But With The Bare, Hard Life, And The Bare, Bleak
Mountains Around, Who Could Find Fault With Even A Hothouse
Atmosphere, if it can nourish such a flower of Paradise as sacred
human love?
The mercury is eleven degrees below
Zero, and I have to keep my
ink on the stove to prevent it from freezing. The cold is
intense - a clear, brilliant, stimulating cold, so dry that even
in my threadbare flannel riding dress I do not suffer from it. I
must now take up my narrative of the nothings which have all the
interest of SOMETHINGS to me. We all got up before daybreak on
Tuesday, and breakfasted at seven. I have not seen the dawn for
some time, with its amber fires deepening into red, and the snow
peaks flushing one by one, and it seemed a new miracle. It was a
west wind, and we all thought it promised well. I took only two
pounds of luggage, some raisins, the mailbag, and an additional
blanket under my saddle. I had not been up from the park at
sunrise before, and it was quite glorious, the purple depths of
M'Ginn's Gulch, from which at a height of 9,000 feet you look
down on the sunlit park 1,500 feet below, lying in a red haze,
with its pearly needle-shaped peaks, framed by mountain sides
dark with pines - my glorious, solitary, unique mountain home!
The purple sun rose in front. Had I known what made it purple I
should certainly have gone no farther.
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