Looking Southward From The South End Of Salt Lake, The Two Northmost
Peaks Of The Oquirrh Range Are Seen Swelling
Calmly into the cool sky
without any marked character, excepting only their snow crowns, and a
few weedy-looking patches
Of spruce and fir, the simplicity of their
slopes preventing their real loftiness from being appreciated. Gray,
sagey plains circle around their bases, and up to a height of a
thousand feet or more their sides are tinged with purple, which I
afterwards found is produced by a close growth of dwarf oak just
coming into leaf. Higher you may detect faint tintings of green on a
gray ground, from young grasses and sedges; then come the dark pine
woods filling glacial hollows, and over all the smooth crown of snow.
While standing at their feet, the other day, shortly after my
memorable excursion among the salt waves of the lake, I said: "Now I
shall have another baptism. I will bathe in the high sky, among cool
wind-waves from the snow." From the more southerly of the two peaks a
long ridge comes down, bent like a bow, one end in the hot plains, the
other in the snow of the summit. After carefully scanning the jagged
towers and battlements with which it is roughened, I determined to
make it my way, though it presented but a feeble advertisement of its
floral wealth. This apparent barrenness, however, made no great
objection just then, for I was scarce hoping for flowers, old or new,
or even for fine scenery. I wanted in particular to learn what the
Oquirrh rocks were made of, what trees composed the curious patches of
forest; and, perhaps more than all, I was animated by a mountaineer's
eagerness to get my feet into the snow once more, and my head into the
clear sky, after lying dormant all winter at the level of the sea.
But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. I
had not gone more than a mile from Lake Point ere I found the way
profusely decked with flowers, mostly compositae and purple
leguminosae, a hundred corollas or more to the square yard, with a
corresponding abundance of winged blossoms above them, moths and
butterflies, the leguminosae of the insect kingdom. This floweriness
is maintained with delightful variety all the way up through rocks and
bushes to the snow - violets, lilies, gilias, oenotheras, wallflowers,
ivesias, saxifrages, smilax, and miles of blooming bushes, chiefly
azalea, honeysuckle, brier rose, buckthorn, and eriogonum, all meeting
and blending in divine accord.
Two liliaceous plants in particular, Erythronium grandiflorum and
Fritillaria pudica, are marvelously beautiful and abundant. Never
before, in all my walks, have I met so glorious a throng of these fine
showy liliaceous plants. The whole mountainside was aglow with them,
from a height of fifty-five hundred feet to the very edge of the snow.
Although remarkably fragile, both in form and in substance, they are
endowed with plenty of deep-seated vitality, enabling them to grow in
all kinds of places - down in leafy glens, in the lee of wind-beaten
ledges, and beneath the brushy tangles of azalea, and oak, and prickly
roses - everywhere forming the crowning glory of the flowers.
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