have been so thinned that there are openings sufficiently large to
allow other species a chance to come in. By this time, too, there is
sufficient humus on the floor to allow the seeds of many other species
to germinate. Lodge-pole thus colonizes barren places, holds them for
a time, and so changes them that the very species dispossessed by fire
may regain the lost territory. Roughly, the lodge-pole will hold the
ground exclusively from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty years,
then the invading trees will come triumphantly in and, during the next
century and a half, will so increase and multiply that they will
almost exclude the lodge-pole. Thus Engelmann spruce and Douglas fir
are now growing where lodge-pole flourished, but let fire destroy this
forest and lodge-pole will again claim the territory, hold it against
all comers for a century or two, and then slowly give way to or be
displaced by the spruces and firs.
The interesting characteristic of holding its cones and hoarding seeds
often results in the cones being overgrown and embedded in the trunk
or the limbs of the trees. As the cones hug closely the trunk or the
limbs, it is not uncommon for the saw, when laying open a log at the
mill, to reveal a number of cones embedded there. I have in my cabin a
sixteen-foot plank that is two inches in diameter and six inches wide,
which came out of a lodge-pole tree. Embedded in this are more than a
score of cones. Probably most of these cones were of the first crop
which the tree produced, for they clung along the trunk of the tree
and grew there when it was about an inch and a quarter in diameter.
The section upon which these cones grew was between fifteen and
twenty-five feet from the ground.
The seeds of most conifers need vegetable mould, litter, or vegetation
cover of some kind in which to germinate, and then shade for a time in
which to grow. These requirements so needed by other conifer seeds and
seedlings are detrimental to the lodge-pole. If its seeds fall on
areas lightly covered with low huckleberry vines, but few of them will
germinate. A lodge-pole seed that germinates in the shade is doomed.
It must have sunlight or die. In the ashes of a forest fire, in the
full glare of the sun, the seeds of the lodge-pole germinate, grow,
and flourish.
Wind is the chief agency which enables the seeds to migrate. The seeds
are light, and I know of one instance where an isolated tree on a
plateau managed to scatter its seeds by the aid of the wind over a
circular area fifty acres in extent, though a few acres is all that
is reached by the average tree. Sometimes the wind scatters the seeds
unevenly. If most of the seeds are released in one day, and the wind
this day prevails from the same quarter, the seeds will take but one
course from the tree; while changing winds may scatter them quite
evenly all around the tree.
A camping party built a fire against a lone lodge-pole. The tree was
killed and suffered a loss of its needles from the fire. Four years
later, a long green pennant, tattered at the end and formed of
lodge-pole seedlings, showed on the mountain-side. This pennant began
at the tree and streamed out more than seven hundred feet. Its width
varied from ten to fifty feet.
The action of a fire in a lodge-pole forest is varied. If the forest
be an old one, even with much rubbish on the ground the heat is not
so intense as in a young growth. Where trees are scattered the flames
crawl from tree to tree, the needles of which ignite like flash-powder
and make beautiful rose-purple flames. At night fires of this kind
furnish rare fireworks. Each tree makes a fountain of flame, after
which, for a moment, every needle shines like incandescent silver,
while exquisite light columns of ashen green smoke float above. The
hottest fire I ever experienced was made by the burning of a
thirty-eight-year lodge-pole forest. In this forest the poles stood
more than thirty feet high, and were about fifteen thousand to an
acre. They stood among masses of fallen trees, the remains of a spruce
forest that had been killed by the same fire which had given this
lodge-pole forest a chance to spring up. Several thousand acres were
burned, and for a brief time the fire traveled swiftly. I saw it roll
blazing over one mountain-side at a speed of more than sixty miles an
hour. It was intensely hot, and in a surprisingly short time the
flames had burned every log, stump, and tree to ashes. Several hundred
acres were swept absolutely bare of trees, living and dead, and the
roots too were burned far into the ground.
Several beetles prey upon the lodge-pole, and in some localities the
porcupine feeds off its inner bark. It is also made use of by man. The
wood is light, not strong, with a straight, rather coarse grain. It is
of a light yellow to nearly white, or pinkish white, soft, and easily
worked. In the West it is extensively used for lumber, fencing, fuel,
and log houses, and millions of lodge-pole railroad-ties are annually
put to use.
Most lodge-poles grow in crowded ranks, and slow growth is the result,
but it is naturally a comparatively rapid grower. In good, moist soil,
uncrowded, it rapidly builds upward and outward. I have more than a
score of records that show that it has made a quarter of an inch
diameter growth annually, together with an upright growth of more than
twelve inches, and also several notes which show where trees standing
in favorable conditions have made half an inch diameter growth
annually. This fact of its rapid growth, together with other valuable
characteristics and qualities of the tree, may lead it to be selected
by the government for the reforestation of millions of acres of
denuded areas in the West. In many places on the Rockies it would, if
given a chance, make commercial timber in from thirty to sixty years.
