e to the sighing of the pine
trees and the scampering of the pack rats over my roof.

Yes, my dream cabin was come true. There it stood on its lofty
vantage, watching over me as I fared forth on my explorations, waiting
faithfully for my return, never reproaching me for my absence, its snug
walls always ready to welcome me like sheltering arms, its quickly
blazing hearth cheering me like a warm, loving heart. So high was it
perched, that I could see it, while on my excursions, from many miles
away. It was a beacon to my wandering spirit, a compass and a guide to
my wandering feet.

From it, as my knowledge of woodcraft, which I came to know was nothing
more than common sense and resourcefulness applied to outdoor living,
increased, I ranged farther and farther, into the wilder, more remote
regions, which, except for an occasional trapper, no other white man
had ever penetrated. The country around my homestead, Long's Peak, and
the adjacent mountains, which have since been made a part of Rocky
Mountain National Park, is itself exceptionally high and rugged.
There, in a comparatively small area, are more than sixty peaks over
twelve thousand feet high, Long's, of course, being over fourteen
thousand feet. As the years passed my wanderings took me along the
Continental Divide, from the Wyoming line at the north to the southern
boundary of Colorado.

The vastness of the Rocky Mountains is beyond comprehension, they
sprawl the length of the continent. No one can hope to see all their
beauty, all their grandeur and awesomeness in a single lifetime. From
the crest of the Divide, north, west, and south, stretches a world of
rugged peaks. Range on range, tier on tier, like the waves of a
solidified ocean in a Titanic storm they roll away to the distant
horizon shore.

Always, as a boy, that compelling panorama fascinated me. On pleasant,
sunny days, those rugged slopes, from a distance, looked safe and
plushy, for all the world like deerskin; the dark green canyons
mysteriously beckoned to me, the myriad lakes sparkled knowingly,
intimately, the swift brooks chattered incessantly, urging action,
adventure. On stormy days, when violent winds swept over the Divide
and hid the heads of the peaks beneath the scuttling clouds, that
overwhelming vista, with its tremendous, deep-gashed canyons, its
towering, forbidding cliffs, still challenged even while it repelled me.

To explore every mile, vertical and horizontal, o