124 PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 



SUNSET FROM PILOT KNOB. 

 By Eugene Secor, Author. 



I've never seen a sunset from an ocean steamer. I've never seen the 

 great luminary dip into the Pacific from any of the high mountain peaks 

 of the Rocky or Sierra range. 



But one doesn't need to travel two thousand miles or to risk an ocean 

 voyage to see the sky in all its evening glory and the earth in its fruit- 

 fulness at the same time. Iowa is not without its beauty spots spots ; 

 too, where the heavens seem to meet the earth in a joint effort to magnify 

 our inheritance. 



Such a spot is Pilot Knoh, four miles east of Forest City. Camp with 

 me on its summit any time when the clouds do not curtain the sky or an 

 Indian summer haze limit the power of our glass, preferably in early har- 

 vest. A landscape is before and behind and all around us that for extent 

 and beauty combined is hard to match. If one is proud of teeming fields 

 and verdant pastures and cool leafage of restful groves he may feast his 

 eyes on a succession of such landscape views, the extent and variety of 

 which can nowhere else be found in Iowa, although she is fair to look 

 upon in every part of her matchless domain. 



The fields of golden sheaves where the binder has hummed all day re- 

 veal, the auriferous deposit left by the Wisconsin drift. Other shades of 

 ripening grain emphasize the promise of a harvest that seldom disap- 

 points. Haystacks in a hundred fields surrounded by a lush aftermath 

 add refreshment to the scene. The deep green of the tasseling corn on 

 every farm foretells another harvest of the staple that has put Iowa on 

 the map of the world. Cattle leisurely cropping grass in another hundred 

 fields, and patches of timber in all directions all these present a scene of 

 rural wealth and contentment in a panorama as the air-man sees it, but 

 we are safe on solid ground and yet behold it. 



Far in the west the sun is slowly sinking into the prairie. It is big 

 and round and as yellow as a ripe pumpkin. The blinding light of its 

 noonday splendor has been so softened that we watch it without blinking. 

 Just above the descending orb an opalescent cloud is stretched across the 

 sky, as if to catch and hold a little longer the glory of its reflected light ! 

 If .an artist should paint such a picture we'd say it wasn't natural. But 

 how could an artist overdraw such a picture as we now see? W T ith one 

 dash of his master brush the greater painter, the sun, has glorified all 

 the western sky as a good-night message to a tired world just as a 

 mother tells her little ones the most beautiful story she knows as she 

 tucks them in for their nightly sleep. 



A sunset is both a beatitude and a benediction. Blessed are they that 

 go ouit of sight leaving such a halo of influence that men will stop and 

 wonder and take courage. May all who labor^and need rest go to their 

 peaceful beds for refreshment after a day of useful toil with as much 

 surety of rising on the morrow with renewed energy as the golden disk be- 

 fore us. 



But turn to the east. Another candle is lit in the sky. The full moon 

 like a great silver disk is just above the tree tops in the distance. The 



