Everything is
refreshed and invigorated, a steam of fragrance rises, and the storm is
finished--one cloud, one lightning-stroke, and one dash of rain. This is
the Sierra mid-summer thunder-storm reduced to its lowest terms. But
some of them attain much larger proportions, and assume a grandeur and
energy of expression hardly surpassed by those bred in the depths of
winter, producing those sudden floods called "cloud-bursts," which are
local, and to a considerable extent periodical, for they appear nearly
every day about the same time for weeks, usually about eleven o'clock,
and lasting from five minutes to an hour or two. One soon becomes so
accustomed to see them that the noon sky seems empty and abandoned
without them, as if Nature were forgetting something. When the glorious
pearl and alabaster clouds of these noonday storms are being built I
never give attention to anything else. No mountain or mountain-range,
however divinely clothed with light, has a more enduring charm than
those fleeting mountains of the sky--floating fountains bearing water
for every well, the angels of the streams and lakes; brooding in the
deep azure, or sweeping softly along the ground over ridge and dome,
over meadow, over forest, over garden and grove; lingering with cooling
shadows, refreshing every flower, and soothing rugged rock-brows with a
gentleness of touch and gesture wholly divine.
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