Adirondack Peeks Summer 2023

Near and more near it came. It swept against the mountain on whose crest we stood, as an army charg es a citadel, struck it, and recoiled. But the wild forces of the wind urged It from behind, seeming to cheer it on. It pressed to the attack, swept over the outlying spurs, and wrapped the mountains about on all sides. It had triumphed. Then did our eyes behold a spectacle rarely witnessed, even by mountaineers. Five hundred feet below us hung the cloud. We could look into its black center, and see the lightnings play. We could hear the crash of thunder in the gorges far beneath, the dull roar of the gathering torrents, the crush of falling trees as they went down with thump and boom, while above us the sun was shining bright ly, and the heavens were cloudless. At last the cloud broke; half swayed to the north, and half to the south: but a black fragment torn off from the main body, and lifted by some rising column of air, rose slowly up, following the gorge on whose brink we stood, until it folded us in its dark vapor. Still rising, until it stood some hundred feet above our heads, the

an arc of rose. The stars above us paled. As if stricken with envy, they sickened and died. Venus alone re sisted, and gave up her hold on life as a dolphin, whose colors deepen in death. The fog beneath lay heavy on the valleys, covering with its white folds the lesser mountains. At length the uppermost point of the red orb appeared. A shaft of yellow light ploughed through the upper stratum of the fog as a cannon-ball ploughs through swarded field, and rent it in twain. It was only the first shaft from a bow that in an instant shot forth a score of flaming arrows. The fog was thick and stubborn; but what might resist the orb ap pointed of God to lighten the world! The fleece relaxed its hold upon the hills. It surrendered its empire over the valleys. It fled from the still wa ters of a thousand lakes. It untwined its fingers from the misty pine tops; and, ushered in with glory, God's sweetest gift to man—the holy day of rest came to the world. To us it was indeed a sab bath in the heavens. The sky was cloudless. Not a scud or patch of fleece in the entire firmament—per

fect vault of deepest blue, filled with a pure, white light. The air was cool, moving in steady current past us. Not a sound was heard, save when an eagle, swooping upward on his dark pinions, startled at the sight of human faces a thousand feet above his eyrie, challenged us with his wild cry, then sailed away. And there for hours we three sat on the gray rocks, in the deep silence and the white light, worshiping. Near mid day a change occurred. Beneath us clouds began to form. Over Big Tupper's Lake, fifty miles to the west, a dark bank gathered. We watched it rise. We saw a flash cleave it from top to bottom; and, after a long in terval, a heavy boom shook the thin air around us into vibrations, and the huge bulk beneath us trembled to the deep jar. It was the signal-gun, ordering an advance. Straight on the cloud came. It marched across the wilderness as a battery sweeps to the front, in some pinch of battle, halting ever and anon to deliver a vol ley. We saw the shadow on the for est. We saw the flash and blaze. We heard each successive boom, and felt beneath us the answering jar.

22 | ADIRONDACK PEEKS