In the intensity and clash of the elements there is a vigorous building environment. The storms furnish energy, inspiration, and resolution. There are no substitutes "just as good," no experiences just as great.
One rainy June day I started up a dim steep trail toward the headwaters of the river St. Vrain, near timber-line in what is now the Rocky Mountain National Park. While enjoying the general downpour and its softened noise through the woods, I was caught in a storm-center of wrangling winds and waters, and was almost knocked down. Like a sapling, I bowed streaming in the storm. Later, as I sat on a sodden log, reveling in the elemental moods and sounds, a water-ouzel began to sing, but I heard little of his serene optimistic solo above the roar of the wind and stream.
The storm raged louder as I approached timber-line. Clouds dragged among the trees. I could see nothing clearly. Every breath was like swallowing a wet sponge. Then a wind-surge rent the clouds and let me glimpse the blue sun-filled sky. I climbed an exceptionally tall spruce. A comic Frémont squirrel scolded in rattling, jerky chatter as I rose above the sea of clouds and trees. Astride the slender tree-top, I felt that the wind was trying hard to dislodge me, but I held on. The tree quivered and vibrated, shook and danced; we charged, circled, looped, and angled. Nowhere else have I experienced such wild, exhilarating joy. In the midst of this rare delight the clouds rose, the wind calmed, and the rain ceased. Then suddenly a blinding, explosive crash almost threw me from my observatory. Within fifty feet a tall fir was split to the ground. Quickly climbing back to earth, I eagerly examined the effects of the lightning-stroke. With one wild blow, in a second or less it had wrecked a century-old tree.
Although I have rarely known lightning to strike the heights, I have frequently experienced peculiar electric shocks from the air. I have never known such electrical storms to prove fatal nor to leave ill effects; and they may be beneficial. The day before the famous Poudre Flood, in May, 1904, I was traveling along the Continental Divide above timber-line near Poudre Lakes. While resting I was startled by the pulsating hum, the intermittent buzz-z-z-z and zit-zit and the vigorous hair-pulling of electricity-laden atmosphere.
Presently my right arm was momentarily cramped, and my heart seemed to lurch several times. These electric shocks lasted only about two seconds, but recurred every few minutes. The hair-pulling, palpitation, and cramps seemed slightly less when I fully relaxed on the ground. When I tried to climb, I found myself muscle-bound from the electricity. Points of dry twigs momentarily exhibited tips of smoky blue flame, and sometimes similar flame encircled green twigs below the lower limbs.
Later that day I came to North Specimen Mountain. There the electrical waves weakened or entirely ceased while I was in shadow, but they remained quite serious in the sun. I breathed only in gasps, and my heart was violent and feeble by turns. I felt as if cinched in a steel corset. After sundown I was again at ease and free from this strange electrical colic, which often worries or frightens strangers the first time they experience it. I soon forgot my own electrical experiences in the enjoyment that night of the splendidly brilliant electric effects beneath the enormous mountain-range of cloud-forms over the foothills. Its surface shone momentarily like incandescent glass, and occasionally down the slopes ran crooked rivers of gold.
I have had the good fortune to see geysers by sunlight, by moonlight, during gray stormy days, and also while the earth around them was covered with snow.
By moonlight the mountainous National Parks are enchanted lands. There is a gentleness, a serenity, and a softness that is never known in daylight. Many a time I have explored all night long. The trail is strangely romantic when across it fall the moon-toned etchings of the pines. The waterfalls, crags, mountain-tops, forest glades, and alpine lakes have marvelous combinations of light and shade, and they stir the senses like music. I wish that every one might see in the moonlight the Giant Forest in the Sequoia National Park, or timber-line in the Rocky Mountain National Park. By moonlight the Big Trees will stir you with the greatest elemental eloquence. Those who go up into the sky on mountains in the moonlight will have the greatest raptures and make the highest resolves.
Miss Edna Smith is one of the most appreciative outdoor women I ever have known. Years ago I urged her to know the mountains at night. Here is one of her accounts of a night experience:—
At supper-time the chances seemed against a start. It was raining. Later the rain stopped, but the full moon was almost lost in a heavy mist and the light was dim. Mr. S. N. Husted, the guide, thought an attempt to ascend Long's Peak hardly wise. At eleven o'clock I went to Enos Mills for advice. He said, "Go." So we mounted our ponies and started, chilled by the clammy fog about us.