128 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



planting their feet exactly on its margin, and hold 

 ing themselves erect, strict and orderly like soldiers 

 on parade; thus bounding the meadow with ex 

 quisite precision, yet with free curving lines such 

 as Nature alone can draw. With inexpressible de 

 light you wade out into the grassy sun-lake, feeling 

 yourself contained in one of Nature's most sacred 

 chambers, withdrawn from the sterner influences of 

 the mountains, secure from all intrusion, secure 

 from yourself, free in the universal beauty. And 

 notwithstanding the scene is so impressively 

 spiritual, and you seem dissolved in it, yet every 

 thing about you is beating with warm, terrestrial, 

 human love and life delightfully substantial and 

 familiar. The resiny pines are types of health and 

 steadfastness ; the robins feeding on the sod belong 

 to the same species you have known since child 

 hood; and surely these daisies, larkspurs, and 

 goldenrods are the very friend-flowers of the old 

 home garden. Bees hum as in a harvest noon, but 

 terflies waver above the flowers, and like them you 

 lave in the vital sunshine, too richly and homo 

 geneously joy-filled to be capable of partial thought. 

 You are all eye, sifted through and through with 

 light and beauty. Sauntering along the brook that 

 meanders silently through the meadow from the 

 east, special flowers call you back to discriminating 

 consciousness. The sod comes curving down to the 

 water's edge, forming bossy outswelling banks, and 

 in some places overlapping countersunk boulders 

 and forming bridges. Here you find mats of the 

 curious dwarf willow scarce an inch high, yet send 

 ing up a multitude of gray silky catkins, illumined 



