The Heart of Thunder Mountain

“Well, about Sangre de Cristo first. That’s a great range that stands up high and white along the east. Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for Blood of Christ. I can see those pious old rascal adventurers uncovering their blessed heads when they first glimpsed it. At sunset it takes the color–not always, not often, in fact, perhaps a dozen times a year. There are days and days when the range is only white and cold, days when it’s black with storms, and days when it’s dismal gray. Then there comes an evening when the sun goes down red behind the San Juan, and the snows on Sangre de Cristo run like blood. The whole world, for a few minutes, seems to halt and stand still in awe at that weird and mysterious spectacle–trainmen setting the brakes on squealing ore trains on Marshall Pass, and miners coming out of their tunnels above Creed all stop and look; Mexican sheep-herders in Conejos pause to cross themselves; ranchmen by their lonely corrals up and down the San Luis, and cowboys in the saddle on the open range–all spellbound. It gives you a strange feeling–something that goes back to the primitive instincts of mankind–something of reverence, something of wonder, something of fear–the fear that the first men had when they gazed on the phenomena they could not understand, and began to make their myths and their religions. Primitive superstition, primitive terror will never quite down in us, no matter how wise and practical we become. There’s always, in beauty–in sheer beauty something terrifying, as well as something sad. But–do I bore you with my dithyrambs?”

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