Sometimes, as the busy clouds drooped and
condensed or dissolved to misty gauze, half of the Valley would be
suddenly veiled, leaving here and there some lofty headland cut off from
all visible connection with the walls, looming alone, dim, spectral, as
if belonging to the sky--visitors, like the new falls, come to take part
in the glorious festival. Thus for two days and nights in measureless
extravagance the storm went on, and mostly without spectators, at least
of a terrestrial kind. I saw nobody out--bird, bear, squirrel, or man.
Tourists had vanished months before, and the hotel people and laborers
were out of sight, careful about getting cold, and satisfied with views
from windows. The bears, I suppose, were in their canyon-boulder dens,
the squirrels in their knot-hole nests, the grouse in close fir groves,
and the small singers in the Indian Canyon chaparral, trying to keep
warm and dry. Strange to say, I did not see even the water-ouzels,
though they must have greatly enjoyed the storm.
This was the most sublime waterfall flood I ever saw--clouds, winds,
rocks, waters, throbbing together as one. And then to contemplate what
was going on simultaneously with all this in other mountain temples; the
Big Tuolumne Canyon--how the white waters and the winds were singing
there! And in Hetch Hetchy Valley and the great King's River yosemite,
and in all the other Sierra canyons and valleys from Shasta to the
southernmost fountains of the Kern, thousands of rejoicing flood
waterfalls chanting together in jubilee dress.
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