THE FRIENDLY ROCKS 



snows of winter and the dews of summer had the 

 force of dynamite. 



When I get especially rock-hungry, and the trog- 

 lodyte in me gets restless, as he is apt to in all of us, 

 I take a walk to the ledges on Pine Hill, or on Hem- 

 lock Ridge, and prowl about their caverns and 

 loiter under their overhanging strata, putting my 

 hand in the little niches and pockets where I kept 

 my trinkets and choice possessions when I was a 

 troglodyte, inspecting the phcebe's mossy nest on a 

 little shelf where the four-footed beasts cannot 

 reach it, cleaning out the spring that shows like a 

 small eye under the rocky eyebrow, creeping through 

 what we boys called the "Indian oven." 



When you want to read a stirring and heroic 

 chapter in the great rock volume of the earth, the 

 very Iliad or Odyssey of the rocks, go to the Grand 

 Canon of the Colorado, or to Yosemite. As you 

 gaze, a sentence from Job may come to your mind 

 as it did to a friend of mine "Where wast thou 

 when I laid the foundations of the earth?" 



All through the Southwest the great book of geo- 

 logic Revelation lies open to the traveler in an as- 

 tonishing manner. Its massive but torn and crum- 

 pled leaves of limestone, sandstone, and basalt lie 

 spread out before him all through Colorado, New 

 Mexico, and Arizona, and he may read snatches of 

 the long geologic record from the flying train. 



I myself need not go so far to see what time can 

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