rifts have reached the midmost
whorls and covered up the branches.

When the snows are particularly wet and heavy they spread over the young
firs in green-ribbed tents wherein harbor winter loving birds.

All storms of desert hills, except wind storms, are impotent. East and
east of the Sierras they rise in nearly parallel ranges, desertward, and
no rain breaks over them, except from some far-strayed cloud or roving
wind from the California Gulf, and these only in winter. In summer the
sky travails with thunderings and the flare of sheet lightnings to win
a few blistering big drops, and once in a lifetime the chance of a
torrent. But you have not known what force resides in the mindless
things until you have known a desert wind. One expects it at the turn of
the two seasons, wet and dry, with electrified tense nerves. Along the
edge of the mesa where it drops off to the valley, dust devils begin to
rise white and steady, fanning out at the top like the genii out of the
Fisherman's bottle. One supposes the Indians might have learned the
use of smoke signals from these dust pillars as they learn most things
direct from the tutelage of the earth. The air begins to move fluently,
blowing hot and cold between the ranges. Far south rises a murk of sand
against the sky; it grows, the wind shakes itself, and has a smell of
earth. The cloud of small dust takes on the color of gold and shuts out
the neighborhood, the push of the wind is unsparing. Only man of all
folk is foolish enough to stir abroad in it. But being in a house is
really much worse; no relief from the dust, and a great fear of the
creaking timbers. There is no looking ahead in such a wind, and the bite
of the small sharp sand on exposed skin is keener than any insect sting.
One might sleep, for the lapping of the wind wears one to the point
of exhaustion very soon, but there is dread, in open sand stretches
sometimes justified, of being over blown by the drift. It is hot, dry,
fretful work, but by going along the ground with the wind behind, one
may come upon strange things in its tumultuous privacy. I like these
truces of wind and heat that the desert makes, otherwise I do not know
how I should come by so many acquaintances with furtive folk. I like
to see hawks sitting daunted in shallow holes, not daring to spread a
feather, and doves in a row by the prickle-bushes, and shut-eyed cattle,
turned tail to the wind in a patient doze. I like the smother of sand
am