Forward by David Brower Claude Fiddler's photographs take me back sixty-two years to my first backpack trip in the High Sierra, from the Palisades to Yosemite in 1933. I was only twenty-one, but those seven weeks of wandering along the Sierra crest with George Rockwood stay with me still; time has not dimmed the delights of that journey. Half a century later George recalled it as the high point of his life. Memories often come in pairs. If you remember one thing, its companion pops up too; the lyrics bring back the tune. It is amazing what pops back into my mind's gallery when I turn Claude's pages. I can see and almost taste exactly what George and I ate, still remember the songs we sang, if not our conversations, when a picture reminds me of a lake we paused by or the garden we camped in. As Li Po wrote so long age, "We never grow tired of each other, the mountain and I." Each page evokes a memorable Sierra event. One particular summit view brings back the afternoon on the Thumb when I put all my trust into a handhold that didn't deserve it, and I narrowly escaped a terminal fall that would have suggested that the Sierra had grown tired of me. The air was clearer in those days. From Sierra summits we could almost always see the Coast Range. Today we see the air more often than we see through it. Back in the thirties we could camp anywhere, drink from any of the high streams, delight in the warmth offered by plentiful firewood and the friendships we shared. Only the friendships remain. What other memories do these photographs bring back? High camps in the company of whitebark pines, nearby streams where we drank, sleeping bag sites with natural hip holes in the duff, pine-branch silhouettes to screen us from too much moonlight or too many stars, or to support a scanty tarp if it rained (of course, it never rains at night in the Sierra). Rugged walls and summit profiles that challenges us to go for the top or for the knapsack passes to escape the drudgery of the trails. Some of these memories may not be universally shared. But Claude resuscitates one known to almost all of us: a sky that brings natural light to a world that wildness has made perfect, especially the rare light of early morning, or the last light and alpenglow no one could cease to marvel at. These photographs, besides reminding us of what we never intended to forget, also testify to the work of hosts of people who have helped keep these places what they are. Many of them were the wilderness explorers of the Sierra Club, joined by countless individuals who fought to preserve the range from those who would trash it and those who still need to be shown better things to do. They can keep themselves busy by seizing the opportunity to conserve, preserve, and restore the only planet we are ever likely to live on, the only planet ever to know the gentle wilderness of the Sierra Nevada. In his skillful matching of text to image, Steve Roper has created a mood that evokes not only the uniqueness of the high country, but also they affection our predecessors had for it. Today we cannot match their enthusiasm, because there are no longer blank places on the map, or new routes along streams or up over an explored passes and the virgin vistas they revealed. Too bad. But if we listen carefully, we can almost hear one of them call out to another. "Gad! Wait till you see this!" Such surprises need not be a thing of the past. Just pretend you're the first person to cross the pass. The experience will almost be the same, so long as we let wild ecosytems manage themselves. They've had a lot of practice. Let them remain an essential part of what Wallace Stegner called "the geography of hope." There the sentient beings of the future can explore, enjoy, and protect the music of mountain streams, the stimulus of a challenging mountain wall or high point, and the magic that happens when the last rays of sun set a distant summit afire. Claude Fiddler continues the tradition begun by Joseph N. LeConte and carried on, each in his own way, by Ansel Adams, Cedric Wright, Philip Hyde, and Richard Kauffman. We'll be grateful to all of them for a long time. Thank you, Claude and Steve, for the memories.