the john muir exhibit - writings - steep_trails - chapter 7
Chapter 7
A Great Storm in Utah
9
Utah has just been blessed with one of the grandest storms I have ever
beheld this side of the Sierra. The mountains are laden with fresh
snow; wild streams are swelling and booming adown the canyons, and out
in the valley of the Jordan a thousand rain-pools are gleaming in the
sun.
With reference to the development of fertile storms bearing snow and
rain, the greater portion of the calendar springtime of Utah has been
winter. In all the upper canyons of the mountains the snow is now
from five to ten feet deep or more, and most of it has fallen since
March. Almost every other day during the last three weeks small local
storms have been falling on the Wahsatch and Oquirrh Mountains, while
the Jordan Valley remained dry and sun-filled. But on the afternoon
of Thursday, the 17th ultimo, wind, rain, and snow filled the whole
basin, driving wildly over valley and plain from range to range,
bestowing their benefactions in most cordial and harmonious storm-measures.
The oldest Saints say they have never witnessed a more
violent storm of this kind since the first settlement of Zion, and
while the gale from the northwest, with which the storm began, was
rocking their adobe walls, uprooting trees and darkening the streets
with billows of dust and sand, some of them seemed inclined to guess
that the terrible phenomenon was one of the signs of the times of
which their preachers are so constantly reminding them, the beginning
of the outpouring of the treasured wrath of the Lord upon the Gentiles
for the killing of Joseph Smith. To me it seemed a cordial outpouring
of Nature's love; but it is easy to differ with salt Latter-Days in
everything -- storms, wives, politics, and religion.
About an hour before the storm reached the city I was so fortunate as
to be out with a friend on the banks of the Jordan enjoying the
scenery. Clouds, with peculiarly restless and self-conscious
gestures, were marshaling themselves along the mountain-tops, and
sending out long, overlapping wings across the valley; and even where
no cloud was visible, an obscuring film absorbed the sunlight, giving
rise to a cold, bluish darkness. Nevertheless, distant objects along
the boundaries of the landscape were revealed with wonderful
distinctness in this weird, subdued, cloud-sifted light. The
mountains, in particular, with the forests on their flanks, their mazy
lacelike canyons, the wombs of the ancient glaciers, and their
marvelous profusion of ornate sculpture, were most impressively
manifest. One would fancy that a man might be clearly seen walking on
the snow at a distance of twenty or thirty miles.
While we were reveling in this rare, ungarish grandeur, turning from
range to range, studying the darkening sky and listening to the still
small voices of the flowers at our feet, some of the denser clouds
came down, crowning and wreathing the highest peaks and dropping long
gray fringes whose smooth linear structure showed that snow was
beginning to fall. Of these partial storms there were soon ten or
twelve, arranged in two rows, while the main Jordan Valley between
them lay as yet in profound calm. At 4:30 p.m. a dark brownish cloud
appeared close down on the plain towards the lake, extending from the
northern extremity of the Oquirrh Range in a northeasterly direction
as far as the eye could reach. Its peculiar color and structure
excited our attention without enabling us to decide certainly as to
its character, but we were not left long in doubt, for in a few
minutes it came sweeping over the valley in a wild uproar, a torrent
of wind thick with sand and dust, advancing with a most majestic
front, rolling and overcombing like a gigantic sea-wave. Scarcely was
it in plain sight ere it was upon us, racing across the Jordan, over
the city, and up the slopes of the Wahsatch, eclipsing all the
landscapes in its course -- the bending trees, the dust streamers, and
the wild onrush of everything movable giving it an appreciable
visibility that rendered it grand and inspiring.
This gale portion of the storm lasted over an hour, then down came the
blessed rain and the snow all through the night and the next day, the
snow and rain alternating and blending in the valley. It is long
since I have seen snow coming into a city. The crystal flakes falling
in the foul streets was a pitiful sight.
Notwithstanding the vaunted refining influences of towns, purity of
all kinds -- pure hearts, pure streams, pure snow -- must here be exposed
to terrible trials. City Creek, coming from its high glacial
fountains, enters the streets of this Mormon Zion pure as an angel,
but how does it leave it? Even roses and lilies in gardens most loved
are tainted with a thousand impurities as soon as they unfold. I
heard Brigham Young in the Tabernacle the other day warning his people
that if they did not mend their manners angels would not come into
their houses, though perchance they might be sauntering by with little
else to do than chat with them. Possibly there may be Salt Lake
families sufficiently pure for angel society, but I was not pleased
with the reception they gave the small snow angels that God sent among
them the other might. Only the children hailed them with delight.
The old Latter-Days seemed to shun them. I should like to see how Mr.
Young, the Lake Prophet, would meet such messengers.
But to return to the storm. Toward the evening of the 18th it began
to wither. The snowy skirts of the Wahsatch Mountains appeared
beneath the lifting fringes of the clouds, and the sun shone out
through colored windows, producing one of the most glorious after-storm
effects I ever witnessed.
Looking across the Jordan, the gray
sagey slopes from the base of the Oquirrh Mountains were covered with
a thick, plushy cloth of gold, soft and ethereal as a cloud, not
merely tinted and gilded like a rock with autumn sunshine, but deeply
muffled beyond recognition. Surely nothing in heaven, nor any mansion
of the Lord in all his worlds, could be more gloriously carpeted.
Other portions of the plain were flushed with red and purple, and all
the mountains and the clouds above them were painted in corresponding
loveliness. Earth and sky, round and round the entire landscape, was
one ravishing revelation of color, infinitely varied and interblended.
I have seen many a glorious sunset beneath lifting storm clouds on the
mountains, but nothing comparable with this. I felt as if new-arrived
in some other far-off world. The mountains, the plains, the sky, all
seemed new. Other experiences seemed but to have prepared me for
this, as souls are prepared for heaven. To describe the colors on a
single mountain would, if it were possible at all, require many a
volume -- purples, and yellows, and delicious pearly grays divinely
toned and interblended, and so richly put on one seemed to be looking
down through the ground as through a sky. The disbanding clouds
lingered lovingly about the mountains, filling the canyons like tinted
wool, rising and drooping around the topmost peaks, fondling their
rugged bases, or, sailing alongside, trailed their lustrous fringes
through the pines as if taking a last view of their accomplished work.
Then came darkness, and the glorious day was done.
This afternoon the Utah mountains and valleys seem to belong to our
own very world again. They are covered with common sunshine. Down
here on the banks of the Jordan, larks and redwings are swinging on
the rushes; the balmy air is instinct with immortal life; the wild
flowers, the grass, and the farmers' grain are fresh as if, like the
snow, they had come out of heaven, and the last of the angel clouds
are fleeing from the mountains.
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