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Updated: June 17, 2025
It had been eating away at the snowbanks all night. I saw the top of the stronghold haystack from my bedroom window. Tunnel No. 1 had caved in. All day the wind kept up. By night the tunnel system was nothing but a lot of gaping cuts in the snow. The drifts had settled so much that the windows and doors were exposed, and it would soon be possible to ride on horseback along the street.
A wealth of color decorated every draw, for up here at the roots of the peaks blossoms rioted in great splashes that ran to the snowbanks. After all, she had to go lower for her favorite blooms. On Del Oro she found columbines, but in no great profusion. She wandered from the stream, leading Blacky by the bridle. On a hillside just above an aspen grove the girl came upon scattered clumps of them.
Between the brink of the canyon and the foot of these peaks, there is a high bench. A number of creeks have their sources in the snowbanks to the south and run north into the canyon, tumbling down from 3,000 to 5,000 feet in a distance of five or six miles.
The bare, ugly gymnasium had disappeared; in its place was a little winter scene from fairyland. Cedar branches, decked with flakes of artificial snow, and great white snowbanks, completely hid the walls from view.
To his left, back of the rows of citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort; rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and the flowers in their hair.
Equally at home on the frozen snowbanks of the mountain top, or in the parched deserts of the south, dwelling alike among the rocks, in the timber, or on the prairie, the mountain sheep shows himself adaptable to all conditions, and should surely have the best protection that we can give him. I shall never forget a scene witnessed many years ago, long before railroads penetrated the Northwest.
Late in the summer, as the snowbanks diminished, his body was found, lying at the base of the three-thousand-foot precipice. One man was killed by the accidental discharge of a pistol. A doctor was killed by lightning. In January, 1925, occurred a double tragedy. Miss Agnes Vaille perished near the spot where Miss Welton lost her life, and under similar conditions.
At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.
Patches of grass showed green against the dirty snowbanks lingering stubbornly in sheltered corners; here and there a tiny purple or yellow crocus put up its bright head; a few brave robins started their nest-keeping and, perched shivering on bare boughs, valiantly sung the promise of spring.
Here I had my first lessons in conservation and learned that it is indeed an ill wind that does no good. Here nature hoards her savings in snowbanks. To these savings she adds constantly throughout the winter. Long I sat upon a promontory and marveled. Dimly, only, did I grasp the significance of what lay before me!
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