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 nobleness 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 altitude 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
Washington, 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,
butterflies, 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.