As Miller relaxed along the shore and sketched this scene of what probably is Fremont Lake (thanks to J.D. (Sam) Drucker, a Bureau of Land Management archaeologist in Pinedale, Wyoming, for the identification), his imagination drifted back to what might have been the creation of these sublime mountains and lakes:
From the foreground the eye of the spectator is conducted through a gentle slope with groups of mountain pines at intervals, to a peninsula jutting out into the glorious sheet of water;–thence it wanders across the Lake to a bare salmon-coloured granite rock, rising abruptly out of its depths, clothed towards the top with stunted trees and hardy evergreens,–still more distant is the eternal ice and snow barrier that shuts in the scene;–the solitary rock lying near the end of the Lake, most probably formed at one time a part of the mountain to the right;–the interval between having become dammed up, and trees growing upon it.
A horrible crash must have attended the advent of this huge fellow, and he has lain so long that vegetation has covered entirely the upper surface. (Ross, 1968, text accompanying plate 116)
