Jim Bridger’s Echo Canyon

Long ago, when the Wild West was still wild, there lived a mountain man named Jim Bridger. He knew the Rocky Mountains better than anyone. He walked over every hill and paddled down every river. And when he sat by the campfire at night, he told the most amazing stories.

“Have I told you about my echo canyon?” Jim would begin. “It is a canyon so deep and so wide that an echo takes a very long time to come back.” “When you shout, your voice has to travel all the way to the far side and back again.” “And that takes eight whole hours!”

“So every night, when I camp in that canyon, I do not need an alarm clock.” “Just before I go to sleep, I stand up and shout, ‘Wake up, Jim! Time to get up!’” “Then I lie down, pull up my blanket, and sleep like a baby.” “And in the morning, eight hours later, my own voice comes rolling back.” “‘Wake up, Jim! Time to get up!’ it calls, and up I jump, fresh as a daisy.”

The people around the fire laughed and laughed. “Tell us another one, Jim!” they said.

“Well,” said Jim, “there is also a forest up in those mountains that has turned all to stone.” “The trees are stone, the grass is stone, and even the leaves are stone.” “The birds sit in the stone trees, and they are made of stone too.” “And they sing stone songs, all day long!”

“One day I was riding my horse through that stone forest, and we came to a deep, wide gap.” “My horse did not stop, and he just kept walking, right across the empty air!” “How could he do that?” asked a little boy by the fire. “Why, even the air in that forest had turned to stone,” said Jim, “so he walked across it like a bridge.”

Everybody laughed so hard that they nearly fell off their logs. Nobody knew for sure which of Jim’s stories were true and which were just for fun. But they all agreed that Jim Bridger was the best storyteller in the whole Wild West. And on clear nights in the mountains, people still tell his tales around the campfire.