It is universally understood among the angling fraternity that when a fish is lost under such conditions the Recording Angel turns her head.
In an hour the cold spray from the glacial water had dampened Donald’s clothing and benumbed his fingers. The basket by then being nearly full, and his wrist lame from casting and playing the fish, he decided to quit. As he climbed the ridge the air above felt like a breath from an oven in contrast to the atmosphere of the canyon.
Through a tall, stately grove of pines Donald descried an open glade whence came the sound of running water. He walked through the dark aisles of towering trees, his feet making no sound on the thick carpet of soft needles. Pushed aside a growth of low deciduous trees that fringed this open passage in the woods, he gazed upon a scene that held him entranced. At some time in the earth’s remote history moving ice had gouged out this tiny valley and left a rich deposit of glacial silt. A small mountain stream cascaded from a moss-covered cliff to fall from ledge to ledge and flash crystal clear and sparkling through the vividly green grass and bright flowers which formed the carpet of the valley floor. The brilliant columbine, interspersed with the yellow marigold and dandelion, made bright splotches of colour. Wild roses hung in masses in the border of low green shrubs. The white rein orchis grew in rank profusion everywhere, filling the air with its delicate perfume. Ferns and cotton grass grew to the very edge of the limpid brook that prattled musically over the moss-covered stones. A rabbit with her young nibbled at the tender grass roots at the far side of the creek. Humming-birds buzzed back and forth and a bluejay—the Paul Pry of the woods—peered curiously down at the interloper, with its head moving from side to side and its beady eyes shining. Then with a startled shriek it flew across the glade—like a streak of blue in the sunshine—to hold excited colloquy with its mate. A willow grouse sailed from a cliff above to land with a great preening of feathers and move with a peculiar gliding run to the shelter of a stand of salal bushes.
Near the centre of the field was a “fairy ring” of mushrooms about twelve feet across. The beginning of these rings may be a single mushroom which drops its spores in a circle about its base. The next season a smaller ring of mushrooms drops a larger ring of spores, and so the circle expands year by year, exactly as the ripple spread out on the surface of a pond when a stone is cast into the water.