The seasons for visiting National Parks are spring, summer, autumn, and winter! Morning, noon, the sunset hour, under the stars and with the moon--all times, each in its way, are good for rambling in these places of instruction and delight. I have climbed numerous peaks by moonlight and starlight, and have stood on the summit of the Continental Divide with the winter moon. Nature is good at all times. Rainy days, gray days, windy days, all have something for you not ordinarily offered. So, too, have the sunny winter days when upon the dazzling snow fall the deep-blue shadows of the pines. Forget the season and the weather; visit the Parks when you can stay there longest. One day heavy clouds rested upon the snowy earth around my cabin, nine thousand feet above sea-level. In these, and in the falling snow, I started up the Long's Peak trail, in what now is the Rocky Mountain National Park. I wished to measure the storm-cloud's vertical depth and to observe its movements. Only a ravine and instinct enabled me to snow-shoe through the blinding, flying snow and almost opaque sheep's-wool cloud. The cloud was three thousand feet thick. Suddenly, at twelve thousand feet, the depth of snow became markedly less. Within a few rods I burst through the upper surface of the cloud into brilliant sunshine! Not a bit of snow or cloud was there above this upper level. From a high ridge I watched the top surface of the storm-cloud as it lay before me in the sun--a silvery expanse of unruffled sea, pierced by many peaks. Half a mile above towered vast, rugged Long's Peak. Like a huge raft becalmed in a quiet harbor, the cloud-sea moved slowly and steadily, almost imperceptibly, a short distance along the mountains; then, as if anchored in the center, it swung in easy rotation a few degrees, hesitated, and slowly drifted back. Occasionally it sank, very slowly, several hundred feet, only to rise easily to its original level. With wonder I long watched this beautiful sunny spectacle, finding it hard to realize that a blinding snow was falling beneath it. Later I learned that this snowfall was thirty inches deep over several hundred thousand square miles; but it fell only below the altitude of twelve thousand feet and not on the high peaks. Mountain-tops have more sunshine and fewer storms than the lowlands. The middle slopes of a peak regularly receive heavier falls of rain and snow than does the summit.