Montana towns have more of a
false-front, shack-like old West appearance than
any other I have seen and three little girls
dancing in front of the place where we eat and
the railway grade above and opposite, the N*P.
station and the blistered houses; so away along
the river again^ and pick up a train and follow
down it
298
and at last come upon the Pen D'Qreille
Lake (in Idaho in the panhandle) a rather big
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Fifty-eight
lake and a lovely one> swollen with rains and
increased by flood and along the lake and at
last to Kootenai and big farms,, well painted
buildings > warm alfalfa and green fields \ and so
pick up the river (the Clark Fork again} now
known as the Pen
296
jyOreille^ and further speculation on the route of
Lewis and of Clark, whose ghosts have haunted us
and this country since Three Forks and the upper
reaches of the Missouri and so along the river
until we cross it finally at Newport^ and the river
sweeping North toward Canada and the great
loop and its final return with the mighty
Columbia and we away for the last
294
40 or 50 miles into Spokane the country already
has a Pacific northwest look (I thought) the
dark trees., pines predominant, and some larches >
and all greener there I thought (the whole journey
today has been green and thick with forest, full
of water) and so into Spokane in good time
(at 6:4^ Pacific time)
292
and to the Davenport Hotel and a bottle of Scotch
and conversation j and C y M and a friend
THOMAS WOLFE
Fifty-nine
downstairs to dinner, and presently I go down
alone, and eat, and then upstairs and straighten
accounts with Conway (the whole trip costing me
less than $50.00) and then down to send
telegram to Chase bank and to Roundup place
jor beer,, and so home a little after one to bed.
290
Up at 7:45 and dressed packed downstairs to Friday
breakfast with C and M in coffeeshop of ^ y
Davenport and two of their friends and so
talking and at last away at 9:50 and west from
Spokane through country being more barren
all the time and sweeps of wheat fields and
desert and sage brush country so to the turn off
for Grand Coulee and mounting up and then
down through a dry bend and the great walls,
the basaltic walls
288
of the Grand Coulee down, down,, down and the
tremendous size and glacial greenness of the
Columbia river sweeping round the bend and the
basal ramparts of the terrific dam, and the crews
with red helmets working, so to the observation
point and fidgeted and listened to a talk on the
dimensions and purpose of the dam (so made to
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Sixty
hear another talk with a model the power flumes
and the giant pumps the
286
giant figures so down and across the bridge to
Mason City where the workers live and as much
like the rude West as one can find now and so
back and up again and by crews working^
gathered in red helmets and to the top of the
plateau^ and now following out the route of the
Dry Coulee the cavernous basaltic walls and the
ancient and enormous bed then
284
to the great basin of the Dry falls and then down
down down to the Coulees end and into the
dry sagebrush desert \ and across this desert that
the dam will reclaim^ and under burning skies ,
and corroded desert by it at great speed and a
pause for lunch and on again and towards the
hot blue haze of hills and up and up the canyon
of a constantly rising
282
plateau^ and the air cool now and the wind
beating so the car rocks and swerves like a toy
and down and down the gorge of the Yakimas
THOMAS WOLFE
Sixty-one
into the upper end of the Yakima valley at
Ellenton then into the Yakima gorge and the
dry hills again and up and around and along the
narrow gorge above the rushing river and at last
into Yakima where turning follow
280
back along the valley of the N aches and this too
burgeoning with fruit and the dry hills closing in
and into the Canyon Gorge again and the boiling
river flowing past and trees now, and climbing
climbing^ and the forest darkness now of the
Cascades pine, hemlock, spruce, some fir and
up the American river again into blue black
Cascades and forests night dark now, and mist
gathering
278
and clouds overhead and mists deepening and
thickening and blowing ice sheets of spume
through the Chinook Pass, and through the pass
and down and fog and mist more thick than
leaden fog, and down the road into the valley
past the rangers gate and up again and the milk
white of the Glacier creek and around and up
climbing hard now and all lost vaguely
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Sixty-two
274
in mist and around again and the great white
bowl masses of Ranier descried and mist blowing
in in floods of spume and up and up to timber
line and to the Sunrise Lodge and light playing
marvellously ) and blue cerulean^ struggling to
break through, and the glaciers level to the eye
and visible but the great mountain massif and
the peak obscured so over the snow still 4 to six
feet deep to our cabins then to dinner
272
at the Lodge a state of unfurnishment yet, and
the cold menace and terror of the mountain , the
gigantic fume flames of bright mist sweeping by
below us, above us, and around the mighty mass
then with the Ranger to the administration
office to see his collection of rocks, flowers, and
models, then to the cabin where Ranger built a
fire, and talking with M about the trip and very
tired) and presently to bed.
