By the time the ship reached Chicago, Clyde had “earned the ill-will of the captain, [and] had the good fortune to get discharged.” He disembarked and stayed with a former Geneva classmate while exploring the Second City and sitting in on lectures at the University of Chicago. Clyde enjoyed auditing the classes but found the school itself a dull place in comparison with his alma mater. “One hundred Geneva students make as much stir as 3500 Chicago ones. There seems to be little college spirit, class spirit or any spirit at all except that of study. A very high standard of scholarship prevails, yet there is nothing else to do.” Clyde signed off his “tedious remarks” with the sobriquet “Cyclops,” a nickname he was apparently well known by at Geneva. In Greek mythology Cyclops was the one-eyed monster of tremendous strength who unleashed unmitigated terror against its enemies. Exactly what earned him this colorful title is not known. However, it could be inferred that the name applied to any number of possible traits, including his strength and stamina, single-minded focus, and hot temper.7
Following his stint as a merchant seaman, Clyde became a schoolteacher for the next eighteen years. His academic background prepared him well, and he no doubt chose it in part for the freedom it would afford him to spend time in the mountains during the summer months. Clyde worked his way across the United States as a high school teacher in North Dakota, Utah, and Florence, Arizona, where he arrived to teach school with a Colt handgun at his side. Clyde admitted that the locals were probably taken aback by a schoolteacher wearing a firearm. Clyde was merely relishing his arrival in the American West, playing the role of the lone stranger riding into town, complete with shooting irons.8 He spent the summer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (John Muir’s alma mater), and another summer working on a cattle ranch in Utah.9
A picture postcard written by Clyde to his mother on June 30, 1910, is an early expression of his proclivity for the mountains. The card was postmarked at Camp Curry, in Yosemite Valley. He wrote: “Dear Mother—I have come up to the Yosemite to spend some time. I have seen the Wawona Big Trees and made a wonderful knapsack trip into the High Sierras in which I climbed the highest mountains this region. Sincerely, N. Clyde.”10 Later, Norman wrote to his mother from Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park: “Dear Mother—Arrived here several days ago and shall leave in several more. This is a wonderful place for trees…thousands of great sequoias. Shall be going to McLoud [sic] a town in the northern part of the state near Mt. Shasta. Your son, N. Clyde.”11 His natural attraction to the mountains, a strong interest in the Big Trees, and a matter-of-fact statement that he “climbed the highest mountains in the region” all point to his future as a mountaineer.
Clyde seemed to be seeking out the wild places that Muir had described many years earlier. His profession enabled him to spend summers rambling along the great backbone of the Golden State, from the Tehachapis to Mt. Shasta. Clyde taught school in McCloud and in nearby Weaverville, enabling him to hike, climb, explore, and restore himself in wild places.12
The desire for additional schooling pulled Clyde back to civilization, at least temporarily. Following his stint in Northern California he relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he taught at Lowell High School and attended U.C. Berkeley from 1911 to 1913.13 He later returned to Berkeley for the 1923-24 school year to pursue postgraduate studies in English. Following several years of study he lacked only one course and a thesis for completing his master’s degree. He refused to participate in a “Dramas of the Romance Languages” course, insisting that Italian plays should be read in Italian, French dramas in French, neither one in English; and he could not see the sense in writing a thesis that, once it was filed on the library shelf, may never be read or referred to again.14 He left the university without completing the degree, but then, perhaps his reason for attending graduate school in the first place was not for the degree but for the pleasure it gave him to be back in school. He could read in six different languages, and his interests were diverse. During his career as a teacher and principal he taught history, science, and Latin, and so his main motivation for attending school may have been for the sheer pleasure and enjoyment, without thought of or concern for upward mobility in his teaching career.15
Love and Loss
One of Clyde’s most private and painful experiences in his life was his brief marriage. On June 15, 1915, he was wed to Winifred May Bolster, a tall, slender, attractive woman with thick dark hair. She was born in New York on May 1, 1890, to William and Margaret V. Bolster. The family had moved to California when Winifred was twelve years old, settling in Pasadena.
Very little is known of Norman and Winnie’s acquaintance, courtship, and marriage. It is believed that they met while they were students, Norman at U.C. Berkeley and Winnie in nursing school in Oakland. They married in Pasadena, at the Lincoln Avenue Methodist Church. Winnie was attended to by her sister, Roberta “Byrd” Austin; her mother was a witness. Following the nuptials the couple honeymooned in Santa Barbara before returning to Oakland, where they took up residence. Norman was teaching and Winnie was working as a nurse in a tuberculosis hospital. It was there that she herself caught the dreaded disease, commonly known as “consumption.”
The couple relocated to Pasadena, near Winnie’s family, and she was placed in the La Vina Sanitarium of Altadena. She suffered for four years and died at age twenty-eight on Valentine’s Day, 1919. She was buried at Mountain View Cemetery three days later.16 According to Winifred’s nephew Walter Bolster, Winifred’s mother and sister blamed Norman for Winnie’s sickness; perhaps it was Winifred’s desire to have a career, maybe it was the young couple’s tenuous financial status that required a double income. Whatever the reason, it is likely that Winifred had been exposed to TB while working as a nurse, perhaps even prior to their courtship and marriage. The bitterness and vituperations caused a permanent rift between the Clyde and Bolster clans. Prior to the tragic turn of events, Norman and his in-laws had gotten along well; they enjoyed family get-togethers and he even took his brother-in-law on hikes in the nearby mountains. Following Winifred’s death, Norman left Pasadena and never contacted any Bolster family member again.17
Norman must have been devastated. He would rarely speak of his wife, or of the fact that he had been married, to anyone, not even his closest friends. One of the few people to have elicited this information from Clyde was Walt Wheelock, editor and publisher of Close Ups of the High Sierra. While Wheelock was conducting research for Close Ups he visited Clyde several times. As a retired Glendale Police officer who had worked on the force for twenty-seven years, Wheelock was successful in extracting information from his subject, even on topics as sensitive as his all-too-brief marriage. This bit of information came as a shock to many people, who always assumed that Clyde was simply a bachelor who jealously guarded his freedom. There is also that reserved—some might say suppressed—quality characteristic of both his time and upbringing, embodied in the prevailing attitude and outlook that pain and hardship is a part of one’s life. Outward displays of grief or dismay were strictly off-limits, especially to men. The bottling up of these intense feelings of loss and privation manifested themselves in other, more sinister and sometimes destructive ways. His marriage had a tremendous impact on his life, and would shape his future relationships, especially with women.
CHAPTER 2
The Pack that Walked like a Man: Early Climbs, 1910–1924
Norman Clyde came west to explore and experience wilderness. His chosen career of teaching enabled him to spend his summers scrambling on the peaks and rambling among the heights. His postcard to his mother in 1910 indicated that he had come to California, and the Sierra Nevada, to “climb the highest mountains in this region.” Although no other record exists regarding the specific peaks that he climbed, that may be attributable to the one of several possible reasons: perhaps he simply did