the lake-shore, for without a gun all objects, or my eyes, were so
changed that I had only a dim recollection of having seen the place
before. From time to time, as I walked about, I stopped to try to win
the confidence of the small folk in fur and feathers. I found some
that trusted me, and at noon a chipmunk, a camp-bird, a chickadee, and
myself were several times busy with the same bit of luncheon at once.
Some years ago mountain sheep often came in flocks to lick the salty
soil in a ruined crater on Specimen Mountain. One day I climbed up and
hid myself in the crags to watch them. More than a hundred of them
came. After licking for a time, many lay down. Some of the rams posed
themselves on the rocks in heroic attitudes and looked serenely and
watchfully around. Young lambs ran about, and a few occasionally raced
up and down smooth, rocky steeps, seemingly without the slightest
regard for the laws of falling bodies. I was close to the flock, but
luckily they did not suspect my presence. After enjoying their fine
wild play for more than two hours, I slipped away and left them in
their home among the crags.
One spring day I paused in a whirl of mist and wet snow to look for
the trail. I could see only a few yards ahead. As I peered ahead, a
bear emerged from the gloom, heading straight for me. Behind her were
two cubs. I caught her impatient expression when she beheld me. She
stopped, and then, with a growl of anger, she wheeled and boxed cubs
right and left like an angry mother. The bears disappeared in the
direction from which they had come, the cubs urged on with spanks
from behind as all vanished in the falling snow.
The gray Douglas squirrel is one of the most active, audacious, and
outspoken of animals. He enjoys seclusion and claims to be monarch of
all he surveys, and no trespasser is too big to escape a scolding from
him. Many times he has given me a terrible tongue-lashing with a
desperate accompaniment of fierce facial expressions, bristling
whiskers, and emphatic gestures. I love this brave fellow creature;
but if he were only a few inches bigger, I should never risk my life
in his woods without a gun.
This is a beautiful world, and all who go out under the open sky will
feel the gentle, kindly influence of Nature and hear her good
tidings. The forests of the earth are the flags of Nature. They appeal
to all and awaken inspiring universal feelings. Enter the forest and
the boundaries of nations are forgotten. It may be that some time an
immortal pine will be the flag of a united and peaceful world.
A Watcher on the Heights
While on the sky-line as State Snow Observer, I had one adventure with
the elements that called for the longest special report that I have
ever written. Perhaps I cannot do better than quote this report
transmitted to Professor Carpenter, at Denver, on May 26, 1904.
NOTES ON THE POUDRE FLOOD
The day before the Poudre flood, I traveled for eight hours
northwesterly along the top of the Continental Divide, all the time
being above timber-line and from eleven thousand to twelve thousand
feet above sea-level.
The morning was cloudless and hot. The western sky was marvelously
clear. Eastward, a thin, dark haze overspread everything below ten
thousand feet. By 9.30 A. M. this haze had ascended higher than where
I was. At nine o'clock the snow on which I walked, though it had been
frozen hard during the night, was soggy and wet.
About 9.30 a calm that had prevailed all the morning gave way before
an easy intermittent warm breeze from the southeast.
At 10.10 the first cloud appeared in the north, just above Hague's
Peak. It was a heavy cumulus cloud, but I do not know from what
direction it came. It rose high in the air, drifted slowly toward the
west, and then seemed to dissolve. At any rate, it vanished. About
10.30 several heavy clouds rose from behind Long's Peak, moving toward
the northwest, rising higher into the sky as they advanced.
[Illustration: ON THE HEIGHTS]
The wind, at first in fitful dashes from the southeast, began to come
more steadily and swiftly after eleven o'clock, and was so warm that
the snow softened to a sloppy state. The air carried a tinge of haze,
and conditions were oppressive. It was labor to breathe. Never, except
one deadly hot July day in New York City, have I felt so overcome with
heat and choking air. Perspiration simply streamed from me. These
oppressive conditions continued for two hours,--until about one
o'clock. While they lasted, my eyes pained, ached, and twitched. There
was no glare, but only by keeping my eyes closed could I stand the
half-burning pain. Finally I came to some crags and lay down for a
time in the shade. I was up eleven thousand five hundred feet and the
time was 12.20. As I lay on the snow gazing upward, I became aware
that there were several flotillas of clouds of from seven to twenty
each, and these were moving toward every point of the compass. Each
seemed on a different stratum of air, and each moved through space a
considerable distance above or below the others. The clouds moving
eastward were the highest. Most of the lower clouds were those moving
westward. The haze and sunlight gave color to every cloud, and this
color varied from smoky red to orange.
