From It On This Side
Rise, Snow-Born, The Bright St. Vrain, And The Big And Little
Thompson.
By sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is
the one object which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and
grizzly, unfailingly arrests the eyes.
From it come all
storms of snow and wind, and the forked lightnings play round its
head like a glory. It is one of the noblest of mountains, but in
one's imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. It
becomes invested with a personality. In its caverns and abysses
one comes to fancy that it generates and chains the strong winds,
to let them loose in its fury. The thunder becomes its voice,
and the lightnings do it homage. Other summits blush under the
morning kiss of the sun, and turn pale the next moment; but it
detains the first sunlight and holds it round its head for an
hour at least, till it pleases to change from rosy red to deep
blue; and the sunset, as if spell-bound, lingers latest on its
crest. The soft winds which hardly rustle the pine needles down
here are raging rudely up there round its motionless summit. The
mark of fire is upon it; and though it has passed into a grim
repose, it tells of fire and upheaval as truly, though not as
eloquently, as the living volcanoes of Hawaii. Here under its
shadow one learns how naturally nature worship, and the
propitiation of the forces of nature, arose in minds which had no
better light.
Long's Peak, "the American Matterhorn," as some call it, was
ascended five years ago for the first time.
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