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Wild Life on the Rockies
[Illustration: LONG'S PEAK FROM THE EAST]
Wild Life on the Rockies
By
Enos A. Mills
With Illustrations from Photographs
[Illustration: Publisher's Device]
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY ENOS A. MILLS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published March 1909_
To
John Muir
PREFACE
This book contains the record of a few of the many happy days and
novel experiences which I have had in the wilds. For more than twenty
years it has been my good fortune to live most of the time with
nature, on the mountains of the West. I have made scores of long
exploring rambles over the mountains in every season of the year,
a nature-lover charmed with the birds and the trees. On my later
excursions I have gone alone and without firearms. During three
succeeding winters, in which I was a Government Experiment Officer
and called the "State Snow Observer," I scaled many of the higher
peaks of the Rockies and made many studies on the upper slopes of
these mountains.
"Colorado Snow Observer" was printed in part in _The Youth's
Companion_ for May 18, 1905, under the title of "In the Mountain
Snows"; "The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine" appeared in _The World's
Work_ for August, 1908; and "The Beaver and his Works" is reprinted
from _The World To-Day_ for December, 1908.
E. A. M.
Contents
Colorado Snow Observer 1
The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine 29
The Beaver and his Works 51
The Wilds without Firearms 69
A Watcher on the Heights 81
Climbing Long's Peak 97
Midget, the Return Horse 113
Faithful Scotch 129
Bob and Some Other Birds 149
Kinnikinick 169
The Lodge-Pole Pine 181
Rocky Mountain Forests 197
Besieged by Bears 215
Mountain Parks and Camp-Fires 231
Index 259
Illustrations
_Long's Peak from the East_ _Frontispiece_
_A Man with a History_ 6
_The Crest of the Continent in Winter,
13,000 Feet above Sea-Level_ 16
_A Snow-Slide Track_ 20
_A Veteran Western Yellow Pine_ 32
_A Beaver-House_ 58
_A Beaver-Dam in Winter_ 63
_Lake Odessa_ 76
_On the Heights_ 84
_A Storm on the Rockies_ 94
_Long's Peak from the Summit of Mt. Meeker_ 100
_On the Tip-Top of Long's Peak_ 110
_A Miner on a Return Horse_ 116
_Scotch near Timber-Line_ 132
_The Cloud-Capped Continental Divide_ 144
_Ptarmigan_ 158
_Summer at an Altitude of 12,000 Feet_ 178
_A Typical Lodge-Pole Forest_ 184
_Aspens_ 204
_A Grove of Silver Spruce_ 208
_Ouray, Colorado, a Typical Mining Town_ 218
_Estes Park and the Big Thompson River from
the Top of Mt. Olympus_ 238
_In the Uncompahgre Mountains_ 244
_A Grass-Plot among Engelmann Spruce_ 250
Colorado Snow Observer
"Where are you going?" was the question asked me one snowy winter day.
After hearing that I was off on a camping-trip, to be gone several
days, and that the place where I intended to camp was in deep snow on
the upper slopes of the Rockies, the questioners laughed heartily.
Knowing me, some questioners realized that I was in earnest, and all
that they could say in the nature of argument or appeal was said to
cause me to "forego the folly." But I went, and in the romance of a
new world--on the Rockies in winter--I lived intensely through ten
strong days and nights, and gave to my life new and rare experiences.
Afterwards I made other winter excursions, all of which were stirring
and satisfactory. The recollection of these winter experiences is as
complete and exhilarating as any in the vista of my memory.
Some years after my first winter camping-trip, I found myself
holding a strange position,--that of the "State Snow Observer of
Colorado." I have never heard of another position like it. Professor
L. G. Carpenter, the celebrated irrigation engineer, was making some
original investigations concerning forests and the water-supply. He
persuaded me to take the position, and under his direction I worked
as a government experiment officer. For three successive winters I
traversed the upper slopes of the Rockies and explored the crest of
the continent, alone. While on this work, I was instructed to make
notes on "those things that are likely to be of interest or value
to the Department of Agriculture or the Weather Bureau,"--and to be
careful not to lose my life.
On these winter trips I carried with me a camera, thermometer,
barometer, compass, notebook, and folding axe. The food carried
usually was only raisins. I left all bedding behind. Notwithstanding
I was alone and in the wilds, I did not carry any kind of a gun.
The work made it necessary for me to ramble the wintry heights in
sunshine and storm. Often I was out, or rather up, in a blizzard, and
on more than one occasion I was out for two weeks on the snow-drifted
crest of the continent, without seeing any one. I went beyond the
trails and visited the silent places alone. I invaded gulches, eagerly
walked the splendid forest aisles, wandered in the dazzling glare on
dreary alpine moorlands, and scaled the peaks over mantles of ice and
snow. I had many experiences,--amusing, dangerous, and exciting. There
was abundance of life and fun in the work. On many an evening darkness
captured me and compelled me to spend the night in the wilds without
bedding, and often without food. During these nights I kept a
camp-fire blazing until daylight released me. When the night was mild,
I managed to sleep a little,--in installments,--rising from time to
time to give wood to the eager fire. Sometimes a scarcity of wood kept
me busy gathering it all night; and sometimes the night was so cold
that I did not risk going to sleep. During these nights I watched my
flaming fountain of fire brighten, fade, surge, and change, or shower
its spray of sparks upon the surrounding snow-flowers. Strange
reveries I have had by these winter camp-fires. On a few occasions
mountain lions interrupted my thoughts with their piercing, lonely
cries; and more than once a reverie was pleasantly changed by the
whisper of a chickadee in some near-by tree as a cold comrade snuggled
up to it. Even during the worst of nights, when I thought of my lot at
all. I considered it better than that of those who were sick in houses
or asleep in the stuffy, deadly air of the slums.
