THE PEAK 

 BETWEEN THE PRAIRIES 



IT is a huge hill with a thousand secrets in its heart. There 

 are cities at its base, forests of aspen, cedar, and pine on its 

 flinty sides, and a million tons of broken granite on its crest. 

 The shovels of centuries have scooped a pile of sand, gravel, 

 and big bowlders into a heap that stretches away to the 

 skyward for fourteen thousand feet. The flinty peak lifts 

 itself to dizzy heights far above the timber line. The sharp 

 blades of wind and weather, together with the keen chisels 

 of frost and snow, have made deep scars in the mountain's 

 side. The snows of ages have drifted their stainless beauty 

 over the rough shoulders of this lonely sentinel. Scores of 

 laughing rivers sing their way down the steeps in summer time 

 to the parched and panting prairies. A hundred placid 

 lakes sleep in the dimples between the engirdling hills. Blue 

 bells, snap-dragons, goldenrod, asters, buttercups, forget-me- 

 nots, and mosses of many makes and hues spread their 

 spendthrift beauty in a thousand nooks and corners. Some 

 species of cactus bloom at the snowdrift's edge. It is not so 

 much the cold that keeps the snow as the lightness and the 

 dryness of the air. The chipmunk is happy here in this lofty 

 loneliness. Now and then a vulture or a straggling crow 

 wafts his weary wing sheer over the mountain. Here at 

 high noon, when the sky is clear, sunbeams and shadows lace 

 and interlace each other like the swift-flung threads of a 

 weaver's loom. The weird moaning of the mountain winds, 



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