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Page 84
At night Carley gazed over and into the black void. But for the awful sense
of depth she would not have known the Canyon to be there. A soundless
movement of wind passed under her. The chasm seemed a grave of silence. It
was as mysterious as the stars and as aloof and as inevitable. It had held
her senses of beauty and proportion in abeyance.
At another sunrise the crown of the rim, a broad belt of bare rock, turned
pale gold under its fringed dark line of pines. The tips of the peak
gleamed opal. There was no sunrise red, no fire. The light in the east was
a pale gold under a steely green-blue sky. All the abyss of the Canyon was
soft, gray, transparent, and the belt of gold broadened downward, making
shadows on the west slopes of the mesas and escarpments. Far down in the
shadows she discerned the river, yellow, turgid, palely gleaming. By
straining her ears Carley heard a low dull roar as of distant storm. She
stood fearfully at the extreme edge of a stupendous cliff, where it sheered
dark and forbidding, down and down, into what seemed red and boundless
depths of Hades. She saw gold spots of sunlight on the dark shadows,
proving that somewhere, impossible to discover, the sun was shining through
wind-worn holes in the sharp ridges. Every instant Carley grasped a
different effect. Her studied gaze absorbed an endless changing. And at
last she realized that sun and light and stars and moon and night and
shade, all working incessantly and mutably over shapes and lines and angles
and surfaces too numerous and too great for the sight of man to hold, made
an ever-changing spectacle of supreme beauty and colorful grandeur.
She talked very little while at the Canyon. It silenced her. She had come
to see it at the critical time of her life and in the right mood. The
superficialities of the world shrunk to their proper insignificance. Once
she asked her aunt: "Why did not Glenn bring me here?" As if this Canyon
proved the nature of all things!
But in the end Carley found that the rending strife of the transformation
of her attitude toward life had insensibly ceased. It had ceased during the
long watching of this cataclysm of nature, this canyon of gold-banded
black-fringed ramparts, and red-walled mountains which sloped down to be
lost in purple depths. That was final proof of the strength of nature to
soothe, to clarify, to stabilize the tried and weary and upward-gazing
soul. Stronger than the recorded deeds of saints, stronger than the
eloquence of the gifted uplifters of men, stronger than any words ever
written, was the grand, brooding, sculptured aspect of nature. And it must
have been so because thousands of years before the age of saints or
preachers--before the fret and symbol and figure were cut in stone--man must
have watched with thought-developing sight the wonders of the earth, the
monuments of time, the glooming of the dark-blue sea, the handiwork of God.
In May, Carley returned to Flagstaff to take up with earnest inspiration
the labors of homebuilding in a primitive land.
It required two trucks to transport her baggage and purchases out to Deep
Lake. The road was good for eighteen miles of the distance, until it
branched off to reach her land, and from there it was desert rock and sand.
But eventually they made it; and Carley found herself and belongings dumped
out into the windy and sunny open. The moment was singularly thrilling and
full of transport. She was free. She had shaken off the shackles. She faced
lonely, wild, barren desert that must be made habitable by the genius of
her direction and the labor of her hands. Always a thought of Glenn hovered
tenderly, dreamily in the back of her consciousness, but she welcomed the
opportunity to have a few weeks of work and activity and solitude before
taking up her life with him. She wanted to adapt herself to the
metamorphosis that had been wrought in her.
To her amazement and delight, a very considerable progress had been made
with her plans. Under a sheltered red cliff among the cedars had been
erected the tents where she expected to live until the house was completed.
These tents were large, with broad floors high off the ground, and there
were four of them. Her living tent had a porch under a wide canvas awning.
The bed was a boxlike affair, raised off the floor two feet, and it
contained a great, fragrant mass of cedar boughs upon which the blankets
were to be spread. At one end was a dresser with large mirror, and a
chiffonier. There were table and lamp, a low rocking chair, a shelf for
books, a row of hooks upon which to hang things, a washstand with its
necessary accessories, a little stove and a neat stack of cedar chips and
sticks. Navajo rugs on the floor lent brightness and comfort.
Carley heard the rustling of cedar branches over her head, and saw where
they brushed against the tent roof. It appeared warm and fragrant inside,
and protected from the wind, and a subdued white light filtered through the
canvas. Almost she felt like reproving herself for the comfort surrounding
her. For she had come West to welcome the hard knocks of primitive life.
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