After Waiting A Few Days, I Gladly Hailed A Broad-Browed Cloud
Coming Grandly On From The West In Big Promising Blackness, Very
Unlike The White Sailors Of The Summer Skies.
Under the lee of a rim-ledge, with another snow-lover, I watched its movements as it took
possession of the canyon and all the adjacent region in sight.
Trailing its gray fringes over the spiry tops of the great temples and
towers, it gradually settled lower, embracing them all with ineffable
kindness and gentleness of touch, and fondled the little cedars and
pines as they quivered eagerly in the wind like young birds begging
their mothers to feed them. The first flakes and crystals began to
fly about noon, sweeping straight up the middle of the canyon, and
swirling in magnificent eddies along the sides. Gradually the hearty
swarms closed their ranks, and all the canyon was lost in gray bloom
except a short section of the wall and a few trees beside us, which
looked glad with snow in their needles and about their feet as they
leaned out over the gulf. Suddenly the storm opened with magical
effect to the north over the canyon of Bright Angel Creek, inclosing a
sunlit mass of the canyon architecture, spanned by great white
concentric arches of cloud like the bows of a silvery aurora. Above
these and a little back of them was a series of upboiling purple
clouds, and high above all, in the background, a range of noble cumuli
towered aloft like snow-laden mountains, their pure pearl bosses
flooded with sunshine.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 291 of 304
Words from 78751 to 79015
of 82482
