Thomas Doty – Storyteller

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On the Way to Crater Lake in 1903

Here's a photo of Joaquin Miller writing a poem in camp during the 1903 William Steel Excursion to Crater Lake. Miller was 65 years old when Sunset Magazine hired him to report on his trip. His essay The Sea of Silence was published in the September, 1904 issue. Here's an excerpt....

"It is great, great, but it takes you days to see how great. It lies two thousand feet under your feet, and as it reflects its walls so perfectly that you cannot tell the wall from the reflection in the intensely blue water, you have a continuous and unbroken circular wall of twenty-four miles to contemplate at a glance, all of which lies two thousand feet, and seems to lie four thousand feet, below! Yet so bright, yet so intensely blue is the lake that it seems at times, from some points of view, to lift right in your face."

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