"Believe me, 'tis something to be cast
Face to face with thine own self at last."
[Illustration: A MAN WITH A HISTORY]
Not all nights were spent outdoors. Many a royal evening was passed in
the cabin of a miner or a prospector, or by the fireside of a family
who for some reason had left the old home behind and sought seclusion
in wild scenes, miles from neighbors. Among Colorado's mountains there
are an unusual number of strong characters who are trying again. They
are strong because broken plans, lost fortunes, or shattered health
elsewhere have not ended their efforts or changed their ideals. Many
are trying to restore health, some are trying again to prosper, others
are just making a start in life, but there are a few who, far from
the madding crowd, are living happily the simple life. Sincerity,
hope, and repose enrich the lives of those who live among the crags
and pines of mountain fastnesses. Many a happy evening I have had with
a family, or an old prospector, who gave me interesting scraps of
autobiography along with a lodging for the night.
The snow-fall on the mountains of Colorado is very unevenly
distributed, and is scattered through seven months of the year. Two
places only a few miles apart, and separated by a mountain-range, may
have very different climates, and one of these may have twice as much
snow-fall as the other. On the middle of the upper slopes of the
mountains the snow sometimes falls during seven months of the year.
At an altitude of eleven thousand feet the annual fall amounts to
eighteen feet. This is several times the amount that falls at an
altitude of six thousand feet. In a locality near Crested Butte the
annual fall is thirty feet, and during snowy winters even fifty feet.
Most winter days are clear, and the climate less severe than is
usually imagined.
One winter I walked on snowshoes on the upper slopes of the "snowy"
range of the Rockies, from the Wyoming line on the north to near the
New Mexico line on the south. This was a long walk, and it was full of
amusement and adventure. I walked most of the way on the crest of the
continent. The broken nature of the surface gave me ups and downs.
Sometimes I would descend to the level of seven thousand feet, and
occasionally I climbed some peak that was fourteen thousand feet above
the tides.
I had not been out many days on this trip when I was caught in a storm
on the heights above tree-line. I at once started downward for the
woods. The way among the crags and precipices was slippery; the wind
threatened every moment to hurl me over a cliff; the wind-blown snow
filled the air so that I could see only a few feet, and at times not
at all. But it was too cold to stop. For two hours I fought my way
downward through the storm, and so dark was it during the last
half-hour that I literally felt my way with my staff. Once in the
woods, I took off a snowshoe, dug a large hole in the snow down to
the earth, built a fire, and soon forgot the perilous descent. After
eating from my supply of raisins, I dozed a little, and woke to find
all calm and the moon shining in glory on a snowy mountain-world of
peaks and pines. I put on my snowshoes, climbed upward beneath the
moon, and from the summit of Lead Mountain, thirteen thousand feet
high, saw the sun rise in splendor on a world of white.
The tracks and records in the snow which I read in passing made
something of a daily newspaper for me. They told much of news of the
wilds. Sometimes I read of the games that the snowshoe rabbit had
played; of a starving time among the brave mountain sheep on the
heights; of the quiet content in the ptarmigan neighborhood; of the
dinner that the pines had given the grouse; of the amusements and
exercises on the deer's stamping-ground; of the cunning of foxes; of
the visits of magpies, the excursions of lynxes, and the red records
of mountain lions.
The mountain lion is something of a game-hog and an epicure. He
prefers warm blood for every meal, and is very wasteful. I have much
evidence against him; his worst one-day record that I have shows five
tragedies. In this time he killed a mountain sheep, a fawn, a grouse,
a rabbit, and a porcupine; and as if this were not enough, he was
about to kill another sheep when a dark object on snowshoes shot down
the slope near by and disturbed him. The instances where he has
attacked human beings are rare, but he will watch and follow one for
hours with the utmost caution and curiosity. One morning after a
night-journey through the wood, I turned back and doubled my trail.
After going a short distance I came to the track of a lion alongside
my own. I went back several miles and read the lion's movements. He
had watched me closely. At every place where I rested he had crept up
close, and at the place where I had sat down against a stump he had
crept up to the opposite side of the stump,--and I fear while I dozed!
One night during this expedition I had lodging in an old and isolated
prospector's cabin, with two young men who had very long hair. For
months they had been in seclusion, "gathering wonderful herbs,"
hunting out prescriptions for every human ill, and waiting for their
hair to grow long. I hope they prepared some helpful, or at least
harmless prescriptions, for, ere this, they have become picturesque,
and I fear prosperous, medicine-men on some populous street-corner.
