beautiful spring makes its own environment, regardless of
surroundings. Its sources are in the unfailing hills. It suggests the
lives of some men and women whose friendship you enjoy, and who are
ever ready to refresh you on life's way.

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The wind of last night has carried much of the snow over the top of
the ridge and deposited it in this sheltered slope of the river cañon.
Here are wind-formed caves of sculptured snow, vaulted with a tender
blue. Turrets and towers sparkle in the splendid light. All angles are
softened, and everywhere the lines of the snow curves are smooth and
flowing. The drift sweeps down from the footpath way on the river bank
to the ice-bound bed of the river in graceful lines. Where the side of
the cañon is more precipitous there is equal beauty. Each shrub has
its own peculiar type amidst the broken drift. The red cedar, which is
Iowa's nearest approach to a pine, except in a few favored counties,
hangs from the top of the crag heavily festooned with feathery snow.
Those long creeping lines on which the crystals sparkle are only
brambles, and that big rosette of rusty red and fluffy white is the
New Jersey tea. Those spreading, pointed fingers of coral with a
background of dazzling white are the topmost twigs of the red osier
dogwood. The strip of shrubs with graceful spray, now bowed in beauty
by the river's brink, is a group of young red birches, and this bunch
of downy brown twigs, two feet above the snow, sparkling with frost
particles, is the downy viburnum. The great tangle of vine and lace
work mixed with snow is young hop hornbeam, supporting honeysuckle.

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