At two o'clock the haze came in from the east almost as dense as a
fog-bank, crossed the ridge before me, and spread out as dark and
foreboding as the smoke of Vesuvius. Behind me the haze rolled upward
when it struck the ridge, and I had clear glimpses whenever I looked
to the southwest. This heavy, muddy haze prevailed for a little more
than half an hour, and as it cleared, the clouds began to disappear,
but a gauzy haze still continued in the air. The feeling in the air
was not agreeable, and for the first time in my life I felt alarmed
by the shifting, rioting clouds and the weird haze.
I arrived at timber-line south of Poudre Lakes about 4.30 P. M., and
for more than half an hour the sky, except in the east over the
foothills, was clear, and the sunlight struck a glare from the snow.
With the cleared air there came to me an easier feeling. The
oppressiveness ceased. I descended a short distance into the woods
and relaxed on a fallen tree that lay above the snow.
I had been there but a little while, when--snap! buzz! buzz! buzz!
ziz! ziz! and electricity began to pull my hair and hum around my
ears. The electricity passed off shortly, but in a little while it
caught me again by the hair for a brief time, and this time my right
arm momentarily cramped and my heart seemed to give several lurches. I
arose and tramped on and downward, but every little while I was in for
shocking treatment. The electrical waves came from the southwest and
moved northeast. They were separated by periods of from one to several
minutes in length, and were about two seconds in passing. During
their presence they made it lively for me, with hair-pulling,
heart-palpitation, and muscular cramps. I tried moving speedily with
the wave, also standing still and lying down, hoping that the wave
would pass me by; but in each and every case it gave me the same
stirring treatment. Once I stood erect and rigid as the wave came
on, but it intensified suddenly the rigidity of every muscle to a
seemingly rupturing extent, and I did not try that plan again. The
effect of each wave on me seemed to be slightly weakened whenever
I lay down and fully relaxed my muscles.
I was on a northerly slope, in spruce timber, tramping over five feet
of snow. During these electrical waves, the points of dry twigs were
tipped with a smoky blue flame, and sometimes bands of this bluish
flame encircled green trees just below their lower limbs. I looked at
the compass a few times, and though the needle occasionally swayed a
little, it was not affected in any marked manner.
The effect of the electrical waves on me became less as I descended,
but whether from my getting below the electrical stratum, or from a
cessation of the current, I cannot say.
But I did not descend much below eleven thousand feet, and at the
lowest point I crossed the South Poudre, at the outlet of Poudre
Lakes. In crossing I broke through the ice and received a wetting,
with the exception of my right side above the hip. Once across, I
walked about two hundred yards through an opening, then again entered
the woods, on the southeasterly slope of Specimen Mountain. I had
climbed only a short distance up this slope when another electrical
wave struck me. The effect of this was similar to that of the
preceding ones. There was, however, a marked difference in the
intensity with which the electricity affected the wet and the dry
portions of my body. The effect on my right side and shoulder, which
had escaped wetting when I broke through the ice, was noticeably
stronger than on the rest of my body. Climbing soon dried my clothes
sufficiently to make this difference no longer noticeable. The waves
became more frequent than at first, but not so strong. I made a clumsy
climb of about five hundred feet, my muscles being "muscle-bound" all
the time with rigidity from electricity. But this climb brought me
almost to timber-line on Specimen Mountain, and also under the shadow
of the south peak of it. At this place the electrical effects almost
ceased. Nor did I again seriously feel the current until I found
myself out in the sunlight which came between the two peaks of
Specimen. While I continued in the sunlight I felt the electrical
wave, but, strange to say, when I again entered the shadow I almost
wholly escaped it.
