A Bird-Lover in the West Part 5

Up the road led into the mountain, under thick-crowding trees, between frowning rocks, ever growing higher and drawing nearer together, till the carriage road became a burro track, and then a footpath; now this side the boisterous brook, then crossing by a log or two to the other side, and ending in the heart of Cheyenne in a _cul-de-sac_, whose high perpendicular sides could be scaled only by flights of steps built against the rocks. From high up the mountain, into this immense rocky basin, came the brook Shining Water, in seven tremendous leaps, each more lovely than the last, and reached at bottom a deep stone bowl, which flung it out in a shower of spray forbidding near approach, and keeping the rocks forever wet.

The morning walk was up the road, in the grateful shade of the trees, between the cool rocks, beside the impetuous brook. This last was an ever fresh source of interest and pleasure, for nothing differs more widely from an Eastern brook than its Western namesake. The terms we apply to our mountain rivulets do not at all describe a body of water on its way down a Rocky Mountain valley. It does not murmur,--it roars and brawls; it cannot ripple,--it rages and foams about the bowlders that lie in its path. The name of a Colorado mountain stream, the Roaring Fork, exactly characterizes it.

One warm morning in June, a small party from the camp set out for a walk up the road. By easy stages, resting here and there on convenient rocks, beguiled at every step by something more beautiful just ahead, they penetrated to the end of the canon. Of that party I was one, and it was my first visit. I was alternately in raptures over the richness of color, the glowing red sandstone against the violet-blue sky, and thrilled by the grandeur of places which looked as if the whole mountain had been violently rent asunder.

But no emotion whatever, no beauty, no sublimity even, can make me insensible to a bird note. Just at the entrance to the Pillars of Hercules, two towering walls of perpendicular rock that approach each other almost threateningly, as if they would close up and crush between them the rash mortal who dared to penetrate farther,--in that impressive spot, while I lingered, half yielding to a mysterious hesitation about entering the strange portal, a bird song fell upon my ear. It was a plaintive warble, that sounded far away up the stern cliff above my head. It seemed impossible that a bird could find a foothold, or be in any way attracted by those bare walls, yet I turned my eyes, and later my gla.s.s that way.

At first nothing was to be seen save, part way up the height, an exquisite bit of nature. In a niche that might have been scooped out by a mighty hand, where scarcely a ray of sunlight could penetrate, and no human touch could make or mar, were growing, and blooming luxuriantly, a golden columbine, Colorado's pride and glory, a rosy star-shaped blossom unknown to me, and a cl.u.s.ter of

"Proud cyclamens on long, lithe stems that soar."

When I could withdraw my eyes from this dainty wind-sown garden, I sought the singer, who proved to be a small brown bird with a conspicuous white throat, flitting about on the face of the rock, apparently quite at home, and constantly repeating his few notes. His song was tender and bewitching in its effect, though it was really simple in construction, being merely nine notes, the first uttered twice, and the remaining eight in descending chromatic scale.

Now and then the tiny songster disappeared in what looked like a slight crack in the wall, but instantly reappeared, and resumed his siren strains. Spellbound I stood, looking and listening; but alas! the hour was late, the way was long, and others were waiting; I needs must tear myself away. "To-morrow I will come again," I said, as I turned back.

"To-morrow I shall be here alone, and spend the whole day with the canon wren."

Then we retraced our steps of the morning, lingering among the pleasant groves of cottonwood, oak, and aspen; pausing to admire the cactus display of gorgeous yellow, with petals widespread, yet so wedded to their wildness that they resented the touch of a human hand, resisting their ravisher with needle-like barbs, and then sullenly drawing together their satin petals and refusing to open them more; past great thickets of wild roses, higher than our heads and fragrant as the morning; beside close-growing bushes, where hid the

"Golden cradle of the moccasin flower,"

and the too clever yellow-breasted chat had mocked and defied me; and so home to the camp.

At an early hour the next morning, the carriage of my hostess set me down at the entrance of Cheyenne Canon proper, with the impedimenta necessary for a day's isolation from civilization. I pa.s.sed through the gate,--for even this grand work of nature is claimed as private property; but, happily, through good sense or indifference, "improvements" have not been attempted, and one forgets the gate and the gate-keeper as soon as they are pa.s.sed.

