AFTER the Summer's ripe maturity has vanished with the first autumnal storm, there steals over the world a magical Presence. It has no place in the almanac; it comes with a flooding of amber light and a deepening of amethyst haze; it plays like a passing smile on the face of the universe and like one, vanishes with the stern rebuff of the wintry blast. What jugglery the sun and earth and the four winds of heaven have wrought no mortal man can tell, but certainly by some divine alchemy the deadening blight is turned into gold, and upon the lap of the world there lies, instead of the appointed Fall, a changeling season, the faery-child of Nature, illusive, fleeting as a flock of yellow butterflies, a shimmer of radiant wings—the Indian Summer!

The whole earth is under the spell of the mad, sweet witchery. The forests are decked in a gay masquerade, too glorious to be real, and our own sober senses are half-mastered by the delusion that the dead Summer is come to life again. In open places where the fingers of the sun still warm the moist ground, absent-minded bluebells, strawberries and yellow violets bloom on forgetful that they should already be taking their winter's rest. And it is strange with what pleasure we seize upon these fragile blossom-friends; with what childish joy we caress their pale petals so soon to be laid low. Yet in the warm air lurks a hidden sting, the bittersweet of sun and frost; in the very effulgence of life is the foreshadowing of death. Already on the heights streamers of cloud gather, leaving in their wake the dazzle of fresh snow. And beneath these low-streaming clouds, slanting earthward in broad, down-pouring rays, is a pure white light upon the mountains. The light on the mountains! What a revelation it is! The windows of heaven are flung open and the celestial beams of Paradise illumine God's Cathedral Domes, the peaks, for a brief space before sky-wrought vestments of snow cover the altar of His Sanctuaries.

The trails of yesterday are barred. For prudence sake we must keep to the low country or risk the fate of being "snowed in." Therefore we choose the Kintla Road and Camas Creek, where a large band of moose roams in the forest solitudes, hoping to reach Quartz Lakes near the Canadian line before we shall be driven back by the cold. The pine-sweet air fills us with the very spirit of the woods as we strike out over the gilded trail through forests transfigured into a welter of gorgeous hues, past deep-cleft ravines purple as the heart of a violet, to dim lilac mountains that melt into the blue. What is it that is mystical, spiritual, if you will, in this colour of violet? It is not like the robust, tangible green of the trees, the definite reality of the flowers' multi-coloured petals. We cannot lay our hands upon it any more than we can grasp a sunbeam, for like hope deferred, it lies forever beyond our reach. We see it unwind its royal haze through gorge and forest; we watch it fade into pale lavender on the ultimate pinnacles of the range, but if we follow it what do we find? Mere yawning cleft or greenwood grove or jagged strata of dull rock. Where is the subtle violet, the dim dream lavender? Fled as subtly as the shadow of a wing! Perhaps it is a shadow of the divine, the soul-essence common to man and the flower at his feet, the dumb, stone mountains, the living air and the heaven that embraces all in its enduring keep.

We pass into the deep, unbroken shadow of virgin woods where bushes burn with crimson rosehips, the thimbleberry shines in its autumn garb of yellow, the tamarack gleams golden among its somber brethren, the pines, and strange, bright shrubs set us forever guessing. We emerge into a billowing field of wild hay, fringed with trees, above which we can see the metallic sharpness of the mountains. Shining over all impartially, shedding its glory upon our souls, is the dominant sun whose broad rays break into a mist of ruddy gold. Again we dip into eternal shadow, the horses' hoofs sound with a dull cluck as they sink in and are lifted from the soft mold. Often we are startled by the sudden whirr of wings as frightened grouse fly to shelter. Fungus thrusts evil, flame-coloured tongues from the damp, sweet soil and a marvelous variety of moss and lichen trace their patterns on logs, tree stumps and upon the wind-thrown forest trees that toss their gnarled roots high above our heads in an agony of everlasting despair. We splash through Dutch Creek, Camas Creek and many another, and as we pause to eat a frugal midday meal on the banks of one of these, we find upon a trailing limb, a dying butterfly. Poor little sprite of yesterday! Its bright wings palpitate feebly and it suffers us to take it in our hands without making an effort to escape. The last of its gay brethren, the blossom-lovers, its hour is come and with its final strength it has fluttered to this friendly leaf to die. So, very gently we put it back upon its chosen resting place, leaving it to join ghostly bright winged flocks in the sunshine of some immortal Arcady.

