Part 20 (1/2)
XIX
THE SCENERY IN THE SKY
This big round world carries in its heights four strange, marked features: the vast records of the Ice King; timber-line, the alpine edge of the forest; the mountain-top regions above timber-line; and, over-rising these, the high peaks. Each of these features has scores of stories and pictures. All four of them are seen at their best in some of the National Parks.
1. TIMBER-LINE
The most telling timber-line that I have seen is on the slope of Long's Peak in the Rocky Mountain National Park. This is a wild place during a winter gale. It is a stirring place at all times and seasons.
One day I went up to timber-line on Long's Peak with a number of children. They were interested, and even excited, by the dwarfed and strangely shaped trees. We found a dead pine that had lived two hundred and fifty-eight years, yet it was so small that a boy easily carried it about on his shoulder. Several little girls stood by a living spruce. Every child was taller than the little tree, yet the spruce had been growing when each of their great-grandmothers was born. All timber-line trees are undersized. Most of their ranks are less than eight feet high.
One autumn a grizzly that I was following dug up a number of dwarfed trees at timber-line. I carried these home for careful examination.
One of them was a black birch with a trunk nine tenths of an inch in diameter, a height of fifteen inches, and a limb-spread of twenty-two inches. It had thirty-four annual rings. Another was truly a veteran pine, though his trunk was but six tenths of an inch in diameter, his height twenty-three inches, and his limb-spread thirty-one inches. His age was sixty-seven years. A midget that I carried home in my vest pocket was two inches high, had a limb-spread of about four inches, and was twenty-eight years of age.
Timber-line is one of Nature's most interesting regions. Its location and also its marked characteristics are determined by climatic conditions--by cold, snow, wind, moisture, and drought. Wind is a most influential factor. The position of thousands of miles of timber-line is determined by it. At timber-line the Storm King says, ”Thus far and no farther.” The trees do not heed, but persistently try to go on, and the struggle for existence becomes deadly. They appear like our unfortunate brothers whom fate has chained in the slums. The trees try to stand erect and climb onward and upward, but in vain. The elements are relentless. The wind blows off their arms and cuts them with flying sand. The cold dwarfs them, and for nine months in the year the snow tries to twist and crush the life out of them. Some become hunchbacks; others are broken, bent, and half-flayed; while a few crouch behind the rocks. Many stretches of timber-line are so battered by the wind that the trees have the appearance of having been recently swept by a cyclone, or overthrown by a giant roller.
What a weird scene! Here for ages has been the line of battle between the woods and the weather. At most timber-lines the high winds blow chiefly from one direction. Many of the trees possess a long, vertical fringe of limbs to leeward, being limbless and barkless to stormward.
Each might serve as an impressive symbolic statue of a wind-storm.
Permanently, their limbs stream to leeward together, with fixed bends and distortions, as if cast in metal at the height of a storm. Many present an unconquerable and conscious appearance, like tattered pennants or torn, triumphant battle-flags of the victorious forest!
Some trees are several inches in diameter and only a few inches in height; others are creeping away from the direction of the storms, retreating from life's awful battle. All beauty and n.o.bleness of appearance are lost. But the trees have done their best.
Timber-line is not stationary. In most places it is advancing, climbing the heights. This advance is confined mainly to moist territory. In a few dry places the ranks are losing ground--are being driven back down the slopes; but these advances and retreats are extremely slow.
The alt.i.tude of timber-line varies with locality. On Mount Orizaba, in Mexico, it is a little over thirteen thousand feet; in the San Juan Mountains, in Colorado, a little above twelve thousand; in the Sierras and the Rockies, between eleven thousand and thirteen thousand; in the Cascades and the Alps, about sixty-five hundred feet; on Mount Was.h.i.+ngton, at forty-five hundred feet. It is lower with increased distance from the Equator, and at last is only a stone's throw above sea-level, finally showing its line in the lowlands of the Farthest North. Among the trees that maintain the front ranks at timber-line are pines, spruces, firs, aspens, birches, and willows.
Many beautiful flowers are found at timber-line, along with bees, b.u.t.terflies, birds, chipmunks, and foxes. Timber-line is a strangely interesting, arousing place. As I have said in ”The Rocky Mountain Wonderland”:--
The powerful impressions received at timber-line lead many visitors to return for a better acquaintance, and from each visit the visitor goes away more deeply impressed; for timber-line is not only novel and strange, it is touched with pathos and poetry and has a life-story that is heroic. Its scenes are among the most primeval, interesting, and thought-compelling to be found upon the globe.
2. ABOVE THE TIMBER-LINE
The treeless moorlands and the crags that fill the sky above the limits of tree-growth form an extensive mountain-top world all by itself, a realm of plateaus and sky prairies, which only a few have explored. These regions stand out like islands in the sky; they are singular treeless expanses above the surrounding forest sea.
This realm is not barren and lifeless. For a number of species it is home. The ptarmigan and the rose finch, the cony and the bighorn, live in the heights the year round. Many migrating birds and animals use the region for a nursery and a summer resort. Here, early in the autumn, Nature produces her last berries. Here a.s.semble birds from the lowlands, and flocks from the North stop to feed and frolic while migrating to the Southland.
Here, too, along with peaks and moorlands, meadows and wild-flower gardens, are crags, plateaus, canons, lakes, glaciers, and snow-fields. Countless small, clear streams originate in these island heights and from them start merrily down to the far-off seas. Singly and in cl.u.s.ters, with areas large and areas small, these sky islands are a feature of most of the National Parks.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ABOVE THE TIMBER-LINE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK
Long's Peak on extreme left]
In the Rocky Mountain National Park a few flowers bloom on the highest peaks more than fourteen thousand feet above sea-level. They are visited by numerous winged insects, even by b.u.t.terflies. Let a cloud come over the sun, or a breeze start, and the b.u.t.terflies, and perhaps other winged insects above timber-line, fold wings and drop and remain motionless till the sky clears. Evidently this is ”safety first” from the short-lived but violent gales.
It is believed that the Arctic-alpine plants in these heights were brought to them from the Arctic region on the great ice flow. They bloom in both these zones at about the same date. Among the bright blossoms in the polar mountain-top gardens are the columbine, gentian, aster, daisy, shooting-star, bluebell, a few kinds of phlox, and that dearest of the heath blossoms, the ca.s.siope. Numbers are dwarfed to unbelievable smallness. Think of bluebells perfectly formed and colored and yet so fascinatingly small and dainty that a half-dozen could be sheltered in the upper half of a thimble!
The alpine wild-flower garden on Mount Rainier is one of the most striking on the globe. Just above the timber-line and below and among the glaciers, colored flowers grow in tall and crowded luxuriance.
They color broken distances for miles. It is doubtful if the world can show another hanging garden in which wild flowers so splendidly mingle their lovely hues with the broken picturesque forests, wild crags, and the grandeur of glaciers.