The next day the Doctor proposed a visit to Grand Lake. I suggested that it threatened rain, and he replied that he who went fishing must expect to get wet. The retort, I told him, was dry with age; but the mules were hitched,—they have not been lost,—and we started up the Grand Valley in the sunshine, but had not been long on the road before it began to rain. Rain is a good thing in the mountains; it freshens up the earth, brightens the wild flowers, fills the air with a new fragrance, makes the grass grow, and I like it. I told the Doctor how much I enjoyed it coming down in vast sheets, but he did not say anything, only smiled. I’ve seen that smile before; in a fighting man it is dangerous. I didn’t say anything more about the rain, but tried to impress him with my knowledge of locations for dairy farms, and the excellence of the neighborhood for the growth of turnips and potatoes for winter food, without irrigation. Toward noon we came to a stream, and he told me it was North Fork; it rained at North Fork. I asked him where the other prongs were. He said there was but one other, “up yonder.” I told him the style of fork was long out of date. He stopped the mules. I noticed that smile again, and immediately changed the subject by asking him how far it was to the lake. He said it was about a mile in a direct line, but we did not go that route. About an hour afterwards I asked again how far it was, and he said it was half a mile in a direct line. I was about to inquire why he didn’t take the “direct line,” but changed my mind, and reflected upon the uncertainty of distances in this light air, and the gratifying exactness of the information one derives from being told something is “up yonder.” It rained. Sometime during the afternoon we came to what appeared to me a long line of embankment of gravel and boulders that might have been thrown up by the Titans for a railroad bed in the long ago. We had passed a number of railroad grade stakes, and I inquired if the embankment was the road-bed of the Denver, Utah and Pacific. He said it was a moraine. I thought he was joking, but he always laughs when he gets off a good thing, and he looked as sober as a hired mute at a pauper funeral. I meekly suggested that we had already had more rain than—. He stopped me and the mules right there; said the lake was just over that bank, and had no bottom; that I deserved to be drowned, and wanted to know my weight. I told him that under ordinary circumstances not very heavy, too light to sink, at least, but when wet I swelled. He concluded to go on. It rained, and after awhile we reached the town of Grand Lake. It is hid from the lake, and I was thankful; for I could climb over the moraine—what a handy word for such weather—and look out upon a beautiful sheet of water nearly three miles long by half that in width, guarded at the east and south by mighty hills, while to the southwest I could have recognized Powell Mountain, the grand, with lower hills for distant foreground, and forget the two saloons, the saw mill, tavern and a few slab shanties that were hidden from view—by the moraine—while the clouds hid everything else; and it rained.
We crossed the north inlet and pitched our tent, at the recommendation of a friend, in the midst of a grove of young pines, where the ground was soft with the dead needles from the protecting branches. The couch was delightfully tempting, on the very margin of the lake, with the gentle murmur of the miniature breakers to lull us to sleep. But it rained; I think, however, I have mentioned that fact; there was another drawback, or rather a number of them—ticks. The next morning another friend exhibited to our wondering gaze about two quarts of fish, something less than a hundred to the quart, and said he caught ’em with grasshoppers. I asked him if the grasshoppers were small. He said they were ordinary grasshoppers. Then I asked him if he had to rip any of them open, and he wanted to know for what, and I said to take the fish out of them, of course. He was a polite friend, and he laughed, but I know him for a mimic. He said the fishing was splendid, and I did not tell him of my nineteen-inch prize, lest he might for the first-time doubt my veracity.
After breakfast, it looked as though we might have some “falling weather,” and, while I am partial to a little rain after a very long dry spell, I suggested to the Doctor that, considering we had to do some fording, we had better get to the Springs while we might. He went right off and hitched up those mules; never said a word; didn’t even ask me to help him. He wanted me to carry away a pleasant remembrance of the lake, so he drove round to the south side. Then it began to rain. It is raining yet, and, to all appearances, is settled weather.
I have been sitting under my canvas roof this blessed day, looking at the rain and watching the meanderings of the tiny rivulets outside, and the midges that congregate about their margins. They stand on the current and ride off, and I sometimes think they come back again to “keep the mill going,” as you and I did on the ice when we were younger boys than now. The ground squirrels and chipmunks come out of their holes to pay me brief visits and then scud back. The little chips are cunning chaps, their motions are agile, their eyes are bright, and the glistening rain drops that soak all else, leave no impression upon their glossy fur. They run up the stalks of the wild rye, nibble off a head and drop to the ground as quickly as falls the severed top, and then to shelter under the lee of a log or a projecting rock, to feast. One other visitor I have had to-day—a solitary blackbird with feathers awry and tail bedraggled. He had a melancholy look in his white eyes as he cocked his head despondingly, and his forlorn condition made me think he might be, in miniature, the larcenous and unfortunate jackdaw of Rheims, suffering under the Cardinal’s curse. His wretched condition was contagious, and I myself was about to request him to “move on,” when one of his brethren, dressed in blue and sable, a policeman, evidently, in their community, ran him in, or off. For aught I know he may be now before His Honor on the general charge of vagrancy, with a prospect of a fine and costs, or in default of means, with a term in the blackbird jail staring him in the face.
I want to go home. The Grand is brown, Williams’ Fork is gold color; the Troublesome is so thick that you can stick a knife into it, turn it round and see the hole. Trout fishing this side Egeria Park is not to be thought of, for it seems to have been raining as it never rained before. As if ’twould keep on raining, evermore.
PHILOSOPHY.
Upon the contingency of a rainy day it is always pleasant to have something to read in the mountains. A friend of mine gave me a pamphlet written by one Herbert Spencer, entitled “Education.” A level-headed appreciative friend who understands one’s needs, is a good thing to have. Education was my necessity. After being educated I became hungry for more. My friend had said there were “some good things in Herbert; that he was a philosopher, but given to infidelity.” I discovered that Herbert had written a library; I had, then, so to speak, the wide world from which to choose. I am a seeker after happiness, so I selected “Social Statics, or the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness.” If there is any one thing that I enjoy more than another, it is happiness. Having secured the key to the “Essential Conditions,” I felt as I imagine a hungry and ragged prospector feels when the assayer tells him he has “struck it,” and drew heavy drafts on the future, just as any prospector does. The “Essential Conditions” being philosophy, is not dry reading as you may imagine, that is on a rainy day in camp. It is good as a comedy.