The Great Divide

SHAPED like a gigantic "S" with shallow curves, the pass lay between a tangle of mountains on whose precipitous flanks wild goats sprang from ledge to ledge: above it towered scarred peaks, first to blush under the rising sun, last to retain the dying glory: eastward, westward, the land fell away to ravines and hanging valleys and glacier-fed lakes in whose shining surface shimmered the reflection of gaunt, inaccessible summits. Each lake, lonely in its beauty, smiled up, bordered with stretches of dark green conical spruce of which the multitudinous spires were guarded by ten thousand feet of solid rock, and swayed by no disturbing winds. Here in a season of the year stalked the gigantic elk, deliberate and unafraid: here were meadows of a lighter green, traversed by winding streams where the beaver built his heavy-roofed home of earth and sticks, damming the vagrant creeks till only a rounded crown was unsubmerged. By rocky shores where scented cedars curled their gnarled roots over naked boulders, the otter, the mink, and fisher played and hunted, while everywhere spread a chuckle of hidden runnels, and a murmurous sound born of snowy cataracts leaping from mountain palisades into gulfs below. Baldheaded eagles with sheathed eyes and unquivering pinions floated across circumambient space, crumpled talons drawn close against the grey-white of their breasts. They alone could scale the heights and look down on the austerity of the mountain tops.