THE STORY OF AN OUTING 



The rugged grandeur of the mountains inspired me 

 with reverential awe; their broad expanse and myriad 

 peaks, their valleys and their canons were a revelation. 

 I shall never forget an experience on the top of Pike's 

 Peak: surrounded by a brilliant sunlit atmosphere, I 

 saw below me a raging thunder-storm, with billowing, 

 seething masses of clouds which shut from view all the 

 world below; the play of lightning and the reveberating 

 thunder suggested Dante's "Inferno" and aroused a sense 

 that the dome of the mountain where I stood, an island 

 in this mass of warring elements, was about to be 

 engulfed and my day of reckoning was at hand. It was 

 strangely, weirdly beautiful, and gave me a dread realiza- 

 tion of the power of the elements and the impotence 

 of man. 



In summer garb, the dark shades of the evergreen 

 forests, freshened and enlivened by the lighter shades 

 of deciduous trees and grasses, the rich and varying 

 color of the advancing season, with the orange of the 

 aspens and reds of the oaks and shrubs, ranging from 

 scarlet to magenta, all tempered and dignified by the 

 granite gray of boulder and cliff in all these moods the 

 mountains are impressively beautiful; but one never 

 gets the "spirit of the mountains" until they are seen 

 in winter garb, fast in the embrace of ice and snow, with 

 atmosphere crystal clear, with mantle of spotless white: 



"Billows that never break, 



Great waves that never roar, 

 Firm strands that never shake 

 Motionless sea and shore. 



" Whitecaps of summer snow, 

 Hissing not in the breeze; 



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