wind as if they were real flakes
shaken out of a cloud, not sprung from the ground on wiry three-inch
stems. They keep awake all night, and all the air is heavy and musky
sweet because of them.

Farther south on the trail there will be poppies meeting ankle deep, and
singly, peacock-painted bubbles of calochortus blown out at the tops of
tall stems. But before the season is in tune for the gayer blossoms the
best display of color is in the lupin wash. There is always a lupin wash
somewhere on a mesa trail,--a broad, shallow, cobble-paved sink of
vanished waters, where the hummocks of _Lupinus ornatus_ run a delicate
gamut from silvery green of spring to silvery white of winter foliage.
They look in fullest leaf, except for color, most like the huddled huts
of the campoodie, and the largest of them might be a man's length in
diameter. In their season, which is after the gilias are at their best,
and before the larkspurs are ripe for pollen gathering, every terminal
whorl of the lupin sends up its blossom stalk, not holding any constant
blue, but paling and purpling to guide the friendly bee to virginal
honey sips, or away from the perfected and depleted flower. The length
of the blossom stalk conforms to the rounded contour of the plant, and
of these there will be a million moving indescribably in the airy
current that flows down the swale of the wash.

There is always a little wind on the mesa, a sliding current of cooler
air going down the face of the mountain of its own momentum, but not to
disturb the silence of great space. Passing the wide mouths of canons,
one gets the effect of whatever is doing in them, openly or behind a
screen of cloud,--thunder of falls, wind in the pine leaves, or rush and
roar of rain. The rumor of tumult grows and dies in passing, as from
open doors gaping on a village street, but does not impinge on the
effect of solitariness. In quiet weather mesa days have no parallel for
stillness, but the night silence breaks into certain mellow or poignant
notes. Late afternoons the burrowing owls may be seen blinking at the
doors of their hummocks with perhaps four or five elfish nestlings arow,
and by twilight begin a soft _whoo-oo-ing_, rounder, sweeter, more
incessant in mating time. It is not possible to disassociate the call of
the burrowing owl from the late slant light of the mesa. If the fine
vibrations which are the golden-violet glow of spring twilights were to
tremble into sound, it woul