They Look In Fullest
Leaf, Except For Color, Most Like The Huddled Huts Of The
Campoodie, And The Largest Of Them Might Be A Man's Length In
Diameter.
In their season, which is after the gilias are at
their best, and before the larkspurs are ripe for
Pollen gathering,
every terminal whorl of the lupin sends up its blossom stalk, not
holding any constant blue, but paling and purpling to guide the
friendly bee to virginal honey sips, or away from the perfected and
depleted flower. The length of the blossom stalk conforms to the
rounded contour of the plant, and of these there will be a million
moving indescribably in the airy current that flows down the swale
of the wash.
There is always a little wind on the mesa, a sliding current
of cooler air going down the face of the mountain of its own
momentum, but not to disturb the silence of great space. Passing
the wide mouths of canons, one gets the effect of whatever is doing
in them, openly or behind a screen of cloud,--thunder of falls,
wind in the pine leaves, or rush and roar of rain. The rumor of
tumult grows and dies in passing, as from open doors gaping on a
village street, but does not impinge on the effect of solitariness.
In quiet weather mesa days have no parallel for stillness, but the
night silence breaks into certain mellow or poignant notes. Late
afternoons the burrowing owls may be seen blinking at the doors of
their hummocks with perhaps four or five elfish nestlings arow, and
by twilight begin a soft whoo-oo-ing, rounder, sweeter, more
incessant in mating time.
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