Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies in all their perfection
of purity and spirituality,--gentle mountaineers face to face with the
stormy sky, kept safe and warm by a thousand miracles. I leaped lightly
from rock to rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and sufficiency of
Nature, and in the ineffable tenderness with which she nurtures her
mountain darlings in the very fountains of storms. Fresh beauty appeared
at every step, delicate rock-ferns, and groups of the fairest flowers.
Now another lake came to view, now a waterfall. Never fell light in
brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter foam. I seemed to float
through the canon enchanted, feeling nothing of its roughness, and was
out in the Mono levels before I was aware.
Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed
all a dream. There curved Bloody Canon, a mere glacial furrow 2000 feet
deep, with smooth rocks projecting from the sides and braided together
in the middle, like bulging, swelling muscles. Here the lilies were
higher than my head, and the sunshine was warm enough for palms. Yet the
snow around the arctic willows was plainly visible only four miles away,
and between were narrow specimen zones of all the principal climates of
the globe.
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