When I started on the last slope toward the top of North Specimen, I
came out into the sunlight again, and I also passed into an electrical
sea. The slope was free from snow, and as the electrical waves swept
in close succession, about thirty seconds apart, they snapped, hummed,
and buzzed in such a manner that their advance and retreat could be
plainly heard. In passing by me, the noise was more of a crackling and
humming nature, while a million faint sparks flashed from the stones
(porphyry and rhyolite) as the wave passed over. But the effect on me
became constant. Every muscle was almost immovable. I could climb only
a few steps without weakening to the stopping-point. I breathed only
by gasps, and my heart became violent and feeble by turns. I felt as
if cinched in a steel corset. After I had spent ten long minutes and
was only half-way up a slope, the entire length of which I had more
than once climbed in a few minutes and in fine shape, I turned to
retreat, but as there was no cessation of the electrical colic, I
faced about and started up again. I reached the top a few minutes
before 6.30 P. M., and shortly afterward the sun disappeared behind
clouds and peaks.
I regret that I failed to notice whether the electrical effects
ceased with the setting of the sun, but it was not long after the
disappearance of the sun before I was at ease, enjoying the
magnificent mountain-range of clouds that had formed above the
foothills and stood up glorious in the sunlight.
Shortly before five o'clock the clouds had begun to pile up in the
east, and their gigantic forms, flowing outlines, and glorious
lighting were the only things that caused the electrical effects to be
forgotten even momentarily. The clouds formed into a long, solid,
rounded range that rose to great height and was miles in length. The
southern end of this range was in the haze, and I could not make out
its outline further south than a point about opposite Loveland,
Colorado, nor could I see the northern end beyond a few miles north of
Cheyenne, where it was cut off by a dozen strata of low clouds that
moved steadily at a right angle to the east. Sixty miles of length was
visible. Its height, like that of the real mountains which it
paralleled, diminished toward the north. The place of greatest
altitude was about twenty-five miles distant from me. From my
location, the clouds presented a long and smoothly terraced slope, the
top of which was at least five thousand feet and may have been fifteen
thousand feet above me. The clouds seemed compact; at times they
surged upwards; then they would settle with a long, undulating swell,
as if some unseen power were trying to force them further up the
mountains, while they were afraid to try it. Finally a series of low,
conical peaks rose on the summit of the cloud-range, and the peaks and
the upper cloud-slope resembled the upper portion of a circus-tent.
There were no rough places or angles.
When darkness came on, the surface of this cloud-range was at times
splendidly illuminated by electricity beneath; and, when the darkness
deepened, the electrical play beneath often caused the surface to
shine momentarily like incandescent glass, and occasionally sinuous
rivers of gold ran over the slopes. Several times I thought that the
course of these golden rivers of electrical fire was from the bottom
upward, but so brilliant and dazzling were they that I could not
positively decide on the direction of their movement. Never have I
seen such enormous cloud-forms or such brilliant electrical effects.
The summit of Specimen Mountain, from which I watched the clouds and
electrical flashes, is about twelve thousand five hundred feet above
sea-level. A calm prevailed while I remained on top. It was about
8.30 P. M. when I left the summit, on snowshoes, and swept down the
steep northern slope into the woods. This hurry caused no unusual
heart or muscle action.
The next morning was cloudy as low down as ten thousand five hundred
feet, and, for all I know, lower still. The night had been warm, and
the morning had the oppressive feeling that dominated the morning
before. The clouds broke up before nine o'clock, and the air, with
haze in it, seemed yellow. About 10.30, haze and, soon after, clouds
came in from the southeast (at this time I was high up on the
southerly slope of Mt. Richthofen), and by eleven o'clock the sky was
cloudy. Up to this time the air, when my snow-glasses were off, burned
and twitched my eyes in the same manner as on the previous morning.
Early in the afternoon I left Grand Ditch Camp and started down to
Chambers Lake. I had not gone far when drops of rain began to fall
from time to time, and shortly after this my muscles began to twitch
occasionally under electrical ticklings. At times slight muscular
rigidity was noticeable. Just before two o'clock the clouds began to
burst through between the trees. I was at an altitude of about eleven
thousand feet and a short distance from the head of Trap Creek. Rain,
hail, and snow fell in turn, and the lightning began frequently to
strike the rocks. With the beginning of the lightning my muscles
ceased to be troubled with either twitching or rigidity. For the two
hours between 2 and 4 P. M. the crash and roll of thunder was
incessant. I counted twenty-three times that the lightning struck the
rocks, but I did not see it strike a tree. The clouds were low, and
the wind came from the east and the northeast, then from the west.
