No motor can climb up and down the steep switchback to the Arroyo Hondo of the Bridge. Cars taken over that trail must be towed; but from the Bridge, you can go on to Taos by motor. As you ascend the mesa above the river bed, you see the mountains ahead rise in black basalt like castellated walls, with tower and battlement jagged into the very clouds. Patches of yellow and red splotch the bronzing forests, where frost has touched the foliage; and you haven't gone very many miles into the lilac mist of the morning light--shimmering as it always shimmers above the sagebrush blue and sandy gold of the Upper Mesas--before you hear the laughter of living waters coming down from the mountain snows. One understands why the Indians chose the uplands; while the white man, who came after, had to choose the shadowy bottoms of the walled-in canyons. Someone, back in the good old days when we were not afraid to be poetic, said something about "traveling on the wings of the morning." I can't put in words what he meant; but you do it here--going up and up so gradually that you don't realize that you are in the lap, not of mountains, but of mountain peaks; breathing, not air, but ozone; uplifted by a great weight being taken off spirit and body; looking at life through rose-colored tints, not metaphorically, but really; for there is something in this high rare air--not dust, not moisture--that splits white light into its seven prismatic hues. You look through an atmosphere wonderfully rare, but it is never clear, white light. It is lavender, or lilac, or primrose, or gold, or red as blood according to the hours and the mood of hours; and if you want to carry the metaphor still farther, you may truthfully add that the hours on these high uplands are dancing hours. You never feel time to be a heavy, slow thing that oppresses the soul. [Illustration: Climbing home over your neighbor's roof and bolting your door by pulling up the ladder is customary in Taos]