In the Rocky Mountains the soil and morainal débris were transported only a few miles, while the Wisconsin and Iowa glaciers brought thousands of acres of rich surfacing, now on the productive farms of Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa, from places hundreds of miles to the north in Canada. In the Rocky Mountains most of the forests are growing in soil or moraines that were ground and distributed by glaciers. Thus the work of the glaciers has made the earth and the mountains far more useful in addition to giving them gentler influences,--charming lakes and flowing landscape lines. It is wonderful that the mighty worker and earth-shaper, the Ice King, should have used snowflakes for edge-tools, millstones, and crushing stamps! To know the story of the Ice King--to be able to understand and restore the conditions that made lakes and headlands, moraines and fertile fields--will add mightily to the enjoyment of a visit to the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the coasts and mountains of Norway and New England, Alaska's unrivaled glacier realm, or the extraordinary ice sculpturing in the Yosemite National Park. Edward Orton, Jr., formerly State Geologist of Ohio, who spent weeks toiling over and mapping the Mills Moraine on the east slope of Long's Peak, gave a glimpse of what one may feel and enjoy from nature investigation in his closing remarks concerning this experience. He said, "If one adds to the physical pleasures of mountaineering, the intellectual delight of looking with the seeing eye, of explaining, interpreting, and understanding the gigantic forces which have wrought these wonders; if by these studies one's vision may be extended past the sublime beauties of the present down through the dim ages of the past until each carved and bastioned peak tells a romance above words; if by communion with this greatness, one's soul is uplifted and attuned into fuller accord with the great cosmic forces of which we are the higher manifestation, then mountaineering becomes not a pastime but an inspiration." A Rainy Day at the Stream's Source A Rainy Day at the Stream's Source To spend a day in the rain at the source of a stream was an experience I had long desired, for the behavior of the waters in collecting and hurrying down slopes would doubtless show some of Nature's interesting ways. On the Rockies no spot seemed quite so promising as the watershed on which the St. Vrain made its start to the sea. This had steep and moderate slopes, rock ledges, and deep soil; and about one half of its five thousand acres was covered with primeval forest, while the remainder had been burned almost to barrenness by a fierce forest fire. Here were varied and contrasting conditions to give many moods to the waters, and all this display could easily be seen during one active day.