The Elkins Inter Mountain

I Saw on The Street
The fickle weather that we have
been having during the past week.
Weather that started with a dismal
rain changed from that to a wet,
clingy snow, from that back to rain,
and back and forth until the rain gave
way to misty night of Londonian fog
—and with the passing of the fog there
came again the sunshine.
Someone has said that all the weather in the world comes to West Virginia to change. The weather in this country during the past week seems to bear out that theory.
But on the other side of every bad
situation there is a lining of pure gold.
The gentle breeze that wanders timidly out of the West Virginia hills
grows to a cyclone by the time it gets
to the middle west. The tread of a
storm in our state is a rending earthquake when it reaches California. The
lap lap of water in the Tygart Valley
River is a tidal wave by the time it
gets to Tokio.
So it is not so bad to be on the little
end of this weather proposition after
all. If the mogul of the atmospheric
conditions has his lookout somewhere
on the summit of our rugged ranges
we have no room to kick when we consider that he is a bit careless and lets
the winds and waters get away from
him sometimes and wander at large.
From the bridge that leads to South
Elkins a water bird swimming in the
cool bronze of the evening waters
I stopped to watch, as one who sees
things on the street and from the street
has to do quite frequently.
That bird I do not attempt to classify diligently and scientifically for that
might bring about complications. So
we will call the bird a "dip-diver," as
it is known colloquially.
It was evidently accustomed to people crossing the bridge, but it still retained that wild instinct to get away
from conscious observation. So it dived from sight. Presently it came up within a few feet where it had dived.
This was interesting, so I still watched. Presently it dived again, coming up
a few feet farther out in the river.
And as if it could not bear scrutiny it
dived a third time, reappearing possibly twenty feet down stream.
I walked off the bridge, turned into
a winding path that led around the
brink of the river and endeavored to
get a further glimpse of the shy little aquatic bird. I climbed a fence into a
barnyard and thence into a garden.
The reward was one more glimpse of
the "dip-diver" as he made his last
plunge beneath the waters from view.
Quite likely he came up under the
protecting brow of the bank, for even
from the vantage point of the bridge
he was nowhere to be seen.