MOUNT ST. HELENS
From the Timber-Line Trail on Mount Rainier
Wild flowers are everywhere. They edge the snow-fields, cover the breaks in the cliffs, line the streams, and bank with bloom the fallen forest patriarchs. Among the common blossoms are the lovely cassiope,—white heather,—mountain anemone, phlox, and "Indian basket grass."
This is the home of the gigantic Olympic Roosevelt elk, and among the other common animals are the bear, deer, wolf, fox, lynx, otter, and beaver. The streams are simply crowded with trout. Bald eagles are found, and there is an array of flickers, woodpeckers, warblers, jays, sparrows, and hummingbirds. The solitudes of this sylvan park are cheered with the melody of the water-ouzel, the Alaska hermit thrush, and the winter wren.
But the mountain summits are significant as view-points. From them one commands the sea, islands, and the broken shore of the Pacific. Bright Puget Sound, with a scattering of dark islands and ragged edges, fills the foreground. Looking toward the southeast across the darkly forested mountains through which rolls the Columbia, one enjoys a view vast and imposing. The dark forest cover is pierced by three snow-laden and steaming sleeping volcanoes. The most impressive one of these is Mount Rainier, with a score of enormous glaciers covering head and shoulders. Another one is Mount Adams. But the most exquisitely beautiful of all the peaks which the summits of the Olympics command is Mount St. Helens. The head and shoulders of this mountain rise a perfect snowy cone above the purple forest robe and stand as perfectly poised as a Greek statue of marble.
The Olympic National Park should include about three hundred square miles. What a splendid attraction if this area of primeval scenes and forests were kept in a state of nature!
2. THE NATURAL BRIDGES AND RAINBOW BRIDGE NATIONAL MONUMENTS
Utah has the four grandest natural bridges in the world. Three of these are in the Natural Bridges National Monument, and the fourth in the Rainbow Bridge National Monument. There are natural bridges elsewhere in Utah, and in the Yellowstone and the Mesa Verde National Parks; also in Virginia and various other places. But so far as known, the four in these two National Monuments excel all others in size, in impressiveness, and in wildness of setting.
These National Monuments embrace desert regions in southeastern Utah which are made up mostly of rock-formations. Standing out on the strange desert, the fantastic forms and weird sandstone figures exhibited give the whole region a peculiar impressiveness. There are countless statuesque forms and groups that are surprisingly faithful in their resemblance to figures of birds, animals, humans, and temples; and all are of heroic size.
The bridges in the Natural Bridges Monument are known as the Sipapu or Augusta Bridge, the Kachima or Caroline Bridge, and the Owachomo or Little Bridge. The former of each of these names is of Indian origin and is the official one.