The Sound of Mountain Water

All earth brims with his glory.

Yes and Yes and Yes.

Psalm 72:19 The Message

A friend recently introduced me to the writings of Wallace Stegner, (1909-1993) an American writer, educator and conservationist. In one of his books on the western wilderness, The Sound of Mountain Water, Stegner recounts his earliest experience of a river at the age of eleven. His words resonate with the Biblical theme that “all the earth brims with God’s glory.”

Stegner writes:


“I discovered mountain rivers late, for I was a prairie child, and knew only flatland and dry land until we toured the Yellowstone country … and came to a marvelous torrent, Henry’s Fork of the Snake River.

". . . It was pure delight to be where the land lifted in peaks and plunged in canyons, and to sniff air thin, spray-cooled, full of pine and spruce smells, and to be so close-seeming to the improbable indigo sky. I gave my heart to the mountains the minute I stood beside this river with its spray in my face and watched it thunder into foam, smooth to green glass over sunken rocks, shatter to foam again. I was fascinated by how it sped by and yet was always there; its roar shook both the earth and me.

"When the sun dropped over the rim the shadows chilled sharply; evening lingered until foam on water was ghostly and luminous in the near-dark. Alders caught in the current sawed like things alive, and the noise was louder. It was rare and comforting to waken late and hear the undiminished shouting of the water in the night. And at sunup it was still there, powerful and incessant, with the slant sun tangled in its rainbow spray, the grass blue with wetness, and the air heady as ether and scented with campfire smoke.

"By such a river it is impossible to believe that one will ever be tired or old. Every sense applauds it. Taste it, feel its chill on the teeth: it is purity absolute. Watch its racing current, its steady renewal of force: it is transient and eternal. And listen again to its sounds: get far enough away so that the noise of falling tons of water does not stun the ears, and hear how much is going on underneath -- a whole symphony of smaller sounds, hiss and splash and gurgle, the small talk of side channels, the whisper of blown and scattered spray gathering itself and beginning to flow again, secret and irresistible, among the wet rocks."

Image Source:

Snake River - Trout Unlimited