SCENIC highway built at 7000-foot elevation along the jagged crest of the world's noblest crater.
Thirty-four miles of amazing beauty, three hours of vivid and changeful panorama. One vast colorful canvas involving a complete swing of the horizon; a heaping measure of high-flung Cascades, distant hazy valleys, friendly lakes, crystal streams leaping over waterfalls into placid shaded brooks,
endless avenues of mossed evergreens, glens carpeted with gardens of wild flowers
brilliant against the cool solemnity of the forest. And, to almost overflow the
cup, a hundred views of the magic blue lake and its huge shattered frame.
But how describe the enchantment of the Drive? As well weigh the
substance of the rainbow, or gauge the lilting spirit of a May dawn. For
this Rim Road is not a joy ride, but a pilgrimage for the devotees of
Nature. It is a spiritual experience-nothing less. For, holding up so
clear-cut a story of volcanic catastrophe, it tells an enthralling chapter from the
colossal Book of Creation.
No, one can not describe it. At best he can
but-ghoulishly-dissect it. And pay a tribute to the engineering genius that, while
overcoming technical difficulties, contrived to alternate boundless panoramas with
exquisite closeups of the tremendous caldera containing its Olympian sapphire.
On such a mountain top the gods must have dwelt through all the
ages before man crept up into the pageant; along such an eerier
cloud-kissed highway they must have trooped in shadowy columns, their ecstatic voices
carrying down the great forested slopes in sibilant whispers mistaken by
men as wind among the treetops.
Yet we everydays folks strive to reduce such sheer magic to
terms of gasoline mileage, gear ratios, grades. It can not be done. Approach the
experience in leisurely and appreciative mood, and great will be your
reward. For you will fix a gorgeous memory that neither time nor the fret of
living shall efface.
C. G. THOMSON,
Supt. Crater Lake National Park.