[Illustration: A STORM ON THE ROCKIES]
About four o'clock, I broke through the snow, tumbled into Trap Creek,
and had to swim a little. This stream was really very swift, and ran
in a narrow gulch, but it was blocked by snow and by tree-limbs swept
down by the flood, and a pond had been formed. It was crowded with a
deep deposit of snow which rested on a shelf of ice. This covering was
shattered and uplifted by the swollen stream, and I had slipped on the
top of the gulch and tumbled in. Once in, the swift water tugged at
me to pull me under; the cakes of snow and ice hampered me, and my
snowshoes were entangled with brush and limbs. The combination seemed
determined to drown me. For a few seconds I put forth all my efforts
to get at my pocket-knife. This accomplished, the fastenings of my
snowshoes were cut, and unhampered by these, I escaped the waters.
* * * * *
Since I have felt no ill results, the effect of the entire experience
may have been beneficial. The clouds, glorious as they had been in
formation and coloring, resulted in a terrible cloudburst. Enormous
quantities of water were poured out, and this, falling upon the
treeless foothills, rushed away to do more than a million dollars'
damage in the rich and beautiful Poudre Valley.
Climbing Long's Peak
Among the best days that I have had outdoors are the two hundred and
fifty-seven that were spent as a guide on Long's Peak. One day was
required from the starting-place near my cabin for each round trip to
the summit of the peak. Something of interest occurred to enliven each
one of these climbs: a storm, an accident, the wit of some one or the
enthusiasm of all the climbers. But the climb I remember with greatest
satisfaction is the one on which I guided Harriet Peters, an
eight-year-old girl, to the top.
It was a cold morning when we started for the top, but it was this day
or wait until next season, for Harriet was to start for her Southern
home in a day or two and could not wait for a more favorable morning.
Harriet had spent the two preceding summers near my cabin, and around
it had played with the chipmunks and ridden the burros, and she had
made a few climbs with me up through the woods. We often talked of
going to the top of Long's Peak when she should become strong enough
to do so. This time came just after her eighth birthday. As I was as
eager to have her make the climb as she was to make it, we started up
the next morning after her aunt had given permission for her to go.
She was happy when I lifted her at last into the saddle, away up on
old "Top's" back. She was so small that I still wonder how she managed
to stay on, but she did so easily.
Long's Peak is not only one of the most scenic of the peaks in the
Rocky Mountains, but it is probably the most rugged. From our
starting-place it was seven miles to the top; five of these miles may
be ridden, but the last two are so steep and craggy that one must go
on foot and climb.
[Illustration: LONG'S PEAK FROM THE SUMMIT OF MT. MEEKER]
After riding a little more than a mile, we came to a clear, cold brook
that is ever coming down in a great hurry over a steep mountain-side,
splashing, jumping, and falling over the boulders of one of nature's
stony stairways and forming white cascades which throw their spray
among the tall, dark pines. I had told Harriet that ouzels lived by
this brook; she was eager to see one, and we stopped at a promising
place by the brook to watch. In less than a minute one came flying
down the cascades, and so near to the surface of the water that he
seemed to be tumbling and sliding down with it. He alighted on a
boulder near us, made two or three pleasant curtsies, and started to
sing one of his low, sweet songs. He was doing the very thing of which
I had so often told Harriet. We watched and listened with breathless
interest. In the midst of the song he dived into the brook; in a
moment he came up with a water-bug in his bill, settled on the boulder
again, gave his nods, and resumed his song, seemingly at the point
where he left off. After a few low, sweet notes he broke off again and
plunged into the water. This time he came up quickly and alighted on
the spot he had just left, and went on with his song without any
preliminaries and as if there had been no interruption.
