Читать книгу Krag and Johnny Bear - Ernest Thompson Seton - Страница 6

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I see a broken upland in the far Northwest. Its gray and purple rocks are interpatched with colors rich and warm, the new-born colors of the upland spring, the greatest springtime in the world; for where there is no winter there can be no spring. The gloom is measure of the light. So, in this land of long, long winter night, where nature stints her joys for six hard months, then owns her debt and pays it all at once, the spring is glorious compensation for the past. Six months’ arrears of joy are paid in one great lavish outpour. And latest May is made the date of payment. Then spring, great, gorgeous, six-fold spring holds carnival on every ridge.

Even the sullen Gunder Peak, that pierces the north end of the ridge, unsombres just a whit. The upland beams with all the flowers it might have grown in six lost months; yet we see only one. Here, by our feet and farther on, and right and left and onward far away, in great, broad acre beds, the purple lupin blooming. Irregular, broken, straggling patches near, but broader, denser farther on; till on the distant slopes they lie, long, devious belts, like purple clouds at rest.

But late May though it be, the wind is cold; the pools tell yet of frost at night. The White Wind blows. Broad clouds come up, and down comes driving snow. Over the peaks, over the upland and over the upland flowers. Hoary, gray, and white the landscape grows in turn; and one by one the flowers are painted out. But the lupins on their taller, stiffer stems, can fight the snow for long, they bow their whitened heads beneath its load, then, thanks no little to the wind itself, shake free and stand up defiantly straight, and as fits their royal purple. And when the snowfall ends as suddenly as it began, the clouds roll by and the blue sky sees an upland shining white, but streaked and patched with blots and belts of lovely purple bloom.

And wound across, and in and out, are two long trails of track.