The Spirit of  Fire and Water

High above the far southern seas, our flaming sun has again spent the winter raising the vapors from the endless blue waters and sweeping them northward on the wings of the wind. These thundering storms held the waters in bondage in the form of billowing, silvery clouds of steam and swept them to rocky ramparts half a world away, at heights whose temperatures turned them white and blanketed the crags with their crystalline form—As the San Juan Mountains slept.

But the earth turned— and the fiery sun arced north, and the San Juan Mountains are awakening. The waters that steamed through the stratosphere to be here and turned solidly crystalline icy white to stay, now again feel the heat of the fires that fathered them, and return to that fluid form of which they were born to set forth on that torturous trek in search of the mother sea. Then, the cataracts thunder and the torrents roar and the bear is awakened—his long rest o’er.

But the host of the show, the stoic San Juan Mountains, stand solidly unmoved in the midst of these maelstroms. Conceived themselves as the cataclysmic consequences of steamy intercourses of fire and water, their stunning stature and weathered stone features speak of the need to endure such stormy stresses, to attain their compelling character and ultimate beauty. 

They wear their sparkling cataract jewelry with grace, from the heady heights of their shoulders to the cleavage of their canyons.

Now, up through the canyons comes man —another manifestation of fire and water— with his Iron Horse, forged in fire and tempered with water and breathing clouds of smoke and steam. Up through the canyons cut by roaring torrents of condensed steam through the slag of fires of distant ages.

So returns spring to the Silver San Juans, a roaring sparkling smoking steaming resurgence of the Spirit of Life—The Spirit of Fire and Water.

James Burke, railroad historian and photographer is the associate publisher of the "San Juan Silver Stage." His railroad photographs and writings have appeared in a variety of publications throughout the United States.