Climax! The word takes on a true significance here, among these
broad-based trees. When you enter this forest the road noise does not
follow far—as, when you walk into a cave and turn a corner, sound and
light are left behind. There is a surprising spaciousness, a feeling of
openness in a mature western redcedar forest. With scant understory and
the canopy so far above and everywhere complete, it seems like some
vast, high-ceilinged catacomb, pillared by the huge, shaggy-barked
cedars and the deeply scored trunks of the black cottonwoods. The floor
is strewn with fallen giants in magnificent disarray, uplifted roots
still grasping fractured rock.
A rainy day is a good time to walk a cedar trail, when the dull light
seems to shine from the wet moss, making the underleaves of devil’s-club
and Rocky Mountain maple glow. Wind and rain, like light, penetrate with
difficulty the latticework of this canopy; thin lines of fog develop
over the bogs. The air is fresh with growing plants, snow-cold still
when the first spring flowers appear.
Fiddleheads of unfolding lady ferns line the trail in May, pushing up
from the hub of last year’s leveled, lifeless fronds. Beds of trillium
shine their white, three-pointed flowers like flashlights in the dark
recesses. Unlike the small, hidden calypso orchid, which bears its
purple spikes and yellow throat low above the moss, the trilliums make
no secret of spring growth. They are bold, handsome plants, broad-leaved
and tall, with waxy white petals that tinge to purple in their
month-long bloom.
Moss covers everything. Boulders are green and weightless-looking,
resilient and topped with miniature forests of cedar seedlings. Ancient
fallen trees are disguised with blankets of moss, sprouting hemlock here
and there. The rich greens that characterize Glacier’s summers seem to
begin here amid the moisture-glossed leaves of twinflower, bunchberry
and bead-lily.
Later, the spiders will spin thousands of kilometers of gossamer
filament among the trees. The orb-weavers will hang their webs high and
low, suspended in every opening. Walking through the forest then, you
will see shafts of sunlight whirling in the higher webs until they seem
like tops set spinning among the treetrunks.
Indianpipes, the “ghost flowers” that need no light to grow, will break
through the forest soil. Like mushrooms, with fruiting bodies that are
nourished by underground mycelia, these saprophytes absorb their
nutrients from a fungus that covers their roots.
Receiving an average of about 18 centimeters more annual precipitation
than forests east of the Divide, Glacier’s redcedar-hemlock community
hoards its moisture. Its dense growth and the surrounding mountain walls
inhibit the circulation of drying winds. Mosses and ferns transpire
their moisture, which you can feel; place your hand close, and you will
sense a coolness like the air exuding from an ice cave. Draped from the
tree limbs are long filaments of squawhair and goatsbeard, black and
grey lichen strands that flourish in the damp air.
Except for the black bear, few large animals inhabit the deep forest.
Grizzlies find better forage in meadows or along the forest edge. Since
shade discourages shrubby undergrowth, deer and wapiti will search
elsewhere for browse. In summer, wapiti, grizzlies, and mule deer bucks
tend to wander up into high meadows.
Contrasted to the noisy, conspicuous birds of the prairie—meadowlarks
and bobolinks—birds of the forest seem elusive and secretive. Although
numerous, the varied thrushes, Townsend’s solitaires, and Swainson’s
thrushes are seldom seen; but when approached, they fly silently off and
are swallowed by the forest shadow.
There seems to be serenity in a mature forest, as though the struggle
for life is somehow suspended, the needs of the animals here less
urgent, muffled. The towering redcedar forest seems to be no battlefield
at all, but rather a monument to what Earth can do.