But the essential excitement of this land is more than cliff face, spire, and sudden storm. It comes to you when you realize that here is an aggregation of dramatically differing life zones, where a day’s walk can easily take you from prairie and forest to treelimit and tundra; where a dense forest of redcedar and hemlock, similar to the rain forests of the Pacific coast, exists a score of kilometers from the great prairie sea. Or it comes when you discover that these mountains—young and sharp with shadows, snow-jeweled and newly gowned with forests—are chiseled from the oldest unaltered sedimentary rocks on earth. I come from the prairie and love its broad strokes; I’ve learned to hear the singing in the grass and to see those long, slow seasons soar the level horizons like gliding hawks. But here I learned to match my days against a wild earth, and in me grew the mysterious need to know a mountain from its every side. Mountains that wear the dawn like yellow hats, repeated in the named and nameless lakes. Mountains that stretch the storms between them and balance rainbows ridge to ridge. I must see again the secret forest places, where the paleflowered wood-nymphs hover like a breath, and know once more the endless meadows painted camas blue. I need the perfect freedom of this land, to be able to say, _today I will climb Siyeh_: to stand, for a time, on the rugged shoulders of this upright earth. [Illustration: The sharp spire of little Matterhorn and the broad face of Mt. Edwards loom above Going-to-the-Sun Road in the upper McDonald Valley. During warm days in spring the valleys of the park resound with the thunder of avalanches.] [Illustration: Twilight view.] Cycles and Seasons Bedrock: The First Story On the trail that connects the Logan Pass visitor center to Hidden Lake overlook there is a shallow pond. Near Hidden Pass, it collects its meltwater from the Continental Divide and sends it down the shallow gorge that drains the Hanging Gardens; as a waterfall it plunges into the upper St. Mary Valley where it becomes Reynolds Creek; joined by other tributaries, it continues its long journey to Hudson Bay. The surface of this pond is seldom still, for the wind treats it like a sea. Because the water is shallow, the wave action wrinkles the bottom mud into ripple patterns, mimicking the churning waves.