Muir especially mentions the sugar-pines as interpreting that storm to him. They seemed to be roused by the wildest bursts of the wind music to a "passionate exhilaration," as if saying "_Oh_, what a glorious day this is!"
This was the picture part of it--the glorious moving-picture show. Now listen to some of the music:
"The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with the wild exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming like waterfalls, the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur. The rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf--all this was heard in easy analysis when the attention was calmly bent.
"Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual trees--spruce, fir, pine, and oak--and even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet."
When the winds began to fall and the sky to clear, Muir climbed down and made his way back home.
"The storm tones died away, and turning toward the east I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil, towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to say while they listened:
Did you know that the ash and maple seeds actually have screw propellers, like a ship, so that they can ride on the wind? Pettigrew's great work, "Design in Nature," makes this very plain, both in word and picture.
In what way does the wind help to _produce_ the seed of grasses as well as carry and plant them? (Any encyclopædia or botany will tell you how plants are fertilized.)
How could a tempest that blew down a tree help its seeds to get a start? Wallace, in his "World of Life," says that on a full-grown oak or beech there may be 100,000 seeds that are thus given a better chance of life.
Speaking of "wind ploughs," what is the object of ploughing anyway? The article on preparing the seed bed in "The Country Life Reader" tells about what ploughing means to the soil and also:
Why good soil takes up more room than poor.