One day I had dinner on the summit of Mt. Lincoln, fourteen thousand
feet above the ocean. I ate with some miners who were digging out
their fortune; and was "the only caller in five months."
But I was not always a welcome guest. At one of the big mining-camps
I stopped for mail and to rest for a day or so. I was all "rags and
tags," and had several broken strata of geology and charcoal on my
face in addition. Before I had got well into the town, from all
quarters came dogs, each of which seemed determined to make it
necessary for me to buy some clothes. As I had already determined to
do this, I kept the dogs at bay for a time, and then sought refuge in
a first-class hotel; from this the porter, stimulated by an excited
order from the clerk, promptly and literally kicked me out!
In the robings of winter how different the mountains than when
dressed in the bloom of summer! In no place did the change seem more
marked than on some terrace over which summer flung the lacy drapery
of a white cascade, or where a wild waterfall "leapt in glory." These
places in winter were glorified with the fine arts of ice,--"frozen
music," as some one has defined architecture,--for here winter had
constructed from water a wondrous array of columns, panels, filigree,
fretwork, relief-work, arches, giant icicles, and stalagmites as large
as, and in ways resembling, a big tree with a fluted full-length
mantle of ice.
Along the way were extensive areas covered with the ruins of
fire-killed trees. Most of the forest fires which had caused these
were the result of carelessness. The timber destroyed by these fires
had been needed by thousands of home-builders. The robes of beauty
which they had burned from the mountain-sides are a serious loss.
These fire ruins preyed upon me, and I resolved to do something to
save the remaining forests. The opportunity came shortly after the
resolution was made.
Two days before reaching the objective point, farthest south, my food
gave out, and I fasted. But as soon as I reached the end, I started
to descend the heights, and very naturally knocked at the door of the
first house I came to, and asked for something to eat. I supposed I
was at a pioneer's cabin. A handsome, neatly dressed young lady came
to the door, and when her eyes fell upon me she blushed and then
turned pale. I was sorry that my appearance had alarmed her, but I
repeated my request for something to eat. Just then, through the
half-open door behind the young lady, came the laughter of children,
and a glance into the room told me that I was before a mountain
schoolhouse. By this time the teacher, to whom I was talking, startled
me by inviting me in. As I sat eating a luncheon to which the teacher
and each one of the six school-children contributed, the teacher
explained to me that she was recently from the East, and that I so
well fitted her ideas of a Western desperado that she was frightened
at first. When I finished eating, I made my first after-dinner speech;
it was also my first attempt to make a forestry address. One point I
tried to bring out was concerning the destruction wrought by forest
fires. Among other things I said: "During the past few years in
Colorado, forest fires, which ought never to have been started, have
destroyed many million dollars' worth of timber, and the area
over which the fires have burned aggregates twenty-five thousand
square miles. This area of forest would put on the equator an
evergreen-forest belt one mile wide that would reach entirely around
the world. Along with this forest have perished many of the animals
and thousands of beautiful birds who had homes in it."
I finally bade all good-bye, went on my way rejoicing, and in due
course arrived at Denver, where a record of one of my longest winter
excursions was written.
In order to give an idea of one of my briefer winter walks, I close
this chapter with an account of a round-trip snowshoe journey from
Estes Park to Grand Lake, the most thrilling and adventurous that has
ever entertained me on the trail.
One February morning I set off alone on snowshoes to cross the
"range," for the purpose of making some snow-measurements. The nature
of my work for the State required the closest observation of the
character and extent of the snow in the mountains. I hoped to get to
Grand Lake for the night, but I was on the east side of the range, and
Grand Lake was on the west. Along the twenty-five miles of trail there
was only wilderness, without a single house. The trail was steep and
the snow very soft. Five hours were spent in gaining timber-line,
which was only six miles from my starting-place, but four thousand
feet above it. Rising in bold grandeur above me was the summit of
Long's Peak, and this, with the great hills of drifted snow, out of
which here and there a dwarfed and distorted tree thrust its top, made
timber-line seem weird and lonely.
From this point the trail wound for six miles across bleak heights
before it came down to timber on the other side of the range. I set
forward as rapidly as possible, for the northern sky looked stormy.
I must not only climb up fifteen hundred feet, but must also skirt
the icy edges of several precipices in order to gain the summit. My
friends had warned me that the trip was a foolhardy one even on a
clear, calm day, but I was fated to receive the fury of a snowstorm
while on the most broken portion of the trail.
The tempest came on with deadly cold and almost blinding violence. The
wind came with awful surges, and roared and boomed among the crags.
The clouds dashed and seethed along the surface, shutting out all
landmarks. I was every moment in fear of slipping or being blown over
a precipice, but there was no shelter; I was on the roof of the
continent, twelve thousand five hundred feet above sea-level, and to
stop in the bitter cold meant death.