Entering at that unnatural hour, and alone, leaving the last human being behind,--staring in astonishment, by the way, at my unprecedented proceeding,--I began to realize, as I walked up the narrow path, that the whole grand canon, winding perhaps a mile into the heart of this most beautiful of the Rocky Mountains, was mine alone for three hours.

Indeed, when the time arrived for tourists to appear, so little did I concern myself with them that they might have been a procession of spectres pa.s.sing by; so, in effect, the canon was my solitary possession for nine blissful hours.

The delights of that perfect day cannot be put into words. Strolling up the path, filled with an inexpressible sense of ownership and seclusion from all the world, I first paused in the neighborhood of the small cliff-dweller whose music had charmed me, and suggested the enchanting idea of spending a day with him in his retreat. I seated myself opposite the forbidding wall where the bird had hovered, apparently so much at home. All was silent; no singer to be heard, no wren to be seen. The sun, which turned the tops of the Pillars to gold as I entered, crept down inch by inch till it beat upon my head and clothed the rock in a red glory. Still no bird appeared. High above the top of the rocks, in the clear thin air of the mountain, a flock of swallows wheeled and sported, uttering an unfamiliar two-note call; b.u.t.terflies fluttered irresolute, looking frivolous enough in the presence of the eternal hills; gauzy-winged dragonflies zigzagged to and fro, their intense blue gleaming in the sun. The hour for visitors drew near, and my precious solitude was fast slipping away.

Slowly then I walked up the canon, looking for my singer. Humming-birds were hovering before the bare rock as before a flower, perhaps sipping the water-drops that here and there trickled down, and large hawks, like mere specks against the blue, were soaring, but no wren could I see. At last I reached the end, with its waterfall fountain. Close within this ceaseless sprinkle, on a narrow ledge that was never dry, was placed--I had almost said grew--a bird's nest; whose, it were needless to ask. One American bird, and one only, chooses perpetual dampness for his environment,--the American dipper, or water ouzel.

Here I paused to muse over the spray-soaked cradle on the rock. In this strange place had lived a bird so eccentric that he prefers not only to nest under a continuous shower, through which he must constantly pa.s.s, but to spend most of his life in, not on the water. Shall we call him a fool or a philosopher? Is the water a protection, and from what? Has "damp, moist unpleasantness" no terrors for his fine feathers? Where now were the nestlings whose lullaby had been the music of the falling waters? Down that sheer rock, perhaps into the water at its foot, had been the first flight of the ouzel baby. Why had I come too late to see him?

But the hours were pa.s.sing, while I had not seen, and, what was worse, had not heard my first charmer, the canon wren. Leaving these perplexing conundrums unsolved, I turned slowly back down the walk, to resume my search. Perhaps fifty feet from the ouzel nest, as I lingered to admire the picturesque rapids in the brook, a slight movement drew my attention to a little projection on a stone, not six feet from me, where a small chipmunk sat pertly up, holding in his two hands, and eagerly nibbling--was it, could it be a strawberry in this rocky place?

Of course I stopped instantly to look at this pretty sight. I judged him to be a youngster, partly because of his evident fearlessness of his hereditary enemy, a human being; more on account of the saucy way in which he returned my stare; and most, perhaps, from the appearance of absorbing delight, in which there was a suggestion of the unexpected, with which he discussed that sweet morsel. Closely I watched him as he turned the treasure round and round in his deft little paws, and at last dropped the rifled hull. Would he go for another, and where? In an instant, with a parting glance at me, to make sure that I had not moved, he scrambled down his rocky throne, and bounded in great leaps over the path to a crumpled paper, which I saw at once was one of the bags with which tourists sow the earth. But its presence there did not rouse in my furry friend the indignation it excited in me. To him it was a treasure-trove, for into it he disappeared without a moment's hesitation; and almost before I had jumped to the conclusion that it contained the remains of somebody's luncheon, he reappeared, holding in his mouth another strawberry, bounded over the ground to his former seat, and proceeded to dispose of that one, also. The scene was so charming and his pleasure so genuine that I forgave the careless traveler on the spot, and only wished I had a kodak to secure a permanent picture of this unique strawberry festival.

As I loitered along, gazing idly at the brook, ever listening and longing for the wren song, I was suddenly struck motionless by a loud, shrill, and peculiar cry. It was plainly a bird voice, and it seemed to come almost from the stream itself. It ceased in a moment, and then followed a burst of song, liquid as the singing of the brook, and enchantingly sweet, though very low. I was astounded. Who could sing like that up in this narrow mountain gorge, where I supposed the canon wren was king?

