Aflame In The Autumn

Seventy years ago, when the ox-trains were plodding over the legendary Great American

Desert that was stippled so ominously upon the maps of the day, the big moment always came when a white, triangular cloud on the horizon, growing in size and brilliance, finally resolved itself into a stationary peak. The bull whackers' whips snapped and popped. The oxen quickened their shuffling gait. The eager word went speeding back through the mile-long train of covered wagons-"Pike's Peak-The Mountains!" That big moment is as real today to the speeding motorist, travelling the trappers' and gold seekers' trails at sixty miles an hour, as it was to the emigrant snailing along at twelve miles the day. Even native Coloradans, returning from a distant journey, are not immune to the thrill, for to them, as to the visitor making his first trip, the mountains typify the soul of Colorado. How could it be otherwise? Two-thirds of the state is mountainous, and no two mountains are alike. They constitute Colorado's diatonic scale, ranging from the flat-topped buttes that glow ruby-red in the sunsets, to the sharp peaks, aglow with pink or plum, purple or amethyst, according to the season, or the time of day. They are smiling and gay at times, hung about with strings of glacial lakes, like beads of turquoise, jade or jet. They are inexpressibly austere and terrible, when bitter, boreal storms break into chaos upon their jagged fangs. In the morning veiled with clinging wisps of doud; in the evening, perhaps, incarnadined by the rare alpenglow. Aflame in the autumn with the gold of the aspens; in winter, clear-cut as marble temples against a cobalt sky. I like to think of them as temples-altars of the outdoors. This changing tempo of the mountains, more variable even than the sea, helps to explain the fact that Colorado people are inveterate weekenders. Not only do they lift up their eyes unto the hills, but also the hills irresistibly draw them, and they bring back therefrom of the mountains' strength. The most charming phase of life in this vast western sunland is the way in which the inhabitants stream mountainward on a Saturday afternoon, casually, as one goes to lunch with a friend; habitually, as one draws on his shoes in the morning. So continuous is the Colorado sunshine, so endless the places that one has never seen, that winter still finds them at the gay round of recreation, motoring through white forest fairylands, or skiing down the long slopes of nearby hills.

Aflame In The Autumn

By: David Bunch

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