[Illustration: THE CREST OF THE CONTINENT IN WINTER, 13,000 FEET
ABOVE SEA-LEVEL]
It was still three miles to timber on the west slope, and I found it
impossible to keep the trail. Fearing to perish if I tried to follow
even the general course of the trail, I abandoned it altogether, and
started for the head of a gorge, down which I thought it would be
possible to climb to the nearest timber. Nothing definite could be
seen. The clouds on the snowy surface and the light electrified air
gave the eye only optical illusions. The outline of every object was
topsy-turvy and dim. The large stones that I thought to step on
were not there; and, when apparently passing others, I bumped into
them. Several times I fell headlong by stepping out for a drift and
finding a depression.
In the midst of these illusions I walked out on a snow-cornice that
overhung a precipice! Unable to see clearly, I had no realization of
my danger until I felt the snow giving way beneath me. I had seen the
precipice in summer, and knew it was more than a thousand feet to the
bottom! Down I tumbled, carrying a large fragment of the snow-cornice
with me. I could see nothing, and I was entirely helpless. Then, just
as the full comprehension of the awful thing that was happening swept
over me, the snow falling beneath me suddenly stopped. I plunged into
it, completely burying myself. Then I, too, no longer moved downward;
my mind gradually admitted the knowledge that my body, together with
a considerable mass of the snow, had fallen upon a narrow ledge and
caught there. More of the snow came tumbling after me, and it was a
matter of some minutes before I succeeded in extricating myself.
When I thrust my head out of the snow-mass and looked about me, I was
first appalled by a glance outward, which revealed the terrible height
of the precipice on the face of which I was hanging. Then I was
relieved by a glance upward, which showed me that I was only some
twenty feet from the top, and that a return thither would not be very
difficult. But if I had walked from the top a few feet farther back,
I should have fallen a quarter of a mile.
One of my snowshoes came off as I struggled out, so I took off the
other shoe and used it as a scoop to uncover the lost web. But it
proved very slow and dangerous work. With both shoes off I sank
chest-deep in the snow; if I ventured too near the edge of the ledge,
the snow would probably slip off and carry me to the bottom of the
precipice. It was only after two hours of effort that the shoe was
recovered.
When I first struggled to the surface of the snow on the ledge, I
looked at once to find a way back to the top of the precipice. I
quickly saw that by following the ledge a few yards beneath the
unbroken snow-cornice I could climb to the top over some jagged
rocks. As soon as I had recovered the shoe, I started round the ledge.
When I had almost reached the jagged rocks, the snow-cornice caved
upon me, and not only buried me, but came perilously near knocking me
into the depths beneath. But at last I stood upon the top in safety.
A short walk from the top brought me out upon a high hill of snow that
sloped steeply down into the woods. The snow was soft, and I sat down
in it and slid "a blue streak"--my blue overalls recording the
streak--for a quarter of a mile, and then came to a sudden and
confusing stop; one of my webs had caught on a spine of one of the
dwarfed and almost buried trees at timber-line.
When I had traveled a short distance below timber-line, a fearful
crashing caused me to turn; I was in time to see fragments of snow
flying in all directions, and snow-dust boiling up in a great geyser
column. A snow-slide had swept down and struck a granite cliff. As I
stood there, another slide started on the heights above timber, and
with a far-off roar swept down in awful magnificence, with a
comet-like tail of snow-dust. Just at timber-line it struck a ledge
and glanced to one side, and at the same time shot up into the air so
high that for an instant I saw the treetops beneath it. But it came
back to earth with awful force, and I felt the ground tremble as it
crushed a wide way through the woods. It finally brought up at the
bottom of a gulch with a wreckage of hundreds of noble spruce trees
that it had crushed down and swept before it.
As I had left the trail on the heights, I was now far from it and in a
rugged and wholly unfrequented section, so that coming upon the fresh
tracks of a mountain lion did not surprise me. But I was not prepared
for what occurred soon afterward. Noticing a steamy vapor rising from
a hole in the snow by the protruding roots of an overturned tree, I
walked to the hole to learn the cause of it. One whiff of the vapor
stiffened my hair and limbered my legs. I shot down a steep slope,
dodging trees and rocks. The vapor was rank with the odor from a bear.
[Illustration: A SNOW-SLIDE TRACK]
At the bottom of the slope I found the frozen surface of a stream
much easier walking than the soft snow. All went well until I came to
some rapids, where, with no warning whatever, the thin ice dropped me
into the cold current among the boulders. I scrambled to my feet, with
the ice flying like broken glass. The water came only a little above
my knees, but as I had gone under the surface, and was completely
drenched, I made an enthusiastic move toward the bank. Now snowshoes
are not adapted for walking either in swift water or among boulders.
I realized this thoroughly after they had several times tripped me,
sprawling, into the liquid cold. Finally I sat down in the water, took
them off, and came out gracefully.
I gained the bank with chattering teeth and an icy armor. My pocket
thermometer showed two degrees above zero. Another storm was bearing
down upon me from the range, and the sun was sinking. But the worst of
it all was that there were several miles of rough and strange country
between me and Grand Lake that would have to be made in the dark. I
did not care to take any more chances on the ice, so I spent a hard
hour climbing out of the cañon. The climb warmed me and set my
clothes steaming.
