Article August 22, 1983 Issue

Lessons of a mountain spring

EARL E. HARRIS

Back in 1905 my father moved his family to a home in the mountains of western Colorado. Teen-age curiosity led me to explore our new environment. To a growing boy, the wilderness was a world of unending discoveries. The city held no such natural wonders as the nearby cascading waterfalls, the rushing torrents of a mountain stream that passed through our small ranch, or the sand cliff that loomed skyward to the west.

Upstream was a beaver dam built by furry engineers with unsurpassed native skills, but the thing that made the greatest impression on me was the water that came tumbling down the hillside. I came upon it while exploring the beaver dam. It flowed in such abundance that I was eager to find its source. After a long climb I reached a beautiful mountain spring. Beside it was a sheltered resting place beneath a shapely pine tree. The spring's water fell about four feet from a crevice in the rock face into a naturally formed basin. The volume was tremendous, gallons every minute. The water leaped down the mountainside to join waters in the creek.

To my eyes, the only flaw in an otherwise ideal situation was that the spray leaving the main stream fell into a swamp alongside the creek where it became stagnant.

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