nce, finally, your soul, grown big in a
moment, came to rest on the great precipices and pines of the greatest
mountains of all, close under the sky.

In a little, after the change had come to you, a change definite and
enduring, which left your inner processes forever different from what
they had been, you turned sharp to the west and rode five miles along
the knife-edge Ridge Trail to where Rattlesnake Canon led you down and
back to your accustomed environment.

To the left as you rode you saw, far on the horizon, rising to the
height of your eye, the mountains of the channel islands. Then the
deep sapphire of the Pacific, fringed with the soft, unchanging white
of the surf and the yellow of the shore. Then the town like a little
map, and the lush greens of the wide meadows, the fruit-groves, the
lesser ranges--all vivid, fertile, brilliant, and pulsating with
vitality. You filled your senses with it, steeped them in the beauty of
it. And at once, by a mere turn of the eyes, from the almost crude
insistence of the bright primary color of life, you faced the tenuous
azures of distance, the delicate mauves and amethysts, the lilacs and
saffrons of the arid country.

This was the wonder we never tired of seeing for ourselves, of showing
to others. And often, academically, perhaps a little wistfully, as one
talks of something to be dreamed of but never enjoyed, we spoke of how
fine it would be to ride down into that land of mystery and
enchantment, to penetrate one after another the canons dimly outlined
in the shadows cast by the westering sun, to cross the mountains lying
outspread in easy grasp of the eye, to gain the distant blue Ridge, and
see with our own eyes what lay beyond.

For to its other attractions the prospect added that of impossibility,
of unattainableness. These rides of ours were day rides. We had to
get home by nightfall. Our horses had to be fed, ourselves to be
housed. We had not time to continue on down the other side whither the
trail led. At the very and literal brink of achievement we were forced
to turn back.

Gradually the idea possessed us. We promised ourselves that some day
we would explore. In our after-dinner smokes we spoke of it.
Occasionally, from some hunter or forest-ranger, we gained little items
of information, we learned the fascination of musical names--Mono
Canon, Patrera Don Victor, Lloma Paloma, Patrera Madulce, Cuyamas,
became familiar to us as syllables. We de