My watch indicated six o'clock. A fine snow was falling, and it was
dark and cold. I had been exercising for twelve hours without rest,
and had eaten nothing since the previous day, as I never take
breakfast. I made a fire and lay down on a rock by it to relax, and
also to dry my clothes. In half an hour I started on again. Rocky and
forest-covered ridges lay between me and Grand Lake. In the darkness
I certainly took the worst way. I met with too much resistance in the
thickets and too little on the slippery places, so that when, at
eleven o'clock that night, I entered a Grand Lake Hotel, my appearance
was not prepossessing.
The next day, after a few snow-measurements, I set off to re-cross the
range. In order to avoid warm bear-dens and cold streams, I took a
different route. It was a much longer way than the one I had come by,
so I went to a hunter's deserted cabin for the night. The cabin had no
door, and I could see the stars through the roof. The old sheet-iron
stove was badly rusted and broken. Most of the night I spent chopping
wood, and I did not sleep at all. But I had a good rest by the stove,
where I read a little from a musty pamphlet on palmistry that I found
between the logs of the cabin. I always carry candles with me. When
the wind is blowing, the wood damp, and the fingers numb, they are of
inestimable value in kindling a fire. I do not carry firearms, and
during the night, when a lion gave a blood-freezing screech, I wished
he were somewhere else.
Daylight found me climbing toward the top of the range through the
Medicine Bow National Forest, among some of the noblest evergreens in
Colorado. When the sun came over the range, the silent forest vistas
became magnificent with bright lights and deep shadows. At timber-line
the bald rounded summit of the range, like a gigantic white turtle,
rose a thousand feet above me. The slope was steep and very icy; a
gusty wind whirled me about. Climbing to the top would be like going
up a steep ice-covered house-roof. It would be a dangerous and barely
possible undertaking. But as I did not have courage enough to
retreat, I threw off my snowshoes and started up. I cut a place in the
ice for every step. There was nothing to hold to, and a slip meant a
fatal slide.
With rushes from every quarter, the wind did its best to freeze or
overturn me. My ears froze, and my fingers grew so cold that they
could hardly hold the ice-axe. But after an hour of constant peril and
ever-increasing exhaustion, I got above the last ice and stood upon
the snow. The snow was solidly packed, and, leaving my snowshoes
strapped across my shoulders, I went scrambling up. Near the top of
the range a ledge of granite cropped out through the snow, and toward
this I hurried. Before making a final spurt to the ledge, I paused to
breathe. As I stopped, I was startled by sounds like the creaking of
wheels on a cold, snowy street. The snow beneath me was slipping! I
had started a snow-slide.
Almost instantly the slide started down the slope with me on it. The
direction in which it was going and the speed it was making would in
a few seconds carry it down two thousand feet of slope, where it would
leap over a precipice into the woods. I was on the very upper edge of
the snow that had started, and this was the tail-end of the slide. I
tried to stand up in the rushing snow, but its speed knocked my feet
from under me, and in an instant I was rolled beneath the surface.
Beneath the snow, I went tumbling on with it for what seemed like a
long time, but I know, of course, that it was for only a second or
two; then my feet struck against something solid. I was instantly
flung to the surface again, where I either was spilled off, or else
fell through, the end of the slide, and came to a stop on the scraped
and frozen ground, out of the grasp of the terrible snow.
I leaped to my feet and saw the slide sweep on in most impressive
magnificence. At the front end of the slide the snow piled higher
and higher, while following in its wake were splendid streamers and
scrolls of snow-dust. I lost no time in getting to the top, and set
off southward, where, after six miles, I should come to the trail that
led to my starting-place on the east side of the range. After I had
made about three miles, the cold clouds closed in, and everything was
fogged. A chilly half-hour's wait and the clouds broke up. I had lost
my ten-foot staff in the snow-slide, and feeling for precipices
without it would probably bring me out upon another snow-cornice, so
I took no chances.
I was twelve thousand five hundred feet above sea-level when the
clouds broke up, and from this great height I looked down upon what
seemed to be the margin of the polar world. It was intensely cold, but
the sun shone with dazzling glare, and the wilderness of snowy peaks
came out like a grand and jagged ice-field in the far south. Halos
and peculiarly luminous balls floated through the color-tinged and
electrical air. The horizon had a touch of cobalt blue, and on the
dome above, white flushes appeared and disappeared like faint auroras.
After five hours on these silent but imposing heights I struck my
first day's trail, and began a wild and merry coast down among the
rocks and trees to my starting-place.
I hope to have more winter excursions, but perhaps I have had my
share. At the bare thought of those winter experiences I am again
on an unsheltered peak struggling in a storm; or I am in a calm and
splendid forest upon whose snowy, peaceful aisles fall the purple
shadows of crags and pines.
The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine
The peculiar charm and fascination that trees exert over many people
I had always felt from childhood, but it was that great nature-lover,
John Muir, who first showed me how and where to learn their language.
Few trees, however, ever held for me such an attraction as did a
gigantic and venerable yellow pine which I discovered one autumn day
several years ago while exploring the southern Rockies. It grew within
sight of the Cliff-Dwellers' Mesa Verde, which stands at the corner
of four States, and as I came upon it one evening just as the sun
was setting over that mysterious tableland, its character and heroic
proportions made an impression upon me that I shall never forget, and
which familiar acquaintance only served to deepen while it yet lived
and before the axeman came. Many a time I returned to build my
camp-fire by it and have a day or a night in its solitary and noble
company. I learned afterwards that it had been given the name "Old
Pine," and it certainly had an impressiveness quite compatible with
the age and dignity which go with a thousand years of life.
