The Quotable Enos A. Mills, from "The Spell
of
the Rockies":
"During all seasons of the year there
are
oft-recurring periods when the mountains sit in sunshine and all the
winds
are still. In days of this kind of transcontinental passengers in
glass-bottomed
airships would have a bird's-eye view of sublime scenes. The
purple
forests, the embowered, peaceful parks, the drifted snows, the streams
that
fold and shine through the forests,—all these combine and cover
magnificently
the billowed and broken distances, while ever floating up from below
are
the soft, ebbing, and intermittent songs from white water that leaps in
glory."
"There are times when Nature completely commands her
citizens.
A splendid landscape, sunset clouds, or a rainbow on a near-by
mountain's
slope,—by these one may be as completely charmed and made as completely
captive
as were those who heard the music of Orpheus' lyre."
"The trees are our friends. As an agency for pro-moting and
sustaining
the general welfare, the forest stands preeminent. A nation which
appreciates
trees, which maintains sufficient forests, and these in the most
serviceable
places, may expect to enjoy regularly the richest of harvests; it will
be
a nation of homes and land that is comfortable, full of hope, and
beautiful.
"
"Of course each departing camper should put out his
camp-fire.
However, a camp-fire built on a humus-covered forest floor, or by a
log,
or against a dead tree, is one that is very difficult to
extinguish.
With the best of intentions one may deluge such a fire with water
without
destroying its potency. A fire thus secreted appears, like a lie,
to
have a spark of immortality in it. A fire should not be built in
contact
with substances that will burn, for such fuel will prolong the fire's
life
and may lead it far into the forest. There is but little danger
to
the forest from a fire that is built upon rock, earth, sand, or
gravel.
A fire so built is isolated and it usually dies an early natural
death.
Such a fire—one built in a safe and sane place—is easily extinguished."
"Forest influences and forest scenes add much to existence and
bestow
blessings upon life that cannot be measured by gold."
"I should have stayed in camp and watched the filmy flakes form
their
beautiful white feathery bog upon the earth, watched robes, rugs, and
drapery
decorate rocks and cliffs, or the fir trees come out in pointed,
spearhead
caps, or the festoons form upon the limbs of dead and lifeless
trees,—crumbling
tree-ruins in the midst of growing forest life. To be without
food
or snowshoes in faraway mountain snows is about as serious as to be
adrift
in a lifeboat without food or oars in the ocean's wide waste. In
a
few minutes the large, almost pelt-like flakes were falling thick and
fast.
Hastily I put the two kodaks and the treasured films into water-tight
cases,
pocketed my only food, a handful of raisins, adjusted hatchet and
barometer,
then started across the strange, snowy mountains through the night."
"On this bit of the wild world's stage are theatrical lightning
changes
of scenes,—changes that on most mountains would require ten thousand
years
or more. It is a place of strange and fleeting landscapes; the
earth
is ever changing like the sky. In wreathed clouds a great cliff
is
born, stands out bold and new in the sunshine and the blue. The Storm
King
comes, the thunders echo among crags and cañons, the broken
clouds
clear away, and the beautiful bow bends above a ruined cliff."
"The trees were snow-laden and dripping, but on and on I
went.
Years of training had given me great physical endurance, and this,
along
with a peculiar mental attitude that Nature had developed in me from
being
alone in her wild places at all seasons, gave me a rare trust in her
and
an enthusiastic though uncon-scious confidence in the ultimate success
of
whatever I attempted to accomplish out of doors."
"Edward Orton, Jr. said, 'If one adds to the physical
pleasures
of mountaineering, the intellectual delight of looking with the seeing
eye,
of explaining, interpret-ing, 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,
the mountaineering becomes not a pastime but an inspiration.'"
"The wind had tried hard to dislodge me, but, seated on the small
limbs
and astride the slender top, I held on. The tree shook and
danced;
splendidly we charged, circled, looped, and angled; such wild,
exhilarating
joy I have not elsewhere experienced. At all times I could feel
in
the trunk a subdued quiver or vibration, and I half believe that a
tree's
greatest joys are the dances it takes with the winds."
"Many times I have wandered through the coniferous forests in the
mountains
when the seeds were ripe and fluttering thick as snowflakes to the
earth.
Visiting ridges, slopes, and cañons, I have watched the pines,
firs,
and spruces closing a year's busy, invisible activity by merrily
strewing
the air and the earth with their fruits,—seeding for the centuries to
come.
One breathless autumn day I looked up into the blue sky from the bottom
of
a cañon. The golden air was as thickly filled with winged
seeds
as a perfect night with stars. A light local air-current made a
milky
way across this sky. Myriads of becalmed and suspended seeds were
fixed
stars. Some of the seeds, each with a filmy wing, hurried through
elliptical
orbits like comets as they settled to the earth; while innumerable
others,
as they came rotating down, were revolving through planetary orbits in
this
seed-sown field of space. Now and then a number of cones on a fir
tree
collapsed and precipitated into space a meteoric shower of
slow-descending
seeds and hurried zigzag fall of heavier scales. Occasionally on
a
ridge-top a few of the lighter seeds would come floating upward through
an
air-chimney as though carried in an invisible smoke-column."
"These forests, delightfully inviting, cover the mountains below
the
altitude of eleven thousand feet. This rich robe, draping from
the
shoulders to the feet of the mountains, appears a dark purple from a
distance.
A great robe it hangs over every steep and slope, smooth, wrinkled, and
torn;
pierced with pinnacles and spires, gathered on terraces and headlands,
uplifted
on the swells, and torn by cañons. Here and there this
forest
is beautified with a ragged-edged grass-plot, a lake, or a stream that
flows,
ever singing, on."
"The ancients told many wonderful legends concerning the tree, and
claimed for it numerous extraordinary qualities. Modern
experience is finding some of these legends to be almost literal truth,
and increasing know-ledge of the tree shows that it has many of those
high qualities for which it was anciently revered. Though people
no longer think of it as the Tree of Life, they are beginning to
realize that the tree is what enables our race to make a living and to
live comfortably and hopefully upon this beautiful world."
Do you have a special Enos
Mills quote that has inspired you that is not on this page?
Click here to email us and we'll include it.
Please indicate from which book
the
quote appears if not the chapter or page.
Return to the Quoteable directory
Enos Mills Cabin Homepage
Browse in the Gallery
Links
Copyright 2001 by the Enos
Mills Cabin
Email the web designer