Part 6 (1/2)
One evening I climbed a high ridge that stood about half a mile in front of a heavily forested peninsula which the fire-front would reach in a few hours. The fire was advancing across the valley with a front of about two miles. On arriving at the top of the ridge, I came up behind a grizzly bear seated on his haunches like a dog, intently watching the fire below. On discovering me he took a second look before concentrating his mind on a speedy retreat. Along the ridge about a quarter of a mile distant, a number of mountain sheep could be seen through the falling ashes, with heads toward the fire, but whether they were excited or simply curious could not be determined.
The forested peninsula which extended from between two forested canons had a number of meadow openings on the slopes closest to me. Around these were many brilliant fiery displays. Overheated trees in or across these openings often became enveloped in robes of invisible gas far in advance of the flames. This gas flashed and flared up before the tree blazed, and occasionally it convoyed the flames across openings one hundred feet or so above the earth. Heated isolated trees usually went with a gus.h.i.+ng flash. At other places this flaming sometimes lasted several seconds, and, when seen through steamy curtains or clouds of smoke, appeared like geysers of red fire.
At times there were vast scrolls and whirling spirals of sparks above and around the torrential, upstreaming flames of the fire-front.
Millions of these sparks were sometimes formed by high outflowing air streams into splendid and far-reaching milky ways. In moments of general calm the sky was deeply filled with myriads of excited sparks, which gradually quieted, then floated beautifully, peacefully up to vanish in the night.
Meantime the fire-front was pushed by wind-currents and led by ridges.
By the time the fire-line had advanced to the steeper slopes it was one vast U about three miles long. Its closed end was around the peninsula toward me. The fire-front rushed upward through the dense forest of the peninsula steeps more swiftly than the wildest avalanche could have plunged down. The flames swept across three-hundred-foot gra.s.sy openings as easily as breakers roll in across a beach. Up the final two thousand feet there were magnificent outbursts and sheets of flame with accompanying gale and stormy-ocean roars. Terrific were the rushes of whirled smoke-and-flame clouds of brown, ashen green, and sooty black. There were lurid and volcanic effects in molten red and black, while tattered yellow flames rushed, rolled, and tumbled everywhere.
An uprus.h.i.+ng, explosive burst of flames from all sides wrapped and united on the summit. For a minute a storm of smoke and flame filled the heavens with riot. The wild, irresistible, cyclonic rush of fiery wind carried scores of tree-limbs and many blazing treetops hundreds of feet above the summit. Fire and sparks were hurled explosively outward, and a number of blazing treetops rushed off in gale-currents.
One of these blazing tops dropped, a destructive torch, in a forest more than a mile distant from the summit!
Mountain Lakes
Mountain Lakes
High up in the Rocky Mountains are lakes which s.h.i.+ne as brightly as dewdrops in a garden. These mountains are a vast hanging garden in which flowers and waterfalls, forests and lakes, slopes and terraces, group and mingle in lovely grandeur. Hundreds of these lakes and tarns rest in this broken topography. Though most of them are small, they vary in size from one acre to two thousand acres. Scores of these lakes have not been named. They form a harmonious part of the architecture of the mountains. Their basins were patiently fas.h.i.+oned by the Ice King. Of the thousand or more lakes in the Colorado mountains only a few are not glacial. The overwhelming majority rest in basins that were gouged and worn in solid rock by glaciers. John Muir says that Nature used the delicate snowflake for a tool with which to fas.h.i.+on lake-basins and to sculpture the mountains. He also says: ”Every lake in the Sierra is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely remodeled and scoured out by this mighty agent, but in the first place were eroded from the solid.” The Rocky Mountain lakes are set deep in canons, mounted on terraces, and strung like uncut gems along alpine streams. The boulders in many of their basins are as clean and new as though just left by the constructive ice.
These lakes are scattered through the high mountains of Colorado, the greater number lying between the alt.i.tudes of ten thousand and twelve thousand feet. Few were formed above the alt.i.tude of twelve thousand, and most of those below ten thousand now are great flowerpots and hold a flower-illumined meadow or a grove. Timber-line divides this lake-belt into two nearly equal parts. Many are small tarns with rocky and utterly wild surroundings. Circular, elliptical, and long, narrow forms predominate. Some lie upon a narrow terrace along the base of a precipice. Many are great circular wells at the bottom of a fall; others are long and narrow, filling canons from wall to wall.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CRYSTAL LAKE, A TYPICAL GLACIER LAKE]
Glaciers the world over have been the chief makers of lake-basins, large and small. These basins were formed in darkness, and hundreds and even thousands of years may have been required for the ice to carve and set the gems whose presence now adds so much to the light and beauty of the rugged mountain-ranges. The ponderous glaciers or ice rivers in descending from the mountain-summits came down steep slopes or precipitous walls and bore irresistibly against the bottom.
