Terrific winter winds occasionally sweep through the high passes of the Continental Divide.  Believing that their velocity was sometimes more than one hundred miles an hour, I planned to go up and measure the velocity of the next wind that appeared to be exceeding the speed limit.  An air meter was placed in Granite Pass.  This was on the Long’s Peak trail, about one mile beyond the limits of tree growth and at an elevation of more than two miles above the level of the sea.
 One February morning the rush and boom of the wind among the pines proclaimed that previous speed records were likely to be broken.  I left my cabin and started up to the meter, which was about three thousand feet higher than my cabin and five miles from it.
 In irregular succession the heavy waves of wind rolled down this slope into the forest. A splendid and stormy sea roared through the tree-tops. The first half mile was through a thicket growth of tall young pines.  These young and pliant trees were bending, shaking, and streaming in the wind.  I turned aside from the trail to see the behavior of the tallest woods, a dense growth of Engelmann spruce, at the bottom of the steep slope of Battle Mountain.
 I climbed into a tree-top one hundred feet high.  Around me the tall and crowded trees were swaying and bowing through a dignified dance. Invisible wind breakers produced sudden dips and vigorous sweeps that my old tree thought he enjoyed.  Occasionally the tree-top swayed in one direction, then bowed in another.  Once he nodded in succession toward all points of the compass, tracing a wavy circle perhaps twenty feet in diameter.  Then he straightened up again to the perpen-dicular.  The entire forest was suddenly tilted forward by a violent wind wave and without the least warning I was clinging to a leaning tower.  Engelmann spruce wood is not celebrated for toughness so I quickly descended to earth.
 In the shelter of the storm-battered trees at timberline I looked out into the yellow, sand-filled air upon a tree-less Arctic moorland.  The gale tore among the trees with ever-varying intensity. Sand and gravel pattered and rattled against the scarred and veteran pines.  I climbed a low, stocky tree which the hardest wind waves struck.  This tree was so rigid that it quivered and oscillated like a building in an earthquake.
 At the altitude of 11,500 feet I emerged from the woods and faced the gale. It assailed me with a sand blast which bruised my hands and brought blood from my face, and speedily drove me back into the woods.  Again I tried.  This time I crawled forward between low, healthy growths.  At the start these afforded a little protection but as I advanced the wind swept through more swiftly and violently. I was glad to crawl out into the open moorland.  Here, after an advance of a few hundred yards, I paused to rest in the lee of a butte of granite.  Thicker than hail the sand and gravel rained down upon me; a roll of my coat caught a handful.  Much of this consisted of sand-bits the size of a pencil point, but there were a few pieces of gravel the size of hazel nuts; the remainder was rock dust crushed by colliding with the cliff.
 In was a warm, dry, chinook wind.  Its temperature was several degrees above the freezing point.  There had been but little snow, and only a few small, icy drifts lay scattered upon the brown, bare moor.  The sun shone in a cloudless sky, but the air was so filled with rock dust that objects more than one hundred feet away were out of focus in the hazy yellow air.  The effect was that of a desert sand storm; the wind, however, was of greater velocity and carried less dust than in desert storms.
 Leaving the shelter of the cliff, I again advanced by crawling.  A brief stop was made behind a rock point about five feet high.  Here the wind poured down upon me with such force that it could not be endured.
 Thus far above the limits of the trees not a living thing had showed itself, but in crawling along the edge of an icy snowdrift I came upon a number of ptarmigan.  Many were sitting in little nests just the size of their bodies, which they had made in the hard snow.  A few were bravely feeding.  Squatting low, they grabbed at weed seeds and other edible objects that came sifting down over the snow.  Though in a sheltered place, one of them was occasionally bowled over by the wind.  On regaining its feet, it struggled back into its nest.  But not one risked opening its wings. Apparently they consi-dered me as harmless as a mountain sheep.  With curious eyes, they allowed me to crawl by within three feet.
 The wind met me with violent dashes, with moderate movements, and with occasional intervals that were al-most calm.  In many of its rushes the wind rolled forward like a stormy breaker, with invisible, unbroken wave front in a sustained roar.  At other times, this great wave was broken into wild maelstroms, terrific spirals of various diameters and tilted at every angle.  Sometimes a wave went forward with long, bouncing leaps, bounding entir-ely clear of the earth for long distances, then striking heavily to roll and break, like a breaker on the beach.  Occasionally, over a small space, there was an explosive effect that sent dust and gravel flying.  With slouch hat and mittened hands I protected my face as best I could.  A few times a violent, narrow whirlwind cut unrestrained into unrelated air currents.  Like the explosion of a can-non and by sheer speed and force, it smashed its way diagonally across and through other rushing winds.
 Most of the time I crawled, but occasionally during a calm I rose up and ran forward a few hundred feet.  Except during lulls it was perilous to stand erect.  These winds could not be withstood by bracing.  Main strength did not answer.  Rarely did they strike straight forward; they struck on every side.  Seldom was I blown over, but I was kicked into the air and I was sometimes knocked down or hurled to one side.