From a high ridge which falls away abruptly into a water-hewn declivity, we look through broad, open vistas far below at the North Fork of the Flathead River. The stream takes its way between banks of fine gray pebbles, parting now over a sandy bar in slender green ribbons, then uniting in one broad current, again separating to curl in white foam-frills around a boulder or little island. Mild and limpid as the river now appears there is evidence of its flood-tide fury in uprooted trees and livid scars along its banks. Working silently and secretly near the water's edge is a beaver. We can scarcely distinguish him as he toils patiently, bringing to our minds the old Selish legend that the beavers are a fallen tribe of Indians, doomed by the Great Spirit to expiate an ancient wrong by constant labor in their present shape. But some day after the appointed penance, the Indians believe that the beavers will resume the form of men and come into their own again.

For two days we ride farther and farther into the wilderness, camping by night and taking up the trail with the early dawn. And as we penetrate deeper into the wild the pageant changes only to become more sublime. Clumps of slenderly graceful silver poplars with gray, satin-smooth boles and branches that burst into a shower of golden leaves, shed glory upon our way. Dense woods of yellow pine whose giant trunks hold all the shades of faded rose, and silvery-green Colorado spruce overshadow us and once we find ourselves in a grove of yellow tamarack hung with streamers of black moss. Years upon years ago a forest fire whose fury was nearly spent had scorched these trees with its hot breath, changing the feathery moss into flowing streamers of black—veritable mourning weeds—which contrast sharply with the golden foliage. Even now it is easy to fancy that the fire still burns and each tall tamarack is a pillar of living flame.

The nights are no less wonderful than the days. The melon-coloured harvest moon floats high in the blue-black heavens, touching the priestly trees with its white rays. We sit beside our camp fire listening to the crackle of dry twigs beneath a cautious tread, the occasional whistle of a stag and the ominous note of an owl hooting among the pines. Sometimes we fancy that green and amber eyes burn the darkness, and we cling close, close to the primal birthright of the race—the flaming brand—which raises its bright barrier now as in the age of stone, between mankind and the predatory beasts of the wild. The wooded hosts seem to press down with stifling persistence upon us and an indefinable terror creeps into our hearts, the inherent fear of man, the atom, of Nature, the fathomless, the unknown.

As these nights wear on and we lie upon our couches of fragrant cedar boughs, up out of the gulf of silence the lean-flanked coyotes howl to the moon, and later still, when the pale disc dips beneath the horizon and the shrouded secrecy of before-dawn steals, like a timid ghost, out of the Infinite, the trees find tongue and murmur together though there is no wind and the stream sings with a music as of hidden bells. Strange, elfin sounds, the merest echo of a whisper thrill out of the quiet and sigh into silence again. A faint patter-patter as of falling thistledown is heard constantly, insistently, inevitably. Can it be the beat of gossamer wings, the trip of faery feet as the woodland sprites hang the grass, the leaves, the finest-spun thread of cobweb with beads of dew, and trim the dark pines, like Christmas trees, with tinsel frost?

Truly the pale morning light breaks upon a transformed and enchanted world. Silver filigree adorns the most commonplace limb and twig. Each pine needle twinkles with a gem giving forth rainbow-hued rays beneath the first steel-cold beams of the sun. The thorn-apple, whose wine-red branches are furred with a white beard, is etherealized into delicate pastel shades of lavender and mauve by a film of hoar frost. Ragged streamers of fantastic mist-shapes rise and float heavily through the moist air, obscuring, then revealing stretches of stream-laced woods and finally rolling away in lessening vapour into the lingering dusk of ravines. There is a mighty scene-shifting of Nature in progress. The night phantoms, the colourless dawn-shapes are hurried off, while the sun, riding high in the deepening blue, touches stream and tree and peak with the illumination of the new day.

