It Is Long
Since I Have Seen Snow Coming Into A City.
The crystal flakes falling
in the foul streets was a pitiful sight.
Notwithstanding the vaunted refining influences of towns, purity of
all kinds - pure hearts, pure streams, pure snow - must here be exposed
to terrible trials. City Creek, coming from its high glacial
fountains, enters the streets of this Mormon Zion pure as an angel,
but how does it leave it? Even roses and lilies in gardens most loved
are tainted with a thousand impurities as soon as they unfold. I
heard Brigham Young in the Tabernacle the other day warning his people
that if they did not mend their manners angels would not come into
their houses, though perchance they might be sauntering by with little
else to do than chat with them. Possibly there may be Salt Lake
families sufficiently pure for angel society, but I was not pleased
with the reception they gave the small snow angels that God sent among
them the other might. Only the children hailed them with delight.
The old Latter-Days seemed to shun them. I should like to see how Mr.
Young, the Lake Prophet, would meet such messengers.
But to return to the storm. Toward the evening of the 18th it began
to wither. The snowy skirts of the Wahsatch Mountains appeared
beneath the lifting fringes of the clouds, and the sun shone out
through colored windows, producing one of the most glorious after-storm effects I ever witnessed. Looking across the Jordan, the gray
sagey slopes from the base of the Oquirrh Mountains were covered with
a thick, plushy cloth of gold, soft and ethereal as a cloud, not
merely tinted and gilded like a rock with autumn sunshine, but deeply
muffled beyond recognition. Surely nothing in heaven, nor any mansion
of the Lord in all his worlds, could be more gloriously carpeted.
Other portions of the plain were flushed with red and purple, and all
the mountains and the clouds above them were painted in corresponding
loveliness. Earth and sky, round and round the entire landscape, was
one ravishing revelation of color, infinitely varied and interblended.
I have seen many a glorious sunset beneath lifting storm clouds on the
mountains, but nothing comparable with this. I felt as if new-arrived
in some other far-off world. The mountains, the plains, the sky, all
seemed new. Other experiences seemed but to have prepared me for
this, as souls are prepared for heaven. To describe the colors on a
single mountain would, if it were possible at all, require many a
volume - purples, and yellows, and delicious pearly grays divinely
toned and interblended, and so richly put on one seemed to be looking
down through the ground as through a sky. The disbanding clouds
lingered lovingly about the mountains, filling the canyons like tinted
wool, rising and drooping around the topmost peaks, fondling their
rugged bases, or, sailing alongside, trailed their lustrous fringes
through the pines as if taking a last view of their accomplished work.
Then came darkness, and the glorious day was done.
This afternoon the Utah mountains and valleys seem to belong to our
own very world again. They are covered with common sunshine. Down
here on the banks of the Jordan, larks and redwings are swinging on
the rushes; the balmy air is instinct with immortal life; the wild
flowers, the grass, and the farmers' grain are fresh as if, like the
snow, they had come out of heaven, and the last of the angel clouds
are fleeing from the mountains.
VIII
Bathing in Salt Lake[10]
When the north wind blows, bathing in Salt Lake is a glorious baptism,
for then it is all wildly awake with waves, blooming like a prairie in
snowy crystal foam. Plunging confidently into the midst of the grand
uproar you are hugged and welcomed, and swim without effort, rocking
and heaving up and down, in delightful rhythm, while the winds sing in
chorus and the cool, fragrant brine searches every fiber of your body;
and at length you are tossed ashore with a glad Godspeed, braced and
salted and clean as a saint.
The nearest point on the shoreline is distant about ten miles from
Salt Lake City, and is almost inaccessible on account of the boggy
character of the ground, but, by taking the Western Utah Railroad, at
a distance of twenty miles you reach what is called Lake Point, where
the shore is gravelly and wholesome and abounds in fine retreating
bays that seem to have been made on purpose for bathing. Here the
northern peaks of the Oquirrh Range plant their feet in the clear blue
brine, with fine curbing insteps, leaving no space for muddy levels.
The crystal brightness of the water, the wild flowers, and the lovely
mountain scenery make this a favorite summer resort fro pleasure and
health seekers. Numerous excursion trains are run from the city, and
parties, some of them numbering upwards of a thousand, come to bathe,
and dance, and roam the flowery hillsides together.
But at the time of my first visit in May, I fortunately found myself
alone. The hotel and bathhouse, which form the chief improvements of
the place, were sleeping in winter silence, notwithstanding the year
was in full bloom. It was one of those genial sun-days when flowers
and flies come thronging to the light, and birds sing their best. The
mountain ranges, stretching majestically north and south, were piled
with pearly cumuli, the sky overhead was pure azure, and the wind-swept lake was all aroll and aroar with whitecaps.
I sauntered along the shore until I came to a sequestered cove, where
buttercups and wild peas were blooming close down to the limit reached
by the waves. Here, I thought, is just the place for a bath; but the
breakers seemed terribly boisterous and forbidding as they came
rolling up the beach, or dashed white against the rocks that bounded
the cove on the east.
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