Post 24815
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Among the hundreds of these happy resting-grounds in which I have camped, one in the San Juan Mountains has left me the most memories. I came there one evening during a severe gale. The wind roared and thundered as impressively as breakers on a rock-bound shore. By midnight the storm ceased, and the tall trees stood as quietly as if content to rest after their vigorous exercise in the friendly wrestling-match with the wind. The spruces had become towering folded flags of fluffy black. After the gale the sky was luminous with crowding stars. I lingered in the centre of the opening to watch them. The heavens appeared to be made of many star-filled skies, one behind the other. The farthest one was very remote, while the closest seemed strangely near me, just above the tops of the trees.
Many times I have come out of the subdued light of the pathless forest to enjoy these sunny openings. Often I have stood within them watching the butterflies circling in the sun or a deer and her fawns feeding quietly across, and, as I looked, I have listened to the scolding of the squirrel and the mellow ringing of the woodpecker far away in the forest. Here I have watched the coming storm, have enjoyed its presence, and in its breaking have seen the brilliant bow rest its foundations in front of the trees just across the meadow. Sometimes the moon showed its soft bow in the edge of the advancing or the breaking storm.
One evening, before the moon looked into this fairy garden, I watched a dance of crowding fireflies. They were as thick as snowflakes, but all vanished when the moonlight turned the park into fairyland. Rare shadow etchings the tall, short-armed spruces made, as they lay in light along the eastern border of this moon-filled park. A blue tower of shadow stretched from a lone spruce in the open to the forest wall beyond. As the moon rose higher, one of the dead trees in the edge of the forest appeared to rise out of the darkness and stand to watch or to serve. Then another rose, and presently two appeared side by side and edged into the light. They might have been conversing. As the night advanced, the shadow of the spruces shortened as their shadow points moved round to the north. As the moon sank behind a mountain, the dead trees settled back into the darkness, and, just before light left the park, the two broken trees moved behind a shadow and vanished. They were scarcely out of sight when the weird cries of a fox sounded from the farther edge of the woods.