It is unsurveyed,
"no man's land," and mine by right of love, appropriation, and
appreciation; by the seizure of
Its peerless sunrises and
sunsets, its glorious afterglow, its blazing noons, its
hurricanes sharp and furious, its wild auroras, its glories of
mountain and forest, of canyon, lake, and river, and the
stereotyping them all in my memory. Mine, too, in a better than
the sportsman's sense, are its majestic wapiti, which play and
fight under the pines in the early morning, as securely as fallow
deer under our English oaks; its graceful "black-tails," swift of
foot; its superb bighorns, whose noble leader is to be seen now
and then with his classic head against the blue sky on the top of
a colossal rock; its sneaking mountain lion with his hideous
nocturnal caterwaulings, the great "grizzly," the beautiful
skunk, the wary beaver, who is always making lakes, damming and
turning streams, cutting down young cotton-woods, and setting an
example of thrift and industry; the wolf, greedy and cowardly;
the coyote and the lynx, and all the lesser fry of mink, marten,
cat, hare, fox, squirrel, and chipmunk, as well as things that
fly, from the eagle down to the crested blue-jay. May their
number never be less, in spite of the hunter who kills for food
and gain, and the sportsman who kills and marauds for
pastime!
But still I have not answered the natural question,[15] "What is
Estes Park?" Among the striking peculiarities of these mountains
are hundreds of high-lying valleys, large and small, at heights
varying from 6,000 to 11,000 feet.
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