276
the vast grey green of the plains in the land-
mouldings a silken sheen
The blue blazing sky, the clouds cumulous,
crested, crowded against infinity, packed with
immeasurable light.
THOMAS WOLFE
Sixty-three
And the Rockies half shrouded into both light
and cloud the magic of the sky marvellous
The faery green of the glacial lakes
270
Lay late, until 8:20 and C came in to build Saturday
the fire \ and in both of us quiet greetings,, a ? ?
feeling that our trip was almost done,, and in me a
sense of the tremendous kindness and decency
and humanity of the man. He said: "Tom, look
at the mountain!" I got up and looked; it was
immense and terrific and near and cloud still
clung to the Great
268
Cloudmaker at the side like a great filament of
ectoplasm. C told me to sleep as long as I wanted,
and went out but presently I got up and the
room warm now and a brisk fire going in the
stove and a basin of water and dressed and
shaved, and walked over the packed and dirty
snow to the Lodge, where joined C and Caderon
at breakfast and Caderon
266
a nice boy, doing his level best for us in every-
thing, solicitous and good the long face and
teeth and loving agreeability of the Y.M.C.A.
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Sixty-four
and Sunday School boy he spoke frequently of
his Sunday School Class So M joined us y
refreshed from sleep, and the Ranger and another
Ranger \ and so out to take pictures and to look
at the Mountain and the sun out now, the
264
mist ocean still below us but the great mass of
Rainer clearly defined now^ save for the white
sky-backwall and the great mass faced up
squarely and all its perilous overwhelming
majesty y and with its tremendous shoulders ^ the
long terrific sweeps of its hackling ridges , we
stood trying to get its scale,, and this
262
impossible because there was nothing but
Mountain a universe of mountain, a continent
of mountain and nothing else but mountain
itself to compare mountain to. On this trip C y s
great love and knowledge of mountains has
revealed itself upon the summit of the pass at
the Continental divide in Glacier the way he
pointed out the little trees y the affection and
reverence with which he spoke of them the signs
by which the
THOMAS WOLFE
Sixty-five
260
trees of timber-line could be observed and noted
the Cloudiness at the Base etc the little
mountain flowers now the astounding revelation
that he had climbed Hood 225 times and Ranter
40 the quiet way he told of accidents and
rescues of the ice so hard that the axe bounds
off and "ruins a man for life" of the crevasse
of the man who fell and
258
drove his Alpine stock through him and of how
he got him out but didn't dare touch the Alpine
stock, and of how they got the man down off the
mountain and of how "he lived several hours.
He was conscious." and of another young man
that he had rescued two or three years before and
of how he could see him lying on a ledge in the
crevasse
256
and how his heart sank for he saw the broken
axe and Alpine stock and was "afraid it had
gone through him too" but how he was "all
right except that he was all cut up" and I got
the rope about him and we got him out and
sewed him up with a darning needle and ordinary
thread^ and he j s as good today as he ever was"
and C. laughed Made
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Sixty-six
254
farewells and away by 11:30 or so and down the
mountain Into the sea of cold fog and mist again
the great forests now dropping below the mists
the enormous forest darkness of the Douglas firs,
the towering trunks of the terrific trees, the dense
fervid darkness of the undergrowth then blasted
woods, denuded hills and acres of stumps and
snow, and then the lowlands a casual margin
land at
252
first of farms and woods and natural growth and
nondescript houses ', barns,, etc curiously ragged,
casual, and unkept looking after the irrigated
lands, then out and down into the valley, and
the level, farms, the fruit trees, and the towns, and
so Tacoma and so out along the broad four-
wayed Pacific Highway towards Olympia, and
the four
250
lanes already busy with their traffic of the Fourth
and the strings of market stores, hot dog stands,
filling stations, taverns, etc. so down into the
crowded streets of Olympia choked with great
tides of traffic for the Fourth, the sidewalks
crowded with throngs of people farmers, seamen,
THOMAS WOLFE
Sixty-seven
lumberjacks in town for the Fourth so parked
the car and to Cranes famous seafood Restaurant
248
for lunch, and ate a shrimp cocktail of the tiny
Puget shrimps, and then a delicious fan roast
of the small but succulent Puget Sound oysters,
the whole cooked in with crab meat in a delicious
pungent sauce and spread on toast so eaten,
most delicious and so our farewells new
addresses, final instructions the casuallike
wordiness of men with some sadness in their
246
heart avoiding farewells and C, still avoiding it
(how like my brother!} is going to run me up to
see the Capitol and we see it, and still avoiding
it, back to see the old State Capitol, and we see
it and they give me the map and old Tour Book
we have worn black, and write their names in
it and at last, farewell and they are gone, and
244
a curiously hollow feeling in me as I stand there
in the streets of Olympia and watch the white
Ford flash away
So stay an hour or so and watch the town, and
miss one bus and catch another at 4:35^ and to
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Sfxty-ei&bt
Seattle^ the great bus keeping to the inner line
at good speedy the magnificent four-ply highway
filled with the flashing traffic of
242
the holiday, the country undulant in long sweeps
between the dark and ragged lines of Douglas fir
the temporary congestion of Tacoma, and the
bus halt there then on our way again on the
great highway and -presently the outskirts of
Seattle^ scattered houses ^ open country , the Arms
of Puget Sound blue-black, misty and exciting
under the grey
240
skies y and then the great train yards 3 flying field \
viaducts the settlements upon the hills , then the
Railway stations and the full town y the downtown
section, "Big House 9 ', the crowded streets,, the
long pull up the slope of Second Avenue , the
bus station^ a taxi y the hotel y telegrams there
from Nowell and Ed that
238
(End of the Trip)
make me very happy , money from the bank, a
bottle of Scotch liquor y a midnight meal at Rippes
and, the trip over now y to bed!