I examined a lodge-pole in the Medicine Bow Mountains that was scarred
by fire. It was two hundred and fourteen years of age. It took one
hundred and seventy-eight years for it to make five inches of diameter
growth. In the one hundred and seventy-eighth ring of annual growth
there was a fire-scar, and during the next thirty-six years it put on
five more inches of growth. It is probable, therefore, that the fire
destroyed the neighboring trees, which had dwarfed and starved it and
thus held it in check. I know of scores of cases where lodge-poles
grew much more rapidly, though badly fire-scarred, after fires had
removed their hampering competitors.
There are millions of acres of young lodge-pole forests in the West.
They are almost as impenetrable as canebrakes. It would greatly
increase the rate of growth if these trees were thinned, but it is
probable that this will not be done for many years. Meantime,
if these forests be protected from fire, they will be excellent
water-conservers. When the snows or the rains fall into the lodge-pole
thickets, they are beyond the reach of the extra dry winds. If they
are protected, the water-supply of the West will be protected; and if
they are destroyed, the winds will evaporate most of the precipitation
that falls upon their areas.
I do not know of any tree that better adjusts itself to circumstances,
or that struggles more bravely or successfully. I am hopeful that
before many years the school-children of America will be well
acquainted with the Lodge-Pole Pine, and I feel that its interesting
ways, its struggles, and its importance will, before long, be
appreciated and win a larger place in our literature and also in
our hearts.
Rocky Mountain Forests
It is stirring to stand at the feet of the Rocky Mountains and look
upward and far away over the broken strata that pile and terrace
higher and higher, until, at a distance of twenty-five or thirty
miles, they stand a shattered and snowy horizon against the blue. The
view is an inspiring one from the base, but it gives no idea that this
mountain array is a magnificent wild hanging-garden. Across the
terraced and verdure-plumed garden the eternal snows send their clear
and constant streams, to leap in white cascades between crowning crags
and pines. Upon the upper slopes of this garden are many mirrored
lakes, ferny, flowery glens, purple forests, and crag-piled meadows.
If any one were to start at the foothills in Colorado, where one of
the clear streams comes sweeping out of the mountains to go quietly
across the wide, wide plains, and from this starting-place climb to
the crest of this terraced land of crags, pines, ferns, and flowers,
he would, in so doing, go through many life-zones and see numerous
standing and moving life-forms, all struggling, yet seemingly all
contented with life and the scenes wherein they live and struggle.
The broad-leaf cottonwood, which has accompanied the streams across
the plains, stops at the foothills, and along the river in the
foothills the narrow-leaf cottonwood (_Populus angustifolia_) crowds
the water's edge, here and there mingling with red-fruited hawthorns
and wild plums (_Prunus Americana_). A short distance from the stream
the sumac stands brilliant in the autumn, and a little farther away
are clumps of greasewood and sagebrush and an occasional spread
of juniper. Here and there are some forlorn-looking red cedars and a
widely scattered sprinkling of stunted yellow pines (_Pinus scopulorum_).
At an altitude of six thousand feet the yellow pine acquires true tree
dignity and begins to mass itself into forests. When seen from a
distance its appearance suggests the oak. It seems a trifle rigid,
appears ready to meet emergencies, has a look of the heroic, and
carries more character than any other tree on the Rockies. Though a
slender and small-limbed tree in youth, after forty or fifty years it
changes slowly and becomes stocky, strong-limbed, and rounded at the
top. Lightning, wind, and snow break or distort its upper limbs so
that most of these veteran pines show a picturesquely broken top, with
a towering dead limb or two among the green ones. Its needles are in
bundles of both twos and threes, and they vary from three to eight
inches in length. The tree is rich in resin, and a walk through its
groves on an autumn day, when the sun shines bright on its clean
golden columns and brings out its aroma, is a walk full of contentment
and charm. The bark is fluted and blackish-gray in youth, and it
breaks up into irregular plates, which on old trees frequently are
five inches or more in thickness. This bark gives the tree excellent
fire-protection.
The yellow pine is one of the best fire-fighters and lives long. I
have seen many of the pines that were from sixty to ninety feet high,
with a diameter of from three to five feet. They were aged from two
hundred and fifty to six hundred years. Most of the old ones have
lived through several fires. I dissected a fallen veteran that grew
on the St. Vrain watershed, at an altitude of eight thousand feet,
that was eighty-five feet high and fifty-one inches in diameter five
feet from the ground. It showed six hundred and seventy-nine annual
rings. During the first three hundred years of its life it averaged an
inch of diameter growth every ten years. It had been through many
forest fires and showed large fire-scars. One of these it received at
the age of three hundred and thirty-nine years. It carried another
scar which it received two hundred and sixteen years before its death;
another which it received in 1830; and a fourth which it received
fourteen years before it blew over in the autumn of 1892. All of these
fire-scars were on the same quarter of the tree. All were on that part
of the tree which overlooked the down-sloping hillside.
