The purplish-green point draws nearer, log cabins appear among the trees, each one decorated with a bear skin hung near its door. This is a fur trading center as well as a resort of nature lovers, and upon the broad porch of the club house is a heap of pelts of silver tip, black and brown bear, mountain lion and lynx, and from the walls within, bighorn sheep and mountain goats' heads peer down. The trappers themselves, quaint, old hunters of the wilderness, come out of their retreats to trade. But even now their day is passing. With the advent of outside life these characters, scarcely less shy than the game they seek, move farther back into uncontaminated solitudes. They are the last, lingering fragment of that old West which is so nearly a sad, sweet memory, a loving regret.
Each hour of the day traces its lapse in light and shadow on the lake, until the sunset flowing in a copper tide, draws aureoles of golden cloud over the white-browed peaks, transforming their huge and rugged bulk into luminous light-giving bodies of faded roses and lavender. As the evening wanes the mountains burn out in ashes of roses, still lightened here and there upon their ultimate heights, with a glow as faint as the memory of a dead love, and the living halo of the clouds deepens into coral crowns. Then the lake becomes a vast opal, kindling with fires that flash and die in the growing dusk.
The dark forests that cloak the lake shores, are threaded with trails each leading to some treasure store of Nature far off in the secrecy of the hills. One of great beauty starts from the head of the lake, beneath the shadow of the mountains, and overhangs the boisterous, rock-rent torrent of McDonald's Creek. The narrow way is padded thick with pine needles ground into sweet, brown powder which deadens the least intrusive footfall, as though the whole wood were harkening to the singing of the waters through the silence of the trees. Along the trail are mosses of multitudinous kinds. The delicate star moss unfolds its feathery points of green; a strange variety with thick, mottled leaves grows like a full blown rose around decayed trees, and a small, pale, gray-green trumpet-shaped moss rears hosts of elfin horns. Only a skilled botanist could classify these rich carpets which Nature has spread over the dead royalty of her forests, so that even in their death there is resurrection; even in their decay, new life. Bluebells and twinflowers, those delicate faery-bells of pink, sweet grass, pigeon berry and many another blossom beautiful in its strangeness, weave their colour into gay patterns on the green; blend their fragrance with the balsam sweetness of the woods. And all around, the stately pine trees grow bearded with long, gray moss which marks their antiquity and foretells their doom. The stream below, flowing between steep banks that it has cut during centuries of ceaseless washing, raises its song to a roar as it flings its swift current over a parapet of stone in a banner of shimmering, white foam. Above, the water breaks in whirling rapids and farther still is another fall. Towering in the distance is an exalted peak, the father of this stream, whose snowy gift pours down its perennial blessing into the clear tide of the lake.
So it is, the streams that issue from the glaciers yield their pure tribute to Lake McDonald, and all the trails, uncoiling their devious and dizzy ways over the mountains, bring us back to these shores. And every time that we return it breaks upon us with renewed freshness of mood. It may be ridden by a wind that lashes it into running waves of purple and wine colour, marked with the white foot-prints of the gale. It may be still as the first thought of love, holding in its broad mirror the bending sky and mountains peering into its secrecy. It may be ephemeral with mist that dims the mountains into pale, shadowy ghosts; or it may be like a voluptuous beauty glittering with jewels and clad in robes of silken sheen; again, it may be Quakerish in its pallid monotone. The changing cycle of the day and night each brings its different gift of beauty, and likewise, the passing seasons deck the mountains and the waters with a glory all their own, until, with martial hosts of cloud, with banners streaming silver and emblazoned with lightning-gleam, Winter spreads its garment of white upon the mystery of the wild. Perhaps the lake is never so exquisite as then. At least it seems so, as with closed eyes and passive soul, a memory undimmed arises out of the past.
It is night in the dead of Winter. The silence of deep sleep and isolation is on the world. The snow has fallen like a flock of white birds and the air has cleared to the degree of scintillating brilliance that mocks the diamond's flash. The full moon is beneath a cloud and its veiled light, filtering through the vapor, shows dimly the shadowy waters and the wan peaks fainting far away. Then the cloud passes. The moon leaps into the heavens and a flood of white light illumines the water, the sky and the mountains, transforming the whole into a faery scene of arctic splendour. It is as though the last breath of life had vanished in that chaste frozen atmosphere, and the earth had become a Palace of Dreams.
And though that Palace of Dreams vanishes as dreams must, like a melting snow crystal or a frosty sigh upon the night, there remains in our hearts a yearning which shall bear us back to the reality of beauty that rewards each pilgrim who returns to the deathless glory of the mountain-married lake.