As we wander about breathing the balsam sweetness of the pine-breath of the new dawn, we make curiously interesting discoveries. By an unfortunate accident we roll a hollow log over and uncover a squirrel's winter larder of small pine cones, and at the same time we hear above our heads, in trees so lofty that we cannot penetrate the dense canopy of interlocked limb, the domestic troubles of a pair of these contentious little forest folk. In high treble voices they quarrel and dispute in a perfect hysteria of rage. Upon the damp trail near camp we find large, cloven hoof prints too big for those of a deer, so probably our mysterious visitor of the evening before was no less a personage than a lordly moose.

We linger on heedlessly, much the same as the absent-minded flowers, clinging as desperately to the woodland as the dying butterfly, deceiving ourselves into the half-belief that Winter is far away. The air is still warm and the light shines on the mountains. And that light lures us on by its thrall to higher altitudes. Down the gorges the snow gathers in deepening drifts and the utmost peaks are white as carven ivory. Still we resolve to make one brave dash for the Quartz Lakes, set one above the other in a chain among sheltering caÑons and flanking cliffs. Under the inspiration of the camp fire we discuss the morrow's journey. How splendid it will be to race with the sun; to dare the sudden blizzard that might cut off our retreat, for one brief glimpse of that Upper World we have grown to love with a passion akin to madness. But even as we speak a shadow falls, and looking upward we see that a gray moth-wing of cloud hides the moon. Surely it is a passing vapour, the merest mist-breath exhaled by the languid night. But no! darker and heavier it unrolls. Wraith shapes glide out from the black mass until the stars are dead and the deep blue dome of heaven is shrouded by an impenetrable pall. That night the heavy rain drops beat a tattoo on the tent and the mournful pines weep the sorrow of ages.

Undaunted we take up the trail, assuring ourselves that soon the fickle weather will be fair again. Occasionally a patch of clear blue shows through the broken flock of hurrying clouds and a wan sun ray steals down for a moment to kiss the woods goodbye. The forests are already drenched and each bough that strikes us pours upon us a little flood of rain. The trees line up in somber walls and as the storm settles into a steady downpour, between their dark fringes flows a narrow, ashen stream of sky. Through the brooding shadow tamaracks kindle, silver poplars huddle together with quivering aureoles of gold, and the austere dusk beneath their boughs is lighted with yellow-leafed thimbleberry, glowing like sunbeams. It seems as though the foliage of those receptive trees and shrubs has absorbed the summer sun to give it forth again when the world should be cloaked in shadow. So complete is the illusion that oftentimes, as a shaft of light gleams through the tree tops, we cry exultantly:

"The sun is shining!"

In another second we see that it is but the tamaracks burning like tall, yellow candles through the autumnal gloom, shedding their blessed gift of light to cheer us on our way.

When we gain the lower Quartz Lake, a deep green sheet of water bordered by wooded shores, the heavy clouds drag low and a rainbow arches the lake. We halt, uncertain, raising our eyes questioningly to the heights beyond that frown blackly through the tattered tapestry of the clouds. The mountains are angry! Very reluctantly, sorrowfully, we turn to retrace our steps, thinking of future seasons of sun and warmth and other quests of the sublime that shall end in triumph. At each gust the shearing wind despoils the silver poplars of their crowns until the naked branches leap wildly in a fantastic dance of death.

The changeling season, the faery-child of Nature has fled as mysteriously as it came—fled like a flock of yellow butterflies into some ethereal region to await its perennial resurrection. Dull Autumn settles drab as a moth upon the saddened world and the light has died from the mountains.