The mood created by Steinbeck in the first paragraph of Of Mice and Men can be described as "flourishing." Steinbeck is describing the Salinas River as a peaceful place where nature is growing and working abundantly. This is a place where everything is as it should be.
Of course, the novel describes a world where things are not as they should be. It describes people who are, for one reason or another, cut off from flourishing. This kind of masterful juxtaposition is characteristic of Steinbeck.
This first paragraph is lush with language that helps to create the tone. Words like "green," "golden," and "fresh" are expertly placed to create, in the reader's mind, an Eden-like, flourishing area of the country.
Later, Steinbeck will call the leaves on the ground "so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them" (the important adjective being, of course, 'crisp'). He has begun to weave in images of animals, not just plants, flourishing in this area as well.
Near the end of the paragraph he calls the flats around the river "damp." The river is so strong and lively that its water even seeps into the land around it. This is land and water that has abundance.
And it makes it all the more heartbreaking to read of people who do not have abundance; who are forced or choose to make violent decisions to survive.
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