My First Summer 



of no particular color, - - ornaments with no 

 hint of rain or snow in them. Day all calm, 

 another grand throb of Nature's heart, rip- 

 ening late flowers and seeds for next summer, 

 full of life and the thoughts and plans of life 

 to come, and full of ripe and ready death 

 beautiful as life, telling divine wisdom and 

 goodness and immortality. Have been up Mt. 

 Dana, making haste to see as much as I can 

 now that the time of departure is drawing 

 nigh. The views from the summit reach far 

 and wide, eastward over the Mono Lake and 

 Desert; mountains beyond mountains look- 

 ing strangely barren and gray and bare like 

 heaps of ashes dumped from the sky. The 

 lake, eight or ten miles in diameter, shines 

 like a burnished disk of silver, no trees about 

 its gray, ashy, cindery shores. Looking west- 

 ward, the glorious forests are seen sweeping 

 over countless ridges and hills, girdling 

 domes and subordinate mountains, fringing 

 in long curving lines the dividing ridges, and 

 filling every hollow where the glaciers have 



[ 320 ] 



