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[Letter dated "Salt Lake City,
Utah, May 19, 1877." Editor.]
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 canons, 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 canons 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 canons,
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 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
night. 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 inter-blended.
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 inter- blended, 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 canons 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. |