When, one day, the sawmill-man at Mancos wrote, "Come, we are about to
log your old pine," I started at once, regretting that a thing which
seemed to me so human, as well as so noble, must be killed.
[Illustration: A VETERAN WESTERN YELLOW PINE]
I went out with the axemen who were to cut the old pine down. A grand
and impressive tree he was. Never have I seen so much individuality,
so much character, in a tree. Although lightning had given him a bald
crown, he was still a healthy giant, and was waving evergreen banners
more than one hundred and fifteen feet above the earth. His massive
trunk, eight feet in diameter on a level with my breast, was covered
with a thick, rough, golden-brown bark which was broken into irregular
plates. Several of his arms were bent and broken. Altogether, he
presented a timeworn but heroic appearance.
It is almost a marvel that trees should live to become the oldest of
living things. Fastened in one place, their struggle is incessant and
severe. From the moment a baby tree is born--from the instant it casts
its tiny shadow upon the ground--until death, it is in danger from
insects and animals. It cannot move to avoid danger. It cannot run
away to escape enemies. Fixed in one spot, almost helpless, it must
endure flood and drought, fire and storm, insects and earthquakes,
or die.
Trees, like people, struggle for existence, and an aged tree, like an
aged person, has not only a striking appearance, but an interesting
biography. I have read the autobiographies of many century-old trees,
and have found their life-stories strange and impressive. The yearly
growth, or annual ring of wood with which trees envelop themselves, is
embossed with so many of their experiences that this annual ring of
growth literally forms an autobiographic diary of the tree's life.
I wanted to read Old Pine's autobiography. A veteran pine that had
stood on the southern Rockies and struggled and triumphed through the
changing seasons of hundreds of years must contain a rare life-story.
From his stand between the Mesa and the pine-plumed mountain, he had
seen the panorama of the seasons and many a strange pageant; he
had beheld what scenes of animal and human strife, what storms and
convulsions of nature! Many a wondrous secret he had locked within his
tree soul. Yet, although he had not recorded what he had _seen_,
I knew that he had kept a fairly accurate diary of his own personal
experience. This I knew the saw would reveal, and this I had
determined to see.
Nature matures a million conifer seeds for each one she chooses for
growth, so we can only speculate as to the selection of the seed from
which sprung this storied pine. It may be that the cone in which it
matured was crushed into the earth by the hoof of a passing deer. It
may have been hidden by a jay; or, as is more likely, it may have
grown from one of the uneaten cones which a Douglas squirrel had
buried for winter food. Douglas squirrels are the principal nurserymen
for all the Western pineries. Each autumn they harvest a heavy
percentage of the cone crop and bury it for winter. The seeds in the
uneaten cones germinate, and each year countless thousands of conifers
grow from the seeds planted by these squirrels. It may be that the
seed from which Old Pine burst had been planted by an ancient ancestor
of the protesting Douglas who was in possession, or this seed may have
been in a cone which simply bounded or blew into a hole, where the
seed found sufficient mould and moisture to give it a start in life.
* * * * *
Two loggers swung their axes. At the first blow a Douglas squirrel
came out of a hole at the base of a dead limb near the top of the tree
and made an aggressive claim of ownership, setting up a vociferous
protest against the cutting. As his voice was unheeded, he came
scolding down the tree, jumped off one of the lower limbs, and took
refuge in a young pine that stood near by. From time to time he came
out on the top of the limb nearest to us, and, with a wry face, fierce
whiskers, and violent gestures, directed a torrent of abuse at the
axemen who were delivering death-blows to Old Pine.
The old pine's enormous weight caused him to fall heavily, and he came
to earth with tremendous force and struck on an elbow of one of his
stocky arms. The force of the fall not only broke the trunk in two,
but badly shattered it. The damage to the log was so general that the
sawmill-man said it would not pay to saw it into lumber and that it
could rot on the spot.
I had come a long distance for the express purpose of deciphering Old
Pine's diary as the scroll of his life should be laid open in the
sawmill. The abandonment of the shattered form compelled the adoption
of another way of getting at his story. Receiving permission to do as
I pleased with his remains, I at once began to cut and split both the
trunk and the limbs and to transcribe their strange records. Day after
day I worked. I dug up the roots and thoroughly dissected them, and
with the aid of a magnifier I studied the trunk, the roots, and the
limbs.
I carefully examined the base of his stump, and in it I found 1047
rings of growth! He had lived through a thousand and forty-seven
memorable years. As he was cut down in 1903, his birth probably
occurred in 856.
