Fancy yourself standing beside me on this Yosemite Ridge. There is a
strange garish glitter in the air and the gale drives wildly overhead,
but you feel nothing of its violence, for you are looking out through a
sheltered opening in the woods, as through a window. In the immediate
foreground there is a forest of silver fir their foliage warm
yellow-green, and the snow beneath them strewn with their plumes,
plucked off by the storm; and beyond broad, ridgy, canyon-furrowed,
dome-dotted middle ground, darkened here and there with belts of pines,
you behold the lofty snow laden mountains in glorious array, waving
their banners with jubilant enthusiasm as if shouting aloud for joy.
They are twenty miles away, but you would not wish them nearer, for
every feature is distinct and the whole wonderful show is seen in its
right proportions, like a painting on the sky.
And now after this general view, mark how sharply the ribs and
buttresses and summits of the mountains are defined, excepting the
portions veiled by the banners; how gracefully and nobly the banners
are waving in accord with the throbbing of the wind flood; how trimly
each is attached to the very summit of its peak like a streamer at a
mast-head; how bright and glowing white they are, and how finely their
fading fringes are penciled on the sky! See how solid white and opaque
they are at the point of attachment and how filmy and translucent toward
the end, so that the parts of the peaks past which they are streaming
look dim as if seen through a veil of ground glass.
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