The vast weight of these embankments of ice moving almost end-on, mixed with boulders, tore and wore excavations into the solid rock at the bottom of each high, steep descent.
Nature's ways are interestingly complicated. Both the number and the location of many of these glacier lakes are due in part to the prevailing direction of the wind during the last glacial epoch. This is especially true of those in the Snowy Range of the Rocky Mountains, which fronts the Great Plains. The majority of the lakes in this range are situated on its eastern slope. Westerly winds undoubtedly prevailed on these mountains during the depositing of the snows which formed and maintained the glaciers that excavated these lake-basins.
As a result, much of the snow which fell on the summit and its westerly slope was swept across and deposited on the eastern slope, thus producing on the eastern side deeper ice, more glaciers, and more appreciable erosion from the glaciers. The eastern summit of this range is precipitous and is deeply cut by numerous ice-worn cirques which extend at right angles to the trend of this range. These cirques frequently lie close together, separated by a thin precipitous wall, or ridge. On the westerly side of the range the upper slopes descend into the lowlands through slopes and ridges rounded and but little broken. Over these it is possible to ride a horse to the summit, while foot travel and careful climbing over precipitous rocky walls is in most places required to gain the summit from the east.
Westerly winds still blow strongly, sometimes for weeks, and the present scanty snowfall is largely swept from the western slopes and deposited on the eastern side. So far as I know, all the remaining glaciers in the front ranges are on the eastern slope. The Arapahoe, Sprague, Hallett, and Andrews Glaciers and the one on Long's Peak are on the eastern slope. They are but the stubs or remnants of large glaciers, and their presence is due in part to the deep, cool cirques cut out by the former ice-flows, and in part to the snows swept to them by prevailing westerly winds.
Though these lakes vary in shape and size, and though each is set in a different topography, many have a number of like features and are surrounded with somewhat similar verdure. A typical lake is elliptical and about one fifth of a mile long; its alt.i.tude about ten thousand feet; its waters clear and cold. A few huge rock-points or boulders thrust through its surface near the outlet. A part of its circling sh.o.r.e is of clean granite whose lines proclaim the former presence of the Ice King. Extending from one sh.o.r.e is a dense, dark forest. One stretch of low-lying sh.o.r.e is parklike and gra.s.sy, flower-crowded, and dotted here and there with a plume of spruce or fir. By the outlet is a filled-in portion of the lake covered with sedge and willow.
In summer, magpies, woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, nuthatches, and chickadees live in the bordering woods. In the willows the white-crowned sparrow builds.
By the outlet or in the cascades above or below is the ever-cheerful water-ouzel. The solitaire nesting near often flies across the lake, filling the air with eager and melodious song. Along the sh.o.r.e, gentians, columbines, paintbrushes, larkspur, and blue mertensia often lean over the edge and give the water-margin the beauty of their reflected colors.
These lakes above the limits of tree-growth do not appear desolate, even though stern peaks rise far above. The bits of flowery meadow or moorland lying close or stretching away, the songful streams arriving or departing, soften their coldness and give a welcome to their rock-bound, crag-piled sh.o.r.es. Mountain sheep are often visitors. They come to drink, or to feed and play in the sedgy meadow near by.
Ptarmigan have their homes here, and all around them nest many birds from the southland.
Into these lakes swift waters run, and here the snowy cataract leaps in glory. From the overshadowing cliffs, flattened and lacy streams flutter down. During the summer there is the ever-flowing harmony, the endless animation, of falling water; and in winter there is the silent and architectural symphony of the frozen waterfall. Many lakes during summer are partly edged with inthrusting snow and ice piles; from time to time fragments of these piles break away and become miniature icebergs in these small arctic seas.
Although filled with the purest and clearest water, from a distant height they often appear to contain a brilliant heavy liquid. Under different lights and from different points of view they are emerald, opal, inky black, violet, indigo-blue, and sea-green. I have approached one from a high distant point, and as I descended and waveringly advanced, the lake took on a number of deep colors, each melting like a pa.s.sing shadow from one into the other. Occasionally, too, it almost vanished in dull gray or flashed up in molten silver.
The colors shown were as vivid as if made of the brilliant fire of the northern lights. All these changing colors played on the lake, while the surrounding peaks towered in cold and silent desolation, changeless except when occasionally swept with the filmy bluish shadows of the clouds.