Utah has just been blessed with one of the grandest storms I have ever
beheld this side of the Sierra. The mountains are laden with fresh
snow; wild streams are swelling and booming adown the cañons, and out
in the valley of the Jordan a thousand rain-pools are gleaming in the
sun.
With reference to the development of fertile storms bearing snow and
rain, the greater portion of the calendar springtime of Utah has been
winter. In all the upper cañons of the mountains the snow is now from
five to ten feet deep or more, and most of it has fallen since March.
Almost every other day during the last three weeks small local storms
have been falling on the Wahsatch and Oquirrh Mountains, while the
Jordan Valley remained dry and sun-filled. But on the afternoon of
Thursday, the 17th ultimo, wind, rain, and snow filled the whole basin,
driving wildly over valley and plain from range to range, bestowing
their benefactions in most cordial and harmonious storm-measures. The
oldest Saints say they have never witnessed a more violent storm of
this kind since the first settlement of Zion, and while the gale from
the northwest, with which the storm began, was rocking their adobe
walls, uprooting trees and darkening the streets with billows of dust
and sand, some of them seemed inclined to guess that the terrible
phenomenon was one of the signs of the times of which their preachers
are so constantly reminding them, the beginning of the outpouring of
the treasured wrath of the Lord upon the Gentiles for the killing of
Joseph Smith. To me it seemed a cordial outpouring of Nature’s love;
but it is easy to differ with salt Latter-Days in everything—storms,
wives, politics, and religion.
About an hour before the storm reached the city I was so fortunate as
to be out with a friend on the banks of the Jordan enjoying the
scenery. Clouds, with peculiarly restless and self-conscious gestures,
were marshaling themselves along the mountain-tops, and sending out
long, overlapping wings across the valley; and even where no cloud was
visible, an obscuring film absorbed the sunlight, giving rise to a
cold, bluish darkness. Nevertheless, distant objects along the
boundaries of the landscape were revealed with wonderful distinctness
in this weird, subdued, cloud-sifted light. The mountains, in
particular, with the forests on their flanks, their mazy lacelike
cañons, the wombs of the ancient glaciers, and their marvelous
profusion of ornate sculpture, were most impressively manifest. One
would fancy that a man might be clearly seen walking on the snow at a
distance of twenty or thirty miles.
While we were reveling in this rare, ungarish grandeur, turning from
range to range, studying the darkening sky and listening to the still
small voices of the flowers at our feet, some of the denser clouds came
down, crowning and wreathing the highest peaks and dropping long gray
fringes whose smooth linear structure showed that snow was beginning to
fall. Of these partial storms there were soon ten or twelve, arranged
in two rows, while the main Jordan Valley between them lay as yet in
profound calm. At 4:30 p.m. a dark brownish cloud appeared close down
on the plain towards the lake, extending from the northern extremity of
the Oquirrh Range in a northeasterly direction as far as the eye could
reach. Its peculiar color and structure excited our attention without
enabling us to decide certainly as to its character, but we were not
left long in doubt, for in a few minutes it came sweeping over the
valley in a wild uproar, a torrent of wind thick with sand and dust,
advancing with a most majestic front, rolling and overcombing like a
gigantic sea-wave. Scarcely was it in plain sight ere it was upon us,
racing across the Jordan, over the city, and up the slopes of the
Wahsatch, eclipsing all the landscapes in its course—the bending trees,
the dust streamers, and the wild onrush of everything movable giving it
an appreciable visibility that rendered it grand and inspiring.
This gale portion of the storm lasted over an hour, then down came the
blessed rain and the snow all through the night and the next day, the
snow and rain alternating and blending in the valley. It is long since
I have seen snow coming into a city. The crystal flakes falling in the
foul streets was a pitiful sight.
Notwithstanding the vaunted refining influences of towns, purity of all
kinds—pure hearts, pure streams, pure snow—must here be exposed to
terrible trials. City Creek, coming from its high glacial fountains,
enters the streets of this Mormon Zion pure as an angel, but how does
it leave it? Even roses and lilies in gardens most loved are tainted
with a thousand impurities as soon as they unfold. I heard Brigham
Young in the Tabernacle the other day warning his people that if they
did not mend their manners angels would not come into their houses,
though perchance they might be sauntering by with little else to do
than chat with them. Possibly there may be Salt Lake families
sufficiently pure for angel society, but I was not pleased with the
reception they gave the small snow angels that God sent among them the
other night. Only the children hailed them with delight. The old
Latter-Days seemed to shun them. I should like to see how Mr. Young,
the Lake Prophet, would meet such messengers.
But to return to the storm. Toward the evening of the 18th it began to
wither. The snowy skirts of the Wahsatch Mountains appeared beneath the
lifting fringes of the clouds, and the sun shone out through colored
windows, producing one of the most glorious after-storm effects I ever
witnessed. Looking across the Jordan, the gray sagey slopes from the
base of the Oquirrh Mountains were covered with a thick, plushy cloth
of gold, soft and ethereal as a cloud, not merely tinted and gilded
like a rock with autumn sunshine, but deeply muffled beyond
recognition. Surely nothing in heaven, nor any mansion of the Lord in
all his worlds, could be more gloriously carpeted. Other portions of
the plain were flushed with red and purple, and all the mountains and
the clouds above them were painted in corresponding loveliness. Earth
and sky, round and round the entire landscape, was one ravishing
revelation of color, infinitely varied and interblended.
I have seen many a glorious sunset beneath lifting storm clouds on the
mountains, but nothing comparable with this. I felt as if new-arrived
in some other far-off world. The mountains, the plains, the sky, all
seemed new. Other experiences seemed but to have prepared me for this,
as souls are prepared for heaven. To describe the colors on a single
mountain would, if it were possible at all, require many a
volume—purples, and yellows, and delicious pearly grays divinely toned
and interblended, and so richly put on one seemed to be looking down
through the ground as through a sky. The disbanding clouds lingered
lovingly about the mountains, filling the cañons like tinted wool,
rising and drooping around the topmost peaks, fondling their rugged
bases, or, sailing alongside, trailed their lustrous fringes through
the pines as if taking a last view of their accomplished work. Then
came darkness, and the glorious day was done.
This afternoon the Utah mountains and valleys seem to belong to our own
very world again. They are covered with common sunshine. Down here on
the banks of the Jordan, larks and redwings are swinging on the rushes;
the balmy air is instinct with immortal life; the wild flowers, the
grass, and the farmers’ grain are fresh as if, like the snow, they had
come out of heaven, and the last of the angel clouds are fleeing from
the mountains.