still, white
noons. There is nothing like a storm, however. The average cloudiness
only about .08, and there is no sighing in the woods to betoken a big
weather change. The sky was red in the morning and evening, the color
not diffused like the ordinary purple glow, but loaded upon separate
well-defined clouds that remained motionless, as if anchored around the
jagged mountain-fenced horizon. A deep-red cap, bluffy around its sides,
lingered a long time on Mount Dana and Mount Gibbs, drooping so low as
to hide most of their bases, but leaving Dana's round summit free, which
seemed to float separate and alone over the big crimson cloud. Mammoth
Mountain, to the south of Gibbs and Bloody Canon, striped and spotted
with snow-banks and clumps of dwarf pine, was also favored with a
glorious crimson cap, in the making of which there was no trace of
economy--a huge bossy pile colored with a perfect passion of crimson
that seemed important enough to be sent off to burn among the stars in
majestic independence. One is constantly reminded of the infinite
lavishness and fertility of Nature--inexhaustible abundance amid what
seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations
that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her
material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use,
beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and
death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable
wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance
of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that
its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.

I watched the growth of these red-lands of the sky as eagerly as if new
mountain ranges were being built. Soon the group of snowy peaks in whose
recesses lie the highest fountains of the Tuolumne, Merced, and North
Fork of the San Joaquin were decorated with majestic colored clouds like
those already described, but more complicated, to correspond with the
grand fountain-heads of the rivers they overshadowed. The Sierra
Cathedral, to the south of camp, was overshadowed like Sinai. Never
before noticed so fine a union of rock and cloud in form and color and
substance, drawing earth and sky together as one; and so human is it,
every feature and tint of color goes to one's heart, and we shout,
exulting in wild enthusiasm as if all the divine show were our own. More