Forest fires, where there is opportunity, sweep up the mountain-side
against the lower side of the trees. The lower side is thus often
scarred while the opposite side is scarcely injured; but wind blowing
down the gulch at the time of each fire may have directed the flames
against the lower side of this tree. In many places clusters of young
trees were growing close to the lower side of the old trees, and were
enabled to grow there by light that came in from the side. It may be
that the heat from one of the blazing clusters scarred this old pine;
then another young cluster may have grown, to be in time also
consumed. But these scars may have resulted, wholly or in part, from
other causes.
Yellow pine claims the major portion of the well-drained slopes,
except those that are northerly, in the middle mountain-zone up to
the lower lodge-pole margin. A few groves are found higher than nine
thousand feet. Douglas spruce covers many of the northerly slopes
that lie between six thousand and nine thousand feet.
The regularity of tree-distribution over the mountains is to me a
never-failing source of interest. Though the various species of trees
appear to be growing almost at random, yet each species shows a
decided preference for peculiar altitude, soil, temperature, and
moisture conditions. It is an interesting demonstration of tree
adaptability to follow a stream which comes out of the west, in the
middle mountain-zone, and observe how unlike the trees are which
thrive on opposite sides. On the southerly slopes that come down to
the water is an open forest of yellow pine, and on the opposite side,
the south bank, a dense forest of Douglas spruce. If one be told the
altitude, the slope, and the moisture conditions of a place on the
Rockies, he should, if acquainted with the Rockies, be able to name
the kinds of trees growing there. Some trees grow only in moist
places, others only in dry places, some never below or above a certain
altitude. Indeed, so regular is the tree-distribution over the Rockies
that I feel certain, if I were to awaken from a Rip Van Winkle sleep
in the forests on the middle or upper slopes of these mountains, I
could, after examining a few of the trees around me, tell the points
of the compass, the altitude above sea-level, and the season of
the year.
[Illustration: ASPENS]
At an altitude of about sixty-five hundred feet cottonwood, which has
accompanied the streams from the foothills, begins to be displaced by
aspen. The aspen (_Populus tremuloides_) is found growing in
groups and groves from this altitude up to timber-line, usually in the
moister places. To me the aspen is almost a classic tree, and I have
met it in so many places that I regard it almost as an old friend. It
probably rivals the juniper in being the most widely distributed tree
on the North American continent. It also vies with the lodge-pole pine
in quickness of taking possession of burned-over areas. Let a moist
place be burned over and the aspen will quickly take possession, and
soon establish conditions which will allow conifers to return. This
the conifers do, and in a very short time smother the aspens that made
it possible for them to start in life. The good nursery work of aspens
is restricted pretty closely to damp places.
Besides being a useful tree, the bare-legged little aspen with its
restless and childlike ways is a tree that it is good to know. When
alone, these little trees seem lonely and sometimes to tremble as
though just a little afraid in this big strange world. But generally
the aspen is not alone. Usually you find a number of little aspens
playing together, with their leaves shaking, jostling, and
jumping,--moving all the time. If you go near a group and stop to
watch them, they may, for an instant, pause to glance at you, then
turn to romp more merrily than before. And they have other childlike
ways besides bare legs and activity. On some summer day, if you wish
to find these little trees, look for them where you would for your own
child,--wading the muddiest place to be found. They like to play in
the swamps, and may often be seen in a line alongside a brook with
toes in the water, as though looking for the deepest place before
wading in.
One day I came across a party of merry little aspens who were in a
circle around a grand old pine, as though using the pine for a maypole
to dance around. It was in autumn, and each little aspen wore its
gayest colors. Some were in gowns of new-made cloth-of-gold. The
grizzled old pine, like an old man in the autumn of his life, looked
down as though honored and pleased with the happy little ones who
seemed so full of joy. I watched them for a time and went on across
the mountains; but I have long believed in fairies, so the next day I
went back to see this fairyland and found the dear little aspens still
shaking their golden leaves, while the old pine stood still in the
sunlight.
Along the streams, between the altitudes of sixty-five hundred and
eighty-five hundred feet, one finds the Colorado blue or silver
spruce. This tree grows in twos or threes, occasionally forming a
small grove. Usually it is found growing near a river or brook,
standing closely to a golden-lichened crag, in surroundings which
emphasize its beauty of form and color. With its fluffy silver-tipped
robe and its garlands of cones it is the handsomest tree on the
Rockies. It is the queen of these wild gardens. Beginning at the
altitude where the silver spruce ceases is the beautiful