One hundred and forty-five emeralds are nestled in the stone crown of the mountain. During the day, small fluffy clouds float in their mirrored waters, and at night, the moon casts a bright path between them, and along it you reach the world of dreams. Some lakes are small, others cannot be walked around in an hour. Some of them spread out in solitary dense squat forests, others spread out in groups, staggered one above the other like sisters in a large family. In some the waters are impeccably smooth, in others the surface is dotted with water lilies or long grassy algae. The color of their waters is different in individual lakes and even in the same lake at different times of the day. Sometimes it is light blue like the sky above the lake waters, other times it is dark blue, and a third time it is dark green, and then the lake looks like an emerald set in a ring of gray granite.
The lakes excite no less than the view that opens up from the high peaks. All the beauty of nature is reflected in them, but they hide in their depths something else that touches more than the expanse beyond the peaks. It is the tender mystery of thick, crystal clear still water. It is not like the foaming streams of the mountain stream, which refresh the eyes and cheer the soul. The murmur of the brook soothes, while the stillness of the lake waters sets the senses in another, sadder range, and they perceive the soft lapping of the waves as a sad, stifled sigh. That is why every mountaineer remembers that feeling of timid childlike fear and deep humility that suddenly filled his whole being when he stood for the first time by the shore of the lake. It is unique and the memory of it does not fade with the years.
It is precisely this lake melancholy that brings me the same thought over and over again as I flip through the pages of The Great Desert. I involuntarily ask myself why the poets sang with poetic inspiration the valleys and rivers, and especially the high peaks, he devoted only twenty lines to the wonderful lakes, those blue eyes of the mountain. Perhaps another could not praise them half as much in twenty pages, but this strange neglect leads me to think that the melancholy breeze that wafts from the lakes and the forest would disturb the rapturous and optimistic tone of the travelogue. If a poet had once spent the night in the open by some mountain lake, he would have left us wonderful pages about the lakes, imbued with warmth and love and fragrant with autumn nights in nature. He would see several lakes from afar, and seem unable to see beyond their melancholy countenance, content to hint at them in a few lines which pale before the descriptions of the peaks of the dense forest.
But not all secluded lakes give rise to sad thoughts. Small ponds seem to be more cheerful, especially if their waters are dotted with grassy algae near the banks or with water lilies in the middle. In the deaf upper reaches of the second of the three streams there is a small lake. In early spring its waters overflow beyond the narrow bed, and luxuriant algae protrude above the smooth surface, in which the face of a huge, almost sheer cliff is seen. These algae delight the eye with their irrevocable longing for sun, air and space. No one would say that they threaten the lake, just as no one would liken the water lilies that float in the waters of the lake to drowning people.
Viewed from afar on a still and clear day, when their waters are mirror-smooth, some of the group lakes strike with their fearful lifelessness, and, like the solitary lakes, inspire sorrow.
In fact, the lakes of the group delight the eye with the rich variety in the color of their waters, because they are so different in depth, and caress the ear with the cheerful chorus of the streams that flow from the upper to the lower of them.
In such magical hours in nature, the mountaineer forgets all earthly cares, lives in a fabulous world and simply merges with the breath of the mountain.
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