There Were
Fair Lakes Mirroring The Dark Pine Woods, Canyons Dark And
Blue-Black With Unbroken Expanses Of Pines, Snow-
Slashed
pinnacles, wintry heights frowning upon lovely parks, watered and
wooded, lying in the lap of summer; North Park floating
Off into
the blue distance, Middle Park closed till another season, the
sunny slopes of Estes Park, and winding down among the mountains
the snowy ridge of the Divide, whose bright waters seek both the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There, far below, links of diamonds
showed where the Grand River takes its rise to seek the
mysterious Colorado, with its still unsolved enigma, and lose
itself in the waters of the Pacific; and nearer the snow-born
Thompson bursts forth from the ice to begin its journey to the
Gulf of Mexico. Nature, rioting in her grandest mood, exclaimed
with voices of grandeur, solitude, sublimity, beauty, and
infinity, "Lord, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or
the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" Never-to-be-forgotten
glories they were, burnt in upon my memory by six succeeding
hours of terror.
You know I have no head and no ankles, and never ought to dream
of mountaineering; and had I known that the ascent was a real
mountaineering feat I should not have felt the slightest ambition
to perform it. As it is, I am only humiliated by my success, for
"Jim" dragged me up, like a bale of goods, by sheer force of
muscle. At the "Notch" the real business of the ascent began.
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