A Bird-Lover in the West. Olive Thorne Miller
for mountains. Before long they retreated to a distance and grew bigger, and at last, far off, appeared the mountains, overtopping all one great white peak, the
"Giver of gold, king of eternal hills."
A welcome awaited me in the summer home of a friend at Colorado Springs, in the presence of the great Cheyenne Range, with the snow-cap of Pike's Peak ever before me. Four delightful days I gave to friendship, and then I sought and found a perfect nook for rest and study, in a cottonwood grove on the banks of the Minnelowan (or Shining Water). This is a mad Colorado stream which is formed by the junction of the North and South Cheyenne Cañon brooks, and comes tumbling down from the Cheyenne, rushing and roaring as if it had the business of the world on its shoulders, and must do it man-fashion, with confusion and noise enough to drown all other sounds.
Imagine a pretty, one-story cottage, set down in a grove of cottonwood-trees, with a gnarly oak and a tall pine here and there, to give it character, and surrounded as a hen by her chickens, by tents, six or eight in every conceivable position, and at every possible angle except a right angle. Add to this picture the sweet voices of birds, and the music of water rushing and hurrying over the stones; let your glance take in on one side the grand outlines of Cheyenne Mountain,
"Made doubly sacred by the poet's pen
And poet's grave,"
and on the other the rest of the range, overlooked by Pike's Peak, fourteen thousand feet higher than the streets of New York. Do this, and you will come as near to realizing Camp Harding as one can who is hundreds of miles away and has never seen a Colorado camp.
Do not think, however, that such camps are common, even in that land of outdoors, where tents are open for business in the streets of the towns, and where every householder sets up his own canvas in his yard, for the invalids to sleep in, from June to November. The little settlement of tents was an evolution, the gradual growth of the tent idea in the mind of one comfort-loving woman. She went there seven or eight years before, bought a grove under the shadow of Cheyenne, put up a tent, and passed her first summer thus. The next year, and several years thereafter, she gradually improved her transient abode in many ways that her womanly taste suggested—as a wooden floor, a high base-board, partitions of muslin or cretonne, door and windows of wire gauze. The original dwelling thus step by step grew to a framed and rough-plastered house, with doors and windows en règle.
Grouped picturesquely around the house, however, were some of the most unique abiding-places in Colorado. On the outside they were permanent tents with wooden foundations; on the inside they were models of comfort, with regular beds and furniture, rugs on the floor, gauzy window curtains, drapery wardrobes, and even tiny stoves for cool mornings and evenings. They combined the comforts of a house with the open air and delightful freshness of a tent, where one might hear every bird twitter, and see the dancing leaf shadows in the moonlight. Over the front platform the canvas cover extended to form an awning, and a wire-gauze door, in addition to one of wood, made them airy or snug as the weather demanded.
The restfulness craved by the weary worker was there to be had for both soul and body, if one chose to take it. One might swing in a hammock all day, and be happy watching "the clouds that cruise the sultry sky"—a sky so blue one never tires of it; or beside the brook he might "lie upon its banks, and dream himself away to some enchanted ground." Or he might study the ever-changing aspect of the mountains—their dreamy, veiled appearance, with the morning sun full upon them; their deep violet blueness in the evening, with the sun behind them, and the mystery of the moonlight, which "sets them far off in a world of their own," as tender and unreal as mountains in a dream.
He might do all these things, but he is far more likely to become excited, and finally bewitched by guide-books, and photographs, and talk all about him of this or that cañon, this or that pass, the Garden of the Gods, Manitou, the Seven Sisters' Falls, the grave of "H. H.;" and unless a fool or a philosopher, before he knows it to be in the full swing of sight-seeing, and becoming learned in the ways of burros, the "Ship of the Rockies," so indispensable, and so common that even the babies take to them.
This traveler will climb peaks, and drive over nerve-shaking roads, a steep wall on one side and a frightful precipice on the other; he will toil up hundreds of steps, and go quaking down into mines; he will look, and admire, and tremble, till sentiment is worn to threads, purse depleted, and body and mind alike a wreck. For this sort of a traveler there is no rest in Colorado; there always remains another mountain to thrill him, another cañon to rhapsodize over; to one who is greedy of "sights," the tameness of Harlem, or the mud flats of Canarsie, will afford more rest.
For myself I can always bear to be near sights without seeing them. I believed what I heard—never were such grand mountains! never such soul-stirring views! never such hairbreadth roads! I believed—and stayed in my cottonwood grove content. I knew how it all looked; did I not peer down into one cañon, holding my breath the while? and, with slightly differing arrangement of rocks and pine-trees and brooks, are not all cañons the same? Did I not gaze with awe at the "trail to the grave of H. H.," and watch, without envy, the sight-seeing tourist struggle with its difficulties? Could I not supply myself with photographs, and guide-books, and poems, and "H. H.'s" glowing words, and picture the whole scene? I could, I did, and to me Colorado was a delightful place of rest, with mountain air that it was a luxury to breathe (after the machinery adjusted itself to the altitude), with glorious sunshine every morning, with unequaled nights of coolness, and a new flower or two for every day of the month.
If to "see Colorado" one must ascend every peak, toil through every cañon, cast the eyes on every waterfall, shudder over each precipice, wonder at each eccentric rock, drink from every spring, then I have not seen America's Wonderland. But if to steep my spirit in the beauty of its mountains so that they shall henceforth be a part of me; to inhale its enchanting air till my body itself seemed to have wings; if to paint in my memory its gorgeous procession of flowers, its broad mesa crowned with the royal blossoms of the yucca, its cosy cottonwood groves, its brooks rushing between banks of tangled greenery; if this is to "see Colorado," then no one has ever seen it more thoroughly.
The "symphony in yellow and red," which "H. H." calls this wonderland, grows upon the sojourner in some mysterious way, till by the time he has seen the waxing and waning of one moon he is an enthusiast. It is charming alike to the sight-seer whose jaded faculties pine for new and thrilling emotions, to the weary in brain and body who longs only for peace and rest, and to the invalid whose every breath is a pain at home. To the lover of flowers it is an exhaustless panorama of beauty and fragrance, well worth crossing the continent to enjoy; to the mountain lover it offers endless attractions.
Nothing is more fascinating to the stranger in Colorado than the formation of its cañons, not only the grand ones running up into the heart of the mountains, but the lesser ones cutting into the high table-land, or mesa, at the foot of the hills. The above mentioned cottonwood grove, for example, with its dozen of dwellings and a natural park of a good many acres above it, with tall pines that bear the marks of age, is so curiously hidden that one may come almost upon it without seeing it. It is reached from Colorado Springs by an electric road which runs along the mesa south of the town. As the car nears the end of the line, one begins to look around for the grove. Not a tree is in sight; right and left as far as can be seen stretches the treeless plain to the foot of the eternal hills; not even the top of a tall pine thrusts itself above the dead level. Before you is Cheyenne—grim, glorious, but impenetrable. The conductor stops. "This is your place," he says. You see no place; you think he must be mistaken.
"But where is Camp Harding?" you ask. He points to an obscure path—"trail" he calls it—which seems to throw itself over an edge. You approach that point, and there, to your wonder and your surprise, at your feet nestles the loveliest of smiling cañon-like valleys, filled with trees, aspen, oak, and pine, with here and there a tent or red roof gleaming through the green, and a noisy brook hurrying on its way downhill. By a steep scramble you reach the lower level, birds singing, flowers tempting on every side, and the picturesque, narrow trail leading you on, around the ledge of rock, over the rustic bridge, till you reach the back entrance of the camp. Before it, up the narrow valley, winds a road, the carriage-way to the Cheyenne cañons.