 At last I gained the air meter.  It was up at 12,000 feet and stood where the wind simply pounded through the pass.  The meter cups were making a blurred wheel of speed; a few times they showed the wind at one hundred and seventy miles an hour.
 Around me were high peaks and deep cañons, level plateaus and crag-torn slopes.  These intercepted and de-flected the wind waves and currents. Against these ob-structions the powerful, invisible wind hurled itself more uproariously that storm-stirred sea against defying and moveless shore.
 Ever from some quarter came an unending roar.  Splendid were the deep sounds and thunderings, pon-derously heavy and prolonged were the booms of the wind. These often mingled with terrific, crashing explo-sions which even the elastic air did not always soften.  There were long, ripping sounds, as the diverted wind rolled up a slope or tore around a corner.  Then, strange were the seconds of ominous, almost breathless, calm.
 After reading the meter, I went higher.  Carried away with the wind, elemental eloquence of the storm, I con-cluded to get effects from the high ledges and finally from the summit of Long’s Peak.
 Every step advanced, each new height somehow gained, was a fight. It took all my endurance and it stimulated utmost alertness.  I simply crawled forward and upward.  And I wrestled with an invisible, unresting contestant who occasionally tried to hurl me over a ledge or smash my bones against the rocks.
 For a mile I made my way across a moraine with the wind beating against my right side. The scattered boulders made travelling difficult; many were large and had to be climbed over.  Such activities often gave the wind the eagerly used opportunity of shooting me with icy pellets and of knocking me off my feet.
 At the altitude of thirteen thousand feet, the trail was through a rocky opening called Keyhole. Here the wind rushed in an invisible but irresistible flood.  To go against it was sheer madness, so I climbed down and around Keyhole.  While doing this, as I lay flat on my face, I was caught by a rush of wind.  It lifted me a foot or two, then jammed me back. After repeating this, it pitched me headlong!
 The wind swept out of the west and came in contact with the Divide at right angles.  On the east the wind blew everywhere; but strangely enough on the western side it struck the mountains from eleven thousand feet upward, below this was perfect calm.  By watching the whirling snow and other wind-blown materials, I judged this wind current to be about two thousand feet thick.  Above, approximately thirteen thousand feet, was an air current moving in nearly the opposite direction.  In crossing the Divide this wind that was blowing high above the earth on the west side closely raked the earth on the eastern side.  From points near the top of the Peak I looked out over my home to the east.  Two thousand feet above it the air was comparatively free from dust.  To the east I saw a number of birds flying high and plainly in a calm stratum of air.
 As I continued upward above thirteen thousand feet, the wind gushed and stormed through the narrow open-ings between pinnacles and around the large rocks in debris piles. I crawled through a number of these open-ings.  There are rapids in rivers and rapids in air streams.  Running a river rapid in a boat is exhilarating.  Crawling through a wind rapid is even more intense.  It lacks most of the exhilaration that goes with the river rapid, but exhilaration is not wholly absent.  In bays and channels of the sea the restless waters wildly eddy; powerful, invisible undertows and whirlpools are present where wild, defiant winds are diverted.
 Rock projections, behind which I hoped to find shelter, were more unfriendly places than the open.  The wind appeared to round them with increased speed, and to batter the leeward more furiously than the stormward front.  Around a number of rocky projections the wind re-volved with swirling rapidity. It hurled me off with centri-fugal motion each time I made close approach.  Once I blundered by breaking into one of these whirls, and was roughly handled while in and while getting out of it.
 Each time that I hugged the earth more closely than usual, the wind took a sheer delight in paying me personal attentions.  While many of these calls were with evil intentions, the others were but the investigations of the curious.  I was grabbed and then slammed back; I was trampled upon and several times was recklessly drag-ged over rough stones.  I was occasionally raised gently upward, then laid gently down; rolled slowly over, then turned slowly back.  Once I was picked carefully up by a current that carried me off as carefully as if to first aid; but from this I was rudely snatched by an angry wind, whose every effort was to put me in need of this aid.
 The most difficult and dangerous place was at a point at an altitude of about fourteen thousand feet.  This was where a long, narrow gulch and a fan-like slope con-verged and ended on the summit of a narrow ridge, beyond which there was a narrow ledge, bounded by unbanistered space.  Sweeping upward three thousand feet from the bottom of a cañon came the wind through converging channels that ended in this one narrow gorge.  My struggles were intense in the last few feet of this channel.  The gorge in which I climbed was extremely steep, yet so powerful was the wind current that all my strength was required to prevent being torn loose, shot upward, and thrown over the precipice.  Icy fragments torn from the walls, twigs from a mile below, went hurtling and rattling by and shot far out over the precipice.  Had I let go for even a second, I should have followed them.  Not for an instant did the wind stop; it had the constant rush of rapids.  I eased myself upward in the rushing wind, crawling close, holding with hands, and anchoring and holding rear down by hooking feet behind and beneath rocks.  Trail conditions were favour-able, and these together with my climbing experiences, endurance, and knowledge of the place, were of advan-tage to me.  All these were needed.