In looking over the rings of growth, I found that a few of them were
much thicker than the others; and these thick rings, or coats of wood,
tell of favorable seasons. There were also a few extremely thin rings
of growth. In places two and even three of these were together. These
were the result of unfavorable seasons,--of drought or cold. The
rings of trees also show healed wounds, and tell of burns, bites,
and bruises, of torn bark and broken arms. Old Pine not only received
injuries in his early years, but from time to time throughout his
life. The somewhat kinked condition of several of the rings of growth,
beginning with the twentieth, shows that at the age of twenty he
sustained an injury which resulted in a severe curvature of the spine,
and that for some years he was somewhat stooped. I was unable to make
out from his diary whether this injury was the result of a tree or
some object falling upon him and pinning him down, or whether his back
had been overweighted and bent by wet, clinging snow. As I could not
find any scars or bruises, I think that snow must have been the cause
of the injury. However, after a few years he straightened up with
youthful vitality and seemed to outgrow and forget the experience.
A century of tranquil life followed, and during these years the rapid
growth tells of good seasons as well as good soil. This rapid growth
also shows that there could not have been any crowding neighbors to
share the sun and the soil. The tree had grown evenly in all quarters,
and the pith of the tree was in the centre. But had one tree grown
close, on that quarter the old pine would have grown slower than the
others and would have been thinner, and the pith would thus have been
away from the tree's centre.
When the old pine was just completing his one hundred and thirty-fifth
ring of growth, he met with an accident which I can account for only
by assuming that a large tree that grew several yards away blew over,
and in falling, stabbed him in the side with two dead limbs. His bark
was broken and torn, but this healed in due time. Short sections of
the dead limbs broke off, however, and were embedded in the old pine.
Twelve years' growth covered them, and they remained hidden from view
until my splitting revealed them. The other wounds started promptly to
heal and, with one exception, did so.
A year or two later some ants and borers began excavating their deadly
winding ways in the old pine. They probably started to work in one
of the places injured by the falling tree. They must have had some
advantage, or else something must have happened to the nuthatches and
chickadees that year, for, despite the vigilance of these birds, both
the borers and the ants succeeded in establishing colonies that
threatened injury and possibly death.
Fortunately relief came. One day the chief surgeon of all the
Southwestern pineries came along. This surgeon was the Texas
woodpecker. He probably did not long explore the ridges and little
furrows of the bark before he discovered the wound or heard these
hidden insects working. After a brief examination, holding his ear to
the bark for a moment to get the location of the tree's deadly foe
beneath, he was ready to act. He made two successful operations.
These not only required him to cut deeply into the old pine and take
out the borers, but he may also have had to come back from time to
time to dress the wounds by devouring the ant-colonies which may have
persisted in taking possession of them. The wounds finally healed, and
only the splitting of the affected parts revealed these records, all
filled with pitch and preserved for nearly nine hundred years.
Following this, an even tenor marked his life for nearly three
centuries. This quiet existence came to an end in the summer of 1301,
when a stroke of lightning tore a limb out of his round top and badly
shattered a shoulder. He had barely recovered from this injury when a
violent wind tore off several of his arms. During the summer of 1348
he lost two of his largest arms. These were large and sound, and were
more than a foot in diameter at the points of breakage. As these were
broken by a down-pressing weight or force, we may attribute these
breaks to accumulations of snow.
The oldest, largest portion of a tree is the short section
immediately above the ground, and, as this lower section is the most
exposed to accidents or to injuries from enemies, it generally bears
evidence of having suffered the most. Within its scroll are usually
found the most extensive and interesting autobiographical impressions.
It is doubtful if there is any portion of the earth upon which there
are so many deadly struggles as upon the earth around the trunk of a
tree. Upon this small arena there are battles fierce and wild; here
nature is "red in tooth and claw." When a tree is small and tender,
countless insects come to feed upon it. Birds come to it to devour
these insects. Around the tree are daily almost merciless fights for
existence. These death-struggles occur not only in the daytime, but in
the night. Mice, rats, and rabbits destroy millions of young trees.
These bold animals often flay baby trees in the daylight, and while at
their deadly feast many a time have they been surprised by hawks, and
then they are at a banquet where they themselves are eaten. The owl,
the faithful nightwatchman of trees, often swoops down at night, and
as a result some little tree is splashed with the blood of the very
animal that came to feed upon it.
The lower section of Old Pine's trunk contained records which I found
interesting. One of these in particular aroused my imagination. I was
sawing off a section of this lower portion when the saw, with a
buzz-z-z-z, suddenly jumped. The object struck was harder than the
saw. I wondered what it could be, and, cutting the wood carefully
away, laid bare a flint arrowhead. Close to this one I found another,
and then with care I counted the rings of growth to find out the year
that these had wounded Old Pine. The outer ring which these arrowheads
had pierced was the six hundred and thirtieth, so that the year of
this occurrence was 1486.
Had an Indian bent his bow and shot at a bear that had stood at bay
backed up against this tree? Or was there around this tree a battle
among Indian tribes? Is it possible that at this place some
Cliff-Dweller scouts encountered their advancing foe from the north
and opened hostilities? It may be that around Old Pine was fought the
battle that is said to have decided the fate of that mysterious race
the Cliff-Dwellers. The imagination insists on speculating with these
two arrowheads, though they form a fascinating clue that leads us
to no definite conclusion. But the fact remains that Old Pine was
wounded by two Indian arrowheads some time during his six hundred and
thirtieth summer.
