Thou Wind, that ravest without, / Bare craig, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, / Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb, / Or lonely house, long held the witches' home, / Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, / Mad Lutanist! [footnote: Tairn is a small lake, generally if not always applied to the lakes up in the mountains, and which are the feeders of those in the valleys.[…]]

Tarns are found in some of the vales, and are numerous upon the mountains. A Tarn, in a Vale, implies, for the most part, that the bed of the vale is not happily formed; that the water of the brooks can neither wholly escape, nor diffuse itself over a large area. Accordingly, in such situtions, Tarns are often surrounded by an unsightly tract of boggy ground; but this is not always the case, […]

In another story the remarkable mystery of the umbrella lost at the shores of a tarn and retrieved at the seaside is explained by the underground communication between the two.

It [the caribou] makes a fine, bold study on the foreground of an evening scene among the mountain tarns of Northern Idaho, as it fulfils the ideal description of the stag given by [Walter] Scott and other writers.

Have you ever been swimming in glacial water – water turned milky blue or deep maroon by minerals and deposits seized by the glacier as it ponderously made its way across a continent? You would have been high atop a mountain, maybe in the Canadian Rockies or in Montana, where glaciers, now in retreat, still press down on the earth's crust. And it would have been in the summer – late August perhaps – the sun warm and still and bright, making you feel as if a dip in this remote glacial tarn is just what your tired body needs at this point in your day.

Off to either side of the road Beartooth Highway], unforgettable mountain scenes arise beneath crisp mountain skies. Here is alpine country at its best, complete with lakes and tarns set amid truly rugged promontories.

Tarn

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