THOMAS WOLFE
Sixty-nine
150
Oregon
California
Arizona
Utah
Idaho
Wyoming
Montana
Washington
4
Square Mileages
96)690
83,990
84,000
146,997
69J27
750,4^
100,000 (?}
(about 30% of
entire national area)
And the notes, the impressions
The little slaughtered wild things in the road
in Oregon, in California, across the desert, going
up through Utah, in Idaho, Wyoming, and
Montana the little crushed carcasses of the
gophers, chipmunks, jackrabbits, birds in the
hot bright western light the black crows picking
at some furry mangled little carcass on the hot
road rises and flaps slowly tauntingly away as
the car approaches
Spokane^
Friday
June 31
In that lively rolling of the White Ford through
Montana, in full afternoon-heat and the bright-
ness of the sun of the transcontinental freight of
A WESTERN JOURNAL
Seventy
the N.P. blasting towards us up the grade, the
interminable freight cars climbing past and
suddenly the tops of the great train lined with
clusters of hoboes a hundred of them some
sprawled out, sitting, others erect, some stretched
out on their backs
8
lazily inviting the luminous American weather,
and the mountain ranges all around, the glacial
green of the Clark's Fork just beyond and
the 'bos roll past across America silently regard-
ing us the pity, terror, strangeness, and
magnificence of it alL
Editorial Notes
These few notes are set here rather than as footnotes to avoid
interrupting the flow of Wolfe's writing. Italic type and the
irregular length of line are used in the hope that they may
suggest, at least a little, his quick-running script.
The boldface arabic figures are facsimiles of the numbers on
the pages of the ledger in which he wrote the ^Journal*
The page numbers for this printing are spelled out at the top
of the page, under the running head.
3 Bent should, of course, be Bend, as it is below on the same
page.
8* The printing of page 8 interrupts page 7, because to have
it follow 7, as 8 would normally, would disturb the flow of
Wolfe's sentence from 7 to 9.
19* a brief halt at . The omission is Wolfe's.
29* the turn at . The omission is Wolfe's; probably
Merced,
46. Set to follow 47 so as not to break the flow of thought from
45 to 47 (probably the order of Wolfe's writing it, anyway).
58 Another afterthought, apparently, and another departure
from right-hand sequence.
71* Big Gorgooby^ it is very evident, is Wolfe's name for the
Grand Canyon.
73. rudeeleven* Of this word we are not absolutely certain.
77. unvitaL Another uncertain word.
155. lemon hay. The word lemon is by no means certain.
218* the big of grain elevators. This space in the ledger is
filled with Wolfe's rough line drawing representing a grain
elevator. See reproduction of page 218.
226* The question mark is Wolfe's; probably Jenny Lake.
238* Here Wolfe drew a line. See note 298.
71
295* junction at ? The question mark is Wolfe's. The word
probably is Ravalli, which is the town at junction of Alt.
10 and 93.
295* Newport (?) This question mark, also, is Wolfe's. The
word probably is Idaho. Newport is on the Idaho- Wash-
ington line and Alt. Route 10 passes through the pan-
handle of Idaho from Montana to Washington. (It is
approximately 200 miles from Poison to Newport.)
300* back at Thompson's Falls. Here Wolfe goes back in re-
collection to the trip he had made over Alt. 10 before he
entered the Idaho panhandle.
298* Here Wolfe starts the business of writing backwards in
the notebook, of writing on the left-hand pages in un-
broken sequence until he reaches p. 238, where he writes
below the line drawn (see note 238) the end of his account
of the trip.
238. (End of the Trip) See p. vii, viii of this book for explana-
tion of pages 150, 4, 6, 8 which follow.
The lettering on the end papers* map is the work of Theodore
Bowman.
72
Printed in U.S.A. by
The Eddy Press Corporation for
The University of Pittsburgh Press
124095
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