At the point where I stood, a straggling shrub, the only one for rods, hung over the brink. I silently sank to a seat behind it, lest I disturb the singer, and remained without movement. The baffling carol went on for some seconds, and for the only time in my life I wished I could put a spell upon brook-babble, that I might the better hear.

Cautiously I raised my gla.s.s to my eyes, and examined the rocks across the water, probably eight feet from me. Then arose again that strange cry, and at the same instant my eye fell upon a tiny ledge, level with the water, and perhaps six inches long, on which stood a small fellow-creature in great excitement. He was engaged in what I should call "curtsying"; that is, bending his leg joint, and dropping his plump little body for a second, then bobbing up to his fullest height, repeating the performance constantly,--looking eagerly out over the water the while, evidently expecting somebody. This was undoubtedly the bird's manner of begging for food,--a very pretty and well-bred way, too, vastly superior to the impetuous calls and demands of some young birds. The movement was "dipping," of course, and he was the dipper, or ouzel baby, that had been cradled in that fountain-dashed nest by the fall. He was not long out of it, either; for though fully dressed in his modest slate-color, with white feet, and white edgings to many of his feathers, he had hardly a vestige of a tail. He was a winsome baby, for all that.

While I studied the points of the stranger, breathless lest he should disappear before my eyes, he suddenly burst out with the strange call I had heard. It was clearly a cry of joy, of welcome, for out of the water, up on to the ledge beside him, scrambled at that moment a grown-up ouzel. He gave one poke into the wide-open mouth of the infant, then slipped back into the water, dropped down a foot or more, climbed out upon another little shelf in the rock, and in a moment the song arose. I watched the singer closely. The notes were so low and so mingled with the roar of the brook that even then I should not have been certain he was uttering them if I had not seen his throat and mouth distinctly. The song was really exquisite, and as much in harmony with the melody of the stream as the voice of the English sparrow is with the city sounds among which he dwells, and the plaintive refrain of the meadow-lark with the low-lying, silent fields where he spends his days.

But little cared baby ouzel for music, however ravishing. What to his mind was far more important was food,--in short, worms. His pretty begging continued, and the daring notion of attempting a perilous journey over the foot of water that separated him from his papa plainly entered his head. He hurried back and forth on the brink with growing agitation, and was seemingly about to plunge in, when the singer again entered the water, brought up another morsel, and then stood on the ledge beside the eager youngling, "dipping" occasionally himself, and showing every time he winked--as did the little one, also--snowy-white eyelids, in strange contrast to the dark slate-colored plumage.

This aesthetic manner of discharging family duties, alternating food for the body with rapture of the soul, continued for some time, probably until the young bird had as much as was good for him; and then supplies were cut off by the peremptory disappearance of the purveyor, who plunged with the brook over the edge of a rock, and was seen no more.

A little later a grown bird appeared, that I supposed at first was the returning papa, but a few moments' observation convinced me that it was the mother; partly because no song accompanied the work, but more because of the entirely different manners of the new-comer. Filling the crop of that importunate offspring of hers was, with this Quaker-dressed dame, a serious business that left no time for rest or recreation. Two charmed hours I sat absorbed, watching the most wonderful evolutions one could believe possible to a creature in feathers.

At the point where this little drama was enacted, the brook rushed over a line of pebbles stretching from bank to bank, lying at all angles and of all sizes, from six to ten inches in diameter. Then it ran five or six feet quietly, around smooth rocks here and there above the water, and ended by plunging over a ma.s.s of bowlders to a lower level. The bird began by mounting one of those slippery rounded stones, and thrusting her head under water up to her shoulders. Holding it there a few seconds, apparently looking for something, she then jumped in where the turmoil was maddest, picked an object from the bottom, and, returning to the ledge, gave it to baby.

The next moment, before I had recovered from my astonishment at this feat of the ouzel, she ran directly up the falls (which, though not high, were exceedingly lively), being half the time entirely under water, and exactly as much at her ease as if no water were there; though how she could stand in the rapid current, not to speak of walking straight up against it, I could not understand.

Often she threw herself into the stream, and let it carry her down, like a duck, a foot or two, while she looked intently on the bottom, then simply walked up out of it on to a stone. I could see that her plumage was not in the least wet; a drop or two often rested on her back when she came out, but it rolled off in a moment. She never even shook herself. The food she brought to that eager youngling every few minutes looked like minute worms, doubtless some insect larvae.

