The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-09-09
VACATION NOTES-H
nr aEoRGE rAvEs. D. D.

jowl and the trout leaps for the sum mer gnat and makes great rings in the lake below two shrinking snowbanks, while newly fallen leaves lie on beds of wild strawberries. When the wind rushes down wonder gorge, as it used to do, and doubtless still does on Galilee, the ripple is good for anglers. Let us go try. Let lunch go hangl We did and ate
 fish when we would, fried with streaky bacon. and with flavor that smacks of the heart of the wild. Far below US were the foothills. To the west was the high ridge that looks down on Middle Park and the Moi fat road. the route to Routt county where are deer and elk and things, Here we are already 11,025 feet above the sea. The trees are spare~and point
 ed and ghostly, whipped so by the fierce winds that lash them even in
 summertime. The wonder Is that they persevere in the effort to push out
 buds and twigs against this awful
 failing, this ceaseless worrying of teeth that besets them the year round
 The poor things have tried to climp higher, but only to appear like trees f smitten with tuberculosis, pines and
 spruces and frs suffering with pei
 lagra and out of their heads for lack of nutrition.
 l It is forbidden to tell fish stories in The Age Herald, unless one have witnesses. Hence will hurry to my
 old parish in the San Juan region hundreds of miles south and west, lest
 I enter into temptation. Even there, in that piscatorial paradise, the Rio Grande, imagination must not outrage the most scrupulous conscience. One l thing only I turn over to our local Isaaks, the fact new to me. that the 1 brook trout will simulate dead los when first hooked and cling stolidly to the bottom of the pool till you
 wonder whether it Is indeed a fish or snag that you have caught Then you slightly increase the pressure of 1 your steady pull and he presently arises, mad from battle, and dashes to death, a hero
 1 l was happy to learn that all this beloved valley of the Rio Grande. with | adjacent districts, has become part of | the United States forest reserve and is patrolled and managed by expert
 woodsmen. They prevent fires, inspect I the distribution of vast herds of sheep
 and cattle, care for the replanting of burned areas and the cutting of tim
 Der and they also admonish the law | less and advise the daring among
 tourists Those great herds of sheep l by the way, are a novelty. In my day | a few Mexicans used to bring up g few hundred head and sell them to us l cheap. It has been proved, however l that these sheep flourish best not ir grassy dells with Phyllis but on the l far heights where grow what seem in
 hospitab1e weeds. This is indeed an eco l homie surprise. At my old neighbor'; l the Wasons place, many hundreds ol l thousands are now annually shorn by l a marvelously rapid electric clipping l device used by an Australian expert They then go to the mountains fol l the summer and, as snow begins tc l fly. they work again down into the valley to evist while their overcoats grow Sol Colorado. by hill and dale. f helping to procure for America the right to wear wool as well as cotton | All this is new and so are the numer l ous automobiles that rush up and down the roads, once so solitary, be ! tween Wagon Wheel Gap and the Sar | Juan ranch and beyond. So, too, are the crowded summer colonies, from Kansas, Texas and even Kentucky l which I found occupying, humanising beautifuying certain forsaken mining camps, individuals from which at tot short intervals preceded me or fol
 lowed solemnly whipping the river T New also was the Farmers untor reservoir" of which I heard but diS not see, near the headwaters ant
 above Squaw creek New, moreover
 this extraordinary volume of water il
 the months of August for which tn