The year that Columbus discovered America, Old Pine was a handsome
giant with a round head held more than one hundred feet above the
earth. He was six hundred and thirty-six years old, and with the
coming of the Spanish adventurers his lower trunk was given new events
to record. The year 1540 was a particularly memorable one for him.
This year brought the first horses and bearded men into the drama
which was played around him. This year, for the first time, he felt
the edge of steel and the tortures of fire. The old chronicles say
that the Spanish explorers found the cliff-houses in the year 1540.
I believe that during this year a Spanish exploring party may have
camped beneath Old Pine and built a fire against his instep, and that
some of the explorers hacked him with an axe. The old pine had
distinct records of axe and fire markings during the year 1540. It was
not common for the Indians of the West to burn or mutilate trees, and
as it was common for the Spaniards to do so, and as these hackings in
the tree seemed to have been made with some edged tool sharper than
any possessed by the Indians, it at least seems probable that they
were done by the Spaniards. At any rate, from the year 1540 until the
day of his death, Old Pine carried these scars on his instep.
As the average yearly growth of the old pine was about the same as in
trees similarly situated at the present time, I suppose that climatic
conditions in his early days must have been similar to the climatic
conditions of to-day. His records indicate periods of even tenor of
climate, a year of extremely poor conditions, occasionally a year
crowned with a bountiful wood harvest. From 1540 to 1762 I found
little of special interest. In 1762, however, the season was not
regular. After the ring was well started, something, perhaps a cold
wave, for a time checked its growth, and as a result the wood for
that one year resembled two years' growth, but yet the difference
between this double or false ring and a regular one was easily
detected. Old Pine's "hard times" experience seems to have been during
the years 1804 and 1805. I think it probable that these were years of
drought. During 1804 the layer of wood was the thinnest in his life,
and for 1805 the only wood I could find was a layer which only partly
covered the trunk of the tree, and this was exceedingly thin.
From time to time in the old pine's record, I came across what seemed
to be indications of an earthquake shock; but late in 1811 or early in
1812, I think there is no doubt that he experienced a violent shock,
for he made extensive records of it. This earthquake occurred after
the sap had ceased to flow in 1811, and before it began to flow in the
spring of 1812. In places the wood was checked and shattered. At one
point, some distance from the ground, there was a bad horizontal
break. Two big roots were broken in two, and that quarter of the tree
which faced the cliffs had suffered from a rock bombardment. I
suppose the violence of the quake displaced many rocks, and some of
these, as they came bounding down the mountain-side, collided with Old
Pine. One, of about five pounds' weight, struck him so violently in
the side that it remained embedded there. After some years the wound
was healed over, but this fragment remained in the tree until I
released it.
During 1859 some one made an axe-mark on the old pine that may have
been intended for a trail-blaze, and during the same year another fire
badly burned and scarred his ankle. I wonder if some prospectors came
this way in 1859 and made camp by him.
Another record of man's visits to the tree was made in the summer of
1881, when I think a hunting or outing party may have camped near here
and amused themselves by shooting at a mark on Old Pine's ankle.
Several modern rifle-bullets were found embedded in the wood around or
just beneath a blaze which was made on the tree the same year in which
the bullets had entered it. As both these marks were made during the
year 1881, it is at least possible that this year the old pine was
used as the background for a target during a shooting contest.
While I was working over the old pine, a Douglas squirrel who lived
near by used every day to stop in his busy harvesting of pine-cones to
look on and scold me. As I watched him placing his cones in a hole in
the ground under the pine-needles, I often wondered if one of his
buried cones would remain there uneaten to germinate and expand ever
green into the air, and become a noble giant to live as long and as
useful a life as Old Pine. I found myself trying to picture the scenes
in which this tree would stand when the birds came singing back from
the Southland in the springtime of the year 3000.
After I had finished my work of splitting, studying, and deciphering
the fragments of the old pine, I went to the sawmill and arranged for
the men to come over that evening after I had departed and burn every
piece and vestige of the venerable old tree. I told them I should
be gone by dark. Then I went back and piled into a pyramid every
fragment of root and trunk and broken branch. Seating myself upon this
pyramid, I spent some time that afternoon gazing through the autumn
sunglow at the hazy Mesa Verde, while my mind rebuilt and shifted the
scenes of the long, long drama in which Old Pine had played his part,
and of which he had given us but a few fragmentary records. I lingered
there dreaming until twilight. I thought of the cycles during which he
had stood patient in his appointed place, and my imagination busied
itself with the countless experiences that had been recorded, and the
scenes and pageants he had witnessed but of which he had made no
record. I wondered if he had enjoyed the changing of seasons. I knew
that he had often boomed or hymned in the storm or in the breeze. Many
a monumental robe of snow-flowers had he worn. More than a thousand
times he had beheld the earth burst into bloom amid the happy songs of
mating birds; hundreds of times in summer he had worn countless
crystal rain-jewels in the sunlight of the breaking storm, while the
brilliant rainbow came and vanished on the near-by mountain-side. Ten
thousand times he had stood silent in the lonely light of the white
and mystic moon.