Several times this hard-working mother plunged into the brook where it was shallow, ran or walked down it, half under water, and stopped on the very brink of the lower fall, where one would think she could not even stand, much less turn back and run up stream, which she did freely. This looked to me almost as difficult as for a man to stand on the brink of Niagara, with the water roaring and tumbling around him. Now and then the bird ran or flew up, against the current, and entirely under water, so that I could see her only as a dark-colored moving object, and then came out all fresh and dry beside the baby, with a mouthful of food. I should hardly dare to tell this, for fear of raising doubts of my accuracy, if the same thing had not been seen and reported by others before me. Her crowning action was to stand with one foot on each of two stones in the middle and most uproarious part of the little fall, lean far over, and deliberately pick something from a third stone.

All this was no show performance, even no frolic, on the part of the ouzel,--it was simply her every-day manner of providing for the needs of that infant; and when she considered the duty discharged for the time, she took her departure, very probably going at once to the care of a second youngster who awaited her coming in some other niche in the rocks.

Finding himself alone again, and no more dainties coming his way, the young dipper turned for entertainment to the swift-running streamlet. He went down to the edge, stepping easily, never hopping; but when the shallow edge of the water ran over his pretty white toes, he hastily scampered back, as if afraid to venture farther. The clever little rogue was only coquetting, however, for when he did at last plunge in he showed himself very much at home. He easily crossed a turbulent bit of the brook, and when he was carried down a little he scrambled without trouble up on a stone. All the time, too, he was peering about after food; and in fact it was plain that his begging was a mere pretense,--he was perfectly well able to look out for himself. Through the whole of these scenes not one of the birds, old or young, had paid the slightest attention to me, though I was not ten feet from them.

During the time I had been so absorbed in my delightful study of domestic life in the ouzel family, the other interesting resident of the canon--the elusive canon wren--had been forgotten. Now, as I noticed that the day was waning, I thought of him again, and, tearing myself away from the enticing picture, leaving the pretty baby to his own amus.e.m.e.nts, I returned to the famous Pillars, and planted myself before my rock, resolved to stay there till the bird appeared.

No note came to encourage me, but, gazing steadily upward, after a time I noticed something that looked like a fly running along the wall.

Bringing my gla.s.s to my eyes, I found that it was a bird, and one of the white-throated family I so longed to see. She--for her silence and her ways proclaimed her s.e.x--was running about where appeared to be nothing but perpendicular rock, flirting her tail after the manner of her race, as happy and as unconcerned as if several thousand feet of sheer cliff did not stretch between her and the brook at its foot. Her movements were jerky and wren-like, and every few minutes she flitted into a tiny crevice that seemed, from my point of view, hardly large enough to admit even her minute form. She was dressed like the sweet singer of yesterday, and the door she entered so familiarly was the same I had seen him interested in. I guessed that she was his mate.

The bird seemed to be gathering from the rock something which she constantly carried into the hole. Possibly there were nestlings in that snug and inaccessible home. To discover if my conjectures were true, I redoubled my vigilance, though it was neck-breaking work, for so narrow was the canon at that point that I could not get far enough away for a more level view.

Sometimes the bustling little wren flew to the top of the wall, about twenty feet above her front door, as it looked to me (it may have been ten times that). Over the edge she instantly disappeared, but in a few minutes returned to her occupation on the rock. Upon the earth beneath her sky parlor she seemed never to turn her eyes, and I began to fear that I should get no nearer view of the shy cliff-dweller.

Finally, however, the caprice seized the tantalizing creature of descending to the level of mortals, and the brook. Suddenly, while I looked, she flung herself off her perch, and fell--down--down--down-- disappearing at last behind a clump of weeds at the bottom. Was she killed? Had she been shot by some noiseless air-gun? What had become of the tiny wren? I sprang to my feet, and hurried as near as the intervening stream would allow, when lo! there she was, lively and fussy as ever, running about at the foot of the cliff, searching, searching all the time, ever and anon jumping up and pulling from the rock something that clung to it.

