In the Great Steep's Garden

In Short

This collection of poems serves as a lyrical pilgrimage into the high-altitude landscape of the American West, specifically the rugged terrain surrounding Pikes Peak. By weaving together the botanical beauty of alpine flora—columbines, saxifrage, and gentians—with mythological echoes of Aztec, Navajo, and Eastern traditions, the work transforms a mountain hike into a spiritual journey. It remains a testament to the power of nature to anchor human history, capturing the delicate, fleeting intersection where the physical reality of the wilderness meets the eternal, mythic imagination of the human spirit.

The Story

The journey begins in the hurrying confusion of the city, where the speaker feels the sudden, insistent pull of the mountains. A gust of wind, smelling of white-flecked alps, acts as a silent summons, drawing the observer away from the mundane street toward the "Great Steep." This mountain is not merely a geographic feature; it is a repository for the "Hill People"—spirits, gnomes, and ancient deities—who dance at dawn and leave remnants of song on the listener’s lips.

As the path climbs, the physical world begins to blur. The speaker encounters the "Columbine," envisioned as a dancing girl in a state of perpetual waltz, caught between the pines and a dream of France. With every step higher, the boundary between the earth and the heavens grows thin. The "Saxifrage," a tiny flower growing from the cold, gray breast of a stone, serves as a portal; through its presence, the observer looks straight into the crystal dome of the sky.

The narrative arc deepens as it explores the origins of these blossoms. The "Alpine Forget-Me-Not" is linked to an ancient, tragic myth of a man-god exiled from a heavenly realm for falling in love with a river-maid of earth. The flowers are the remnants of her sorrow, scattered across the world to mark the path of their longing. This mythic thread weaves through the mountain garden, suggesting that the beauty of the landscape is actually a record of divine atoning. The "Indian Paint Brush" stands as a sentinel at the timberline, an "Indian chief" arrayed in the colors of war, embodying the eternal, harrowing battle between life and death.

As the trail stretches beyond the reach of the trees, the world below—cities, rivers, and fields—fades into a "Navajo carpet" of color and myth. The "Arctic Gentian" marks the edge of the known world, where the land merges into a sea of clouds. Here, the landscape becomes a "lost land" under the waves of a shifting, white-surged ocean. The journey concludes with the "Alpine Primrose," which greets the "Happy Heart" returning from the summit. The descent is not a return to the ordinary, but a carrying of the "sky-lost words" and the flame of the arctic chills back into the human world. The pilgrimage is complete; the mountain has been internalized, and the garden of the Great Steep remains, musked with the spices of Araby and the enduring, mythic memory of love.

How It Unfolds

The Call of the Heights The speaker is interrupted in a busy city by a breeze from the mountains. This wind acts as an invitation to abandon the modern world and follow the "pilgrim road" toward the shrines of the great peaks.

The Flora as Myth Each mountain flower introduces a new layer of folklore, bridging the gap between local Western geography and global mythology. The reader moves from the physical observation of a plant to an ethereal history of gods and maidens.

The Timberline Conflict The journey pushes upward to the limits of life, where the hardy, low-growing plants face the "arctic wrath" of the summit. Here, the imagery shifts from graceful waltzes to the stark, martial iconography of warriors and survival.

The Dissolution of Distance Near the peak, the perspective shifts from the intimate to the universal. The landscape below dissolves into a pattern of "strange soft dyes," suggesting that the mountain perspective renders human concerns like cities and time irrelevant.

The Homecoming The final ascent results in a spiritual transformation. The speaker, now a "Happy Heart," carries the silence and the music of the summit back down, forever changed by the encounter with the high-altitude solitude.

The People

The book is populated by figures who exist in the liminal space between human and divine. The "Hill People"—including the Pikes Peak Pixie, the Cheyenne Shee, and the Navajo Shell-Woman—act as the guides of the mountain. They are elusive, identified only by the "little snatches of song" they leave behind, and they represent the untamed, ancient spirit of the wilderness that demands the reader’s full attention.

Then there is the "River-Maid" and her "Man-God," the protagonists of the Forget-Me-Not legend. Their story provides the emotional anchor for the collection. The Man-God, driven by the wrath of the heavens, and the River-Maid, whose task is to scatter the seeds of heaven across the earth, represent the tension between the divine and the mortal. Their reconciliation at the "crystal gate" frames the mountain garden as a place of redemption.

Finally, the "Happy Heart" is the figure who successfully completes the pilgrimage. This individual begins as a seeker—someone who hears the mountain’s call while pausing at a window—and ends as a keeper of the "sky-lost words." They are the ones who witness the struggle of the timberline and the beauty of the blossoms, ultimately absorbing the mountain’s lessons into their own character.

In Its Own Voice

The poet captures the elusive nature of the mountain spirits who haunt the high trails.

"They touch me light with their finger tips / And lay little snatches of song on my lips,"

The speaker reflects on the startling, miraculous life that emerges from the most barren, inhospitable mountain stone.

"And oh, the white-flowered miracle grown / Out of the broad gray breast of a stone!"

The poem describes the moment when the vastness of the mountain landscape makes the world of men seem like a mere hallucination.

"Cities and rivers and fields beseem / A fantasy, fading, fading,"

What It's Really About

At its core, this work explores the thin veil between the physical world and the mythic imagination. It argues that nature is not merely a collection of objects to be cataloged, but a living narrative of longing, struggle, and divine beauty. The "Great Steep" is a metaphor for the human need to ascend toward something higher and more permanent than the "hurrying street." The book asks: What remains when our cities fade into a dream? It suggests that the answer lies in the enduring, quiet persistence of life in the most extreme conditions, and in the stories we tell to make sense of the vast, silent power of the earth.

Why Read It Today

Readers who find peace in the quiet observation of nature will find a kindred spirit here. The language is precise and evocative, leaning into the specific, chilly clarity of high-altitude air. It is a brief, intense experience, feeling less like a conventional collection of poems and more like a sustained meditative walk.

However, modern readers should be prepared for the specific tonal qualities of its era. There is a romantic, sometimes flowery commitment to the "mythic" that feels very much of the early twentieth century. The references to Navajo and Aztec traditions are filtered through the poetic sensibilities of the time, often blending diverse cultural motifs into a singular, dreamlike landscape. If you are looking for a rigorous historical or anthropological study, this will not be it. Instead, it offers an aesthetic experience—a way of seeing the mountain as a "garden" of spirits rather than a mere geological formation. It is a book for those who want to slow down, who appreciate the way a single flower can suggest an entire history, and who enjoy the feeling of being small in the face of a vast, indifferent, and beautiful world. It stays with you as a gentle, haunting echo, much like the wind coming down from the hills.