De Motte Park

De Motte Park. BY D. D. RUST, (Illustrations by the Author.) As the "perfect days" of summer approach, they beckon us from the perspiring town to the shady groves and green banks and blossoms of wild flowers. We forget the chilly days of some months ago, and the cheery nights by the winter fire, as with fond recollections we seek the Wandameres, the cozy, arbored retreats. Schools have closed, social seasons run out, we must away to the silent places, the parks, the woods, the forests, to think it all over and slow down a little. The place called Kaibab, interpreted, "Mountain lying down," is a plateau forest covering over two thousand square miles and DE MOTTE PARK.

874 IMPROVEMENT ERA. reaching up from the sea nine thousand feet. It is in contrast to everything in sight or contiguous to it. To the'north is the monotony of receding slopes towards the desert, to the east and west it puts out its breakers against an apparently endless stretch of painted country, and to the south it drops into the chasm of the Grand Canyon. It lies like a great Antille amid a desert ocean. It is a marvelous strip of wilderness. De Motte Park is a line of beauty in this magnificent American forest. It extends along the mountain for ten miles in curves as graceful as those of the human form. It has been a puzzle to Powell, Dutton, Gilbert, and the rest of the geologists. They say it was probably the path of an ancient river now extinct. It is irrelevant at this time to make any sort of "brief" on the subject, since it is the purpose of this writing to simply call attention to a spot yet in its epoch of discovery, a spot which if seen will be admired without proofs, the same as we admire the face of a beautiful woman. Like the greatest known natural bridge—the Nonnezoshie of southeastern Utah —and like the valley which surpasses Yosemite—Mukuntuweap of southwestern Utah—De Motte Park is little known. There are people within fifty miles of it who scarcely understand what you are talking about. Cowboys who have grown gray on the trails of the forest have a keen intuitive appreciation for it; they like to be there, yet they cannot sense the comparative sublimity of the place. They love it as if by instinct. So must any man who builds his campfire there, who SPRUCE SPIRES WHOSE BRANCHES FORM PORTIERS TO THE DOORWAY.

DE MO TIE PARK. 875 sleeps under the pines and aspens, who sees the day break, and watches the sun chase away the dew of early morning. Allured from the formalities of data for his Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District, Dutton writes in his field notes: THE QUEEN OF PARKS. The scene is a very attractive one. There is a great wealth of vegetation, somber indeed, but the darkness of tone is suggestive of THE MYSTERIOUS CANYON.

876 IMPRO VEMENT ERA. depth and richness of color. The spirit of the scene is a calm, serene and gentle one, touched with a tinge of solemnity and melancholy. Surely this is the home of the woodland nymphs, and at every turn of the way, we fancy we are about to see them flying at our approach, or peeping at us from the flowery banks. The most entrancing region it has ever been our privilege to visit. A man who had been brought up in the most aesthetic nooks of New England, and had grown up with the best of New England culture, who had been all around the world and seen its natural adornments, came across the canyon up to De Motte Park. As he passed through the sylvan entrance beneath the spruce spires whose branches form portiers to the doorway,the fascinations of the canyon was overcome for a time by the power of this very different picture. Then, after he had stayed there at night, and had seen the colors of the morning; when he had spent another day, and his judgment had calmed from the excitement of first impressions, he said deliberately, "It is unquestionably the most beautiful park in the world." Like other of the highest type of mountain scenery, this, too, AS DREARY IN WINTER AS AN ALASKAN LAKE has its moods, its glory and gloom. It responds to the change of seasons, dreary as an Alaskan lake in winter, and as dreamy in summer as an Emerald Isle. And in this latter season the visitor will find, whether he comes to it from the mysterious canyon, or from the floor of the weird desert, a welcome from this queen of parks that will be a peaceful benediction. Kanab, Utah.