 Just before reaching the top of the narrow ridge and the precipice, I felt the wind getting the better of me and feared that a slightly more violent rush or surge would tear my holds loose.  So I concluded to reverse ends.  Putting a shoulder against a rock point, I allowed the wind to push my legs around, then forward.  I was then going up feet foremost instead of head foremost.  The gulley was so extremely steep that I was almost standing or walking on my head.  This reverse of ends enabled me to brace effectively with my feet, and also to hang on more securely with my hands.  Little by little I eased my-self upward.  There was no climbing; the wind sucked, dragged, pushed, and floated me ever upward.
 At last I safely crossed the ridge, rounded a point, and sat down for a long rest on the famous Narrows of the Long’s Peak trail. The Narrows is a ledge with a precipice in front and a wall behind.  This wall rises pre-cipitously to the summit; the precipice makes a wild, steep descent of two thousand feet.  It is none too wide for a thoroughfare that has unbanistered space before it.  Fortunately, it was sheltered from the wind, otherwise traversing it would not have been either safe or sane.
 Why did I, in this perilous gale, in this wild wind, venture precipices and go up into the sky on a peak nearly three miles above the seven restless seas?
 Irresistible is nature’s call to play.  This call comes in a thousand alluring forms.  It comes at unexpected times and sends us to unheard-of places.  We simply cannot tell what nature will have of us, or where next. But from near and far, ever calls her eloquent voice. In work and in dreams she shows a thousand ways, suggests the pre-sence of wonderlands yet unseen.  She pictures alluring scenes in which to rest and play; in mysterious ways she sends us eagerly forth for unscaled heights and fairylands.  Of these she whispers, or of them she sounds her bugle song.  She fascinatingly commands and charms us to other scenes.  We rush to respond and fix our eyes on a happy horizon, toward which we hurry; but ere we reach it she calls elsewhere, and elsewhere, with highest hopes of a boy at play, we hasten.  It was seriously splendid to play with these wild winds.  There is no greater joy than wrestling naked handed with the elements.
 My most uncertain work was a little below the sum-mit.  The ridge that had shielded my crawling came to an end.  I was on the edge of a steep, short slope that ended at the top, but this slope was smooth and icy and at the bottom paid tribute to a precipice.  It was too slippery to climb.  Across it swept the deflected wind current.  On the opposite side the current struck a ridge and with diminished force shot upward to the summit.  Apparently this wind rushed as steadily as a mountain river.  It was swift enough to sweep me across; but if it hesitated after I cast my lot in it, down the toboggan slope I would slide.  Eagerly I pushed myself out into it and let go.  Across it rushed me, sprawling, bumping me into the rocky ridge beyond.  Here the interrupted current lifted me upward.  I had little else to do than guide myself.  Rapidly it boosted to the top.  Standing on the edge of the summit I turned for a moment to look back down this icy slope which later I must somehow retrace.
 The summit of Long’s Peak is 14,255 feet above the sea and about four hundred feet in diameter.  It is com-paratively level though not smooth.  Granite stones and slabs of various sizes cover the top.
 In terrific, weighty rushes the wind splendidly thun-dered against the west wall of the summit.  All this time the wind was continuously roaring round lower pinnacles and terrifically booming against the lower obstructions.  The old Peak met these cyclonic rushes with strange impassiveness, without a tremble.  Deflected by the west wall, the current shot upward for a hundred feet or so.  The top of the Peak was thus left in comparative calm.
 I ventured too close to the west edge, and my hat was torn off.  It started skyward like a rocket, but less than one hundred feet above the Peak it fell out of the uprush and into the large, slowly rotating eddy that covered the space over the top.  Slowly around in a large air whirlpool the hat was carried.  I threw a number of stones, trying to bring it back to earth.  Presently the forward current caught it.  Then like a duck in a wind the hat shot forward, pointing straight at a lower and near-by lighting place.
 A flock of rosy finches were feeding off the stuff that sifted down out of the wind.  As I watched them, they were unmindful of the wind and had thought of no danger.  But behind a near-by stone a beady-eyed weasel watched and waited.
 Far down the range to the south quantities of snow were being explosively hurled into the air.  This showed that there had been a recent snowfall and also that the wind had just reached that scene.  The scattered snow was thrown high in the air into spirals and whirls and then seized and carried flying to the leeward.  This powdered snow trimmed the Peak points with steamy whirls and gauzy banners and silky pennants through which the sunlight played.  Northward for one hundred miles the gale was sweeping eastward, and a stratum of dust hid the Wyoming plains.  The sky above was clear and strangely blue.  The sun shone brightly.  My shadow against a granite monolith stood out as if of a dark and sculptured figure cut from stone.
 
 

Directory of Stories by Enos A. Mills

Copyright 2001 by Enos Mills Cabin, Temporal Mechanical Press
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