te and I sauntered
down through the dripping bushes reveling in the universal vigor and
freshness that inspired all the life about me. How clean and unworn and
immortal the woods seemed to be!--the lofty cedars in full bloom laden
with golden pollen and their washed plumes shining; the pines rocking
gently and settling back into rest, and the evening sunbeams spangling
on the broad leaves of the madronos, their tracery of yellow boughs
relieved against dusky thickets of Chestnut Oak; liverworts,
lycopodiums, ferns were exulting in glorious revival, and every moss
that had ever lived seemed to be coming crowding back from the dead to
clothe each trunk and stone in living green. The steaming ground seemed
fairly to throb and tingle with life; smilax, fritillaria, saxifrage,
and young violets were pushing up as if already conscious of the summer
glory, and innumerable green and yellow buds were peeping and smiling
everywhere.

As for the birds and squirrels, not a wing or tail of them was to be
seen while the storm was blowing. Squirrels dislike wet weather more
than cats do; therefore they were at home rocking in their dry nests.
The birds were hiding in the dells out of the wind, some of the
strongest of them pecking at acorns and manzanita berries, but most were
perched on low twigs, their breast feathers puffed out and keeping one
another company through the hard time as best they could.

When I arrived at the village about sundown, the good people bestirred
themselves, pitying my bedraggled condition as if I were some benumbed
castaway snatched from the sea, while I, in turn, warm with excitement
and reeking like the ground, pitied them for being dry and defrauded of
all the glory that Nature had spread round about them that day.

CHAPTER XII

SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS

The weather of spring and summer in the middle region of the Sierra is
usually well flecked with rains and light dustings of snow, most of
which are far too obviously joyful and life-giving to be regarded as
storms; and in the picturesque beauty and clearness of outlines of their
clouds they offer striking contrasts to those boundless, all-embracing
cloud-mantles of the storms of winter. The smallest and most perfectly
individualized specimens present a richly modeled cumulous cloud rising
above the dark woods, about 11 A.M., swelling with a visible motion
straight up into the calm, sunny sky to a height of 12,000 to 14,000
feet above the sea