When the industrious bird had filled her beak with material that stuck out on both sides, which I concluded to be some kind of rock moss, she started back. Not up the face of that blank wall, loaded as she was, but by a strange path that she knew well, up which I watched her wending her way to her proper level. This was a cleft between two solid bodies of rock, where, it would seem, the two walls, in settling together for their lifelong union, had broken and crumbled, and formed between them a sort of crack, filled with unattached bowlders, with crevices and pa.s.sages, sometimes perpendicular, sometimes horizontal. Around and through these was a zigzag road to the top, evidently as familiar to that atom of a bird as Broadway is to some of her fellow-creatures, and more easily traversed, for she had it all to herself.

The wren flew about three feet to the first step of her upward pa.s.sage, then ran and clambered nearly all the rest of the way, darting behind jutting rocks and coming out the other side, occasionally flying a foot or two; now pausing as if for an observation, jerking her tail upright and letting it drop back, wren-fashion, then starting afresh, and so going on till she reached the level of her nest, when she flew across the (apparent) forty or fifty feet, directly into the crevice. In a minute she came out, and without an instant's pause flung herself down again.

I watched this curious process very closely. The wren seemed to close her wings; certainly she did not use them, nor were they in the least spread that I could detect. She came to the ground as if she were a stone, as quickly and as directly as a stone would have fallen; but just before touching the ground she spread her wings, and alighted lightly on her feet. Then she fell to her labor of collecting what I suppose was nesting material, and in a few minutes started up again by the roundabout road to the top. Two hours or more, with gradually stiffening neck, I spent with the wren, while she worked constantly and silently, and not once during all that time did the singer appear.

What the scattering parties of tourists, who from time to time pa.s.sed me, thought of a silent personage sitting in the canon alone, staring intently up at a blank wall of rock, I did not inquire. Perhaps that she was a verse-writer seeking inspiration; more likely, however, a harmless lunatic musing over her own fancies.

I know well what I thought of them, from the glimpses that came to me as I sat there; some climbing over the sharp-edged rocks, in tight boots, delicate kid gloves, and immaculate traveling costumes, and panting for breath in the seven thousand feet alt.i.tude; others uncomfortably seated on the backs of the scraggy little burros, one of whom was so interested in my proceedings that he walked directly up and thrust his long, inquiring ears into my very face, spite of the resistance of his rider, forcing me to rise and decline closer acquaintance. One of the melancholy procession was loaded with a heavy camera, another equipped with a b.u.t.terfly net; this one bent under the weight of a big basket of luncheon, and that one was burdened with satchels and wraps and umbrellas. All were laboriously trying to enjoy themselves, but not one lingered to look at the wonder and the beauty of the surroundings. I pitied them, one and all, feeling obliged, as no doubt they did, to "see the sights;" tramping the lovely canon to-day, glancing neither to right nor left; whirling through the Garden of the G.o.ds to-morrow; painfully climbing the next day the burro track to the Grave, the sacred point where

"Upon the wind-blown mountain spot Chosen and loved as best by her, Watched over by near sun and star, Encompa.s.sed by wide skies, she sleeps."

Alas that one cannot quote with truth the remaining lines!

"And not one jarring murmur creeps Up from the plain her rest to mar."

For now, at the end of the toilsome pa.s.sage, that place which should be sacred to loving memories and tender thoughts, is desecrated by placards and picnickers, defaced by advertis.e.m.e.nts, strewn with the wrapping-paper, tin cans, and bottles with which the modern globe-trotter marks his path through the beautiful and sacred scenes in nature.[1]

In this uncomfortable way the majority of summer tourists spend day after day, and week after week; going home tired out, with no new idea gained, but happy to be able to say they have been here and there, beheld this canon, dined on that mountain, drank champagne in such a pa.s.s, and struggled for breath on top of "the Peak." Their eyes may indeed have pa.s.sed over these scenes, but they have not _seen_ one thing.

Far wiser is he (and more especially she) who seeks out a corner obscure enough to escape the eyes of the "procession," settles himself in it, and spends fruitful and delightful days alone with nature; never hasting nor rushing; seeing and studying the wonders at hand, but avoiding "parties" and "excursions;" valuing more a thorough knowledge of one canon than a glimpse of fifty; caring more to appreciate the beauties of one mountain than to scramble over a whole range; getting into such perfect harmony with nature that it is as if he had come into possession of a new life; and from such an experience returning to his home refreshed and invigorated in mind and body.

Such were my reflections as the sun went down, and I felt, as I pa.s.sed out through the gate, that I ought to double my entrance fee, so much had my life been enriched by that perfect day alone in Cheyenne Canon.

FOOTNOTES: