And Then There Is The Loss Of
Ground-Inhabiting Birds That Must Fail From The Mesa When Few Herbs
Ripen Seed.
Out West, the west of the mesas and the unpatented hills,
there is more sky than any place in the world.
It does not sit
flatly on the rim of earth, but begins somewhere out in the space
in which the earth is poised, hollows more, and is full of clean
winey winds. There are some odors, too, that get into the blood.
There is the spring smell of sage that is the warning that sap is
beginning to work in a soil that looks to have none of the juices
of life in it; it is the sort of smell that sets one thinking what
a long furrow the plough would turn up here, the sort of smell that
is the beginning of new leafage, is best at the plant's best, and
leaves a pungent trail where wild cattle crop. There is the smell
of sage at sundown, burning sage from campoodies and sheep camps,
that travels on the thin blue wraiths of smoke; the kind of smell
that gets into the hair and garments, is not much liked except upon
long acquaintance, and every Paiute and shepherd smells of it
indubitably. There is the palpable smell of the bitter dust that
comes up from the alkali flats at the end of the dry seasons, and
the smell of rain from the wide-mouthed canons. And last the smell
of the salt grass country, which is the beginning of other things
that are the end of the mesa trail.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 78 of 136
Words from 20402 to 20672
of 35837