The water-ouzel is found by the alpine lakes and brooks on the
mountains of the West. It is a modest-appearing bird, about the size
of a thrush, and wears a plain dress of slaty blue. This dress is
finished with a tail-piece somewhat like that of the wren, though it
is not upturned so much. The bird seems to love cascades, and often
nests by one. It also shows its fondness for water by often flying
along the brook, following every bend and break made by the stream,
keeping close to the water all the time and frequently touching it.
Over the quiet reaches it goes skimming; it plunges over the
waterfalls, alights on rocks in the rapids, goes dashing through the
spray, its every movement showing the ecstasies of eager life and joy
in the hurrying water. Our ouzel was quietly feeding on the edge of
the brook, when Harriet said good-bye as our ponies started up the
trail.
Harriet had never been in school, but she could read, write, and sing.
She had good health, and a brighter, cheerier little girl I have never
seen. As we rode up the trail through the woods, the gray Douglas
squirrels were busy with the harvest. They were cutting off and
storing cones for winter food. In the treetops these squirrels seemed
to be bouncing and darting in all directions. One would cut off a
cone, then dart to the next, and so swiftly that cones were
constantly dropping. Frequently the cones struck limbs and bounded as
they fell, often coming to the ground to bounce and roll some distance
over the forest floor. An occasional one went rolling and bouncing
down the steep mountain-side with two or three happy chipmunks in
jolly pursuit.
We watched one squirrel stow cones under trash and in holes in the
thick beds of needles. These cones were buried near a tree, in a
dead limb of which the squirrel had a hole and a home. Harriet asked
many questions concerning the cones,--why they were buried, how the
squirrel found them when they were buried in the snow, and what became
of those which were left buried. I told her that during the winter the
squirrel came down and dug through the snow to the cones and then fed
upon the nuts. I also told her that squirrels usually buried more
cones than were eaten. The uneaten cones, being left in the ground,
were in a way planted, and the nuts in them in time sprouted, and
young trees came peeping up among the fallen leaves. The squirrel's
way of observing Arbor Day makes him a useful forester. Harriet said
she would tell all her boy and girl friends what she knew of this
squirrel's tree-planting ways, and would ask her uncle not to shoot
the little tree-planter.
As we followed the trail up through the woods, I told Harriet many
things concerning the trees, and the forces which influenced their
distribution and growth. While we were traveling westward in the
bottom of a gulch, I pointed out to her that the trees on the mountain
that rose on the right and sloped toward the south were of a different
kind from those on the mountain-side which rose on our left and sloped
toward the north. After traveling four miles and climbing up two
thousand feet above our starting-place, and, after from time to time
coming to and passing kinds of trees which did not grow lower down the
slopes, we at last came to timber-line, above which trees did not grow
at all.
In North America between timber-line on the Rockies, at an altitude of
about eleven thousand feet, and sea-level on the Florida coast, there
are about six hundred and twenty kinds of trees and shrubs growing.
Each kind usually grows in the soil and clime that is best suited to
its requirements; in other words, most trees are growing where they
can do the best, or where they can do better than any other kind. Some
trees do the best at the moist seashore; some thrive in swamps; others
live only on the desert's edge; some live on the edge of a river; and
still others manage to endure the storms of bleak heights.
At timber-line the trees have a hard time of it. All of them at this
place are dwarfed, many distorted, some crushed to the earth,
flattened out upon the ground like pressed flowers, by the snowdrifts
that have so long lain upon them. The winter winds at this place blow
almost constantly from the same quarter for days at a time, and often
attain a high velocity. The effect of these winds is strikingly shown
by the trees. None of the trees are tall, and most of them are
leaning, pushed partly over by the wind. Some are sprawled on the
ground like uncouth vines or spread out from the stump like a fan
with the onsweeping direction of the storms. Most of the standing,
unsheltered trees have limbs only on the leeward quarter, all the
other limbs having been blown off by the wind or cut off by the
wind-blown gravel. Most of the exposed trees are destitute of bark
on the portion of the trunk that faces these winter winds. Some of
the dead standing trees are carved into strange totem-poles by the
sand-blasts of many fierce storms. With all the trees warped or
distorted, the effect of timber-line is weird and strange.