A rich growth of green grass, coloured with broad splashes of Indian Paint Brush, covers the sloping floor of the basin. Standing on its extreme elevation upon a platform of rock, and thence overlooking the country that lies ahead, the scene is one of uplifting majesty. Below, within the sombre circle of the pines, is the lake, palely fair as a white sea shell or a milk opal whose latent colours never quite shine forth from its cloudy depths. Farther still, is the gorge, opening like a gateway into the region of the avalanche, and farther still, is Heaven's Peak, mingling with the cloudless sky. The strata on these mountains laid bare as though but yesterday they were rent asunder, flow in undulating ribbons of colour varying from red-violet to dull, antique gold. But between the quivering sky of Summer and the warm, flower-sown earth, is a ghostly tide of purple haze, an amethystine shadow which touches every rock and tree and peak with magical illusion. And through that veil, as through enchantment, each rock, each tree, each peak is transfigured and for a brief hour is given a semblance of the divine. The gorge is filled with flowing purple, the glorified gateway might be Heaven's Gate, even as the dominant mountain, royal in the thickening blue distance, is Heaven's Peak.
Here the sordid world seems to melt away; the sunshine has got into our blood and the transfiguring haze has penetrated even to our hearts. We seem so intimately a part of this mighty, primeval place where the infinity of the past and the infinity of the future are married in one great mystery, that we dare to listen for secrets of the one from the chant of the falls; to lift the veil of circumventing blue and peer into the other. So, standing upon that rock platform, from the reality of the present we speed our souls into the ideality of Time's poles. Though the song of the water-voices that have sung æons, rings in our ears, and the living letter of the world-book is shown in the mountain's open page, we may not know the portent of either message. And though we gaze with seeking vision through the shadow into the ultimate blue above, the haze draws its protecting garment thicker, closer about the treasure-house of Nature, and the sun darts amber lances earthward to blind aspiring eyes. So we pass humbly upon our way, the water-voices singing in our ears, the arch of Heaven trailing its garment over earth, still guarding the riddle of the future in its azure keep.
[INDIAN SUMMER]
[CHAPTER XI]
INDIAN SUMMER
AFTER the Summer's ripe maturity has vanished with the first autumnal storm, there steals over the world a magical Presence. It has no place in the almanac; it comes with a flooding of amber light and a deepening of amethyst haze; it plays like a passing smile on the face of the universe and like one, vanishes with the stern rebuff of the wintry blast. What jugglery the sun and earth and the four winds of heaven have wrought no mortal man can tell, but certainly by some divine alchemy the deadening blight is turned into gold, and upon the lap of the world there lies, instead of the appointed Fall, a changeling season, the faery-child of Nature, illusive, fleeting as a flock of yellow butterflies, a shimmer of radiant wings—the Indian Summer!
The whole earth is under the spell of the mad, sweet witchery. The forests are decked in a gay masquerade, too glorious to be real, and our own sober senses are half-mastered by the delusion that the dead Summer is come to life again. In open places where the fingers of the sun still warm the moist ground, absent-minded bluebells, strawberries and yellow violets bloom on forgetful that they should already be taking their winter's rest. And it is strange with what pleasure we seize upon these fragile blossom-friends; with what childish joy we caress their pale petals so soon to be laid low. Yet in the warm air lurks a hidden sting, the bittersweet of sun and frost; in the very effulgence of life is the foreshadowing of death. Already on the heights streamers of cloud gather, leaving in their wake the dazzle of fresh snow. And beneath these low-streaming clouds, slanting earthward in broad, down-pouring rays, is a pure white light upon the mountains. The light on the mountains! What a revelation it is! The windows of heaven are flung open and the celestial beams of Paradise illumine God's Cathedral Domes, the peaks, for a brief space before sky-wrought vestments of snow cover the altar of His Sanctuaries.
The trails of yesterday are barred. For prudence sake we must keep to the low country or risk the fate of being "snowed in." Therefore we choose the Kintla Road and Camas Creek, where a large band of moose roams in the forest solitudes, hoping to reach Quartz Lakes near the Canadian line before we shall be driven back by the cold. The pine-sweet air fills us with the very spirit of the woods as we strike out over the gilded trail through forests transfigured into a welter of gorgeous hues, past deep-cleft ravines purple as the heart of a violet, to dim lilac mountains that melt into the blue. What is it that is mystical, spiritual, if you will, in this colour of violet? It is not like the robust, tangible green of the trees, the definite reality of the flowers' multi-coloured petals. We cannot lay our hands upon it any more than we can grasp a sunbeam, for like hope deferred, it lies forever beyond our reach. We see it unwind its royal haze through gorge and forest; we watch it fade into pale lavender on the ultimate pinnacles of the range, but if we follow it what do we find? Mere yawning cleft or greenwood grove or jagged strata of dull rock. Where is the subtle violet, the dim dream lavender? Fled as subtly as the shadow of a wing! Perhaps it is a shadow of the divine, the soul-essence common to man and the flower at his feet, the dumb, stone mountains, the living air and the heaven that embraces all in its enduring keep.