and
forms mimic snow wreaths on the floor, and the wind raves and howls and
plays among the creaking pine branches and snaps them short off, and
the lightning plays round the blasted top of Long's Peak, and the hardy
hunters divert themselves with the thought that when I go to bed I must
turn out and face the storm!

You will ask, "What is Estes Park?" This name, with the quiet Midland
Countries' sound, suggests "park palings" well lichened, a lodge with a
curtseying woman, fallow deer, and a Queen Anne mansion. Such as it
is, Estes Park is mine. It is unsurveyed, "no man's land," and mine by
right of love, appropriation, and appreciation; by the seizure of its
peerless sunrises and sunsets, its glorious afterglow, its blazing
noons, its hurricanes sharp and furious, its wild auroras, its glories
of mountain and forest, of canyon, lake, and river, and the
stereotyping them all in my memory. Mine, too, in a better than the
sportsman's sense, are its majestic wapiti, which play and fight under
the pines in the early morning, as securely as fallow deer under our
English oaks; its graceful "black-tails," swift of foot; its superb
bighorns, whose noble leader is to be seen now and then with his
classic head against the blue sky on the top of a colossal rock; its
sneaking mountain lion with his hideous nocturnal caterwaulings, the
great "grizzly," the beautiful skunk, the wary beaver, who is always
making lakes, damming and turning streams, cutting down young
cotton-woods, and setting an example of thrift and industry; the wolf,
greedy and cowardly; the coyote and the lynx, and all the lesser fry of
mink, marten, cat, hare, fox, squirrel, and chipmunk, as well as things
that fly, from the eagle down to the crested blue-jay. May their
number never be less, in spite of the hunter who kills for food and
gain, and the sportsman who kills and marauds for pastime!

But still I have not answered the natural question,[15] "What is Estes
Park?" Among the striking peculiarities of these mountains are
hundreds of high-lying valleys, large and small, at heights varying
from 6,000 to 11,000 feet. The most important are North Park, held by
hostile Indians; Middle Park, famous for hot springs and trout; South
Park is 10,000 feet high, a great rolling prairie seventy miles long,
well grassed and watered, but nearly closed by snow in winter. But
parks innumerable are scattered throughout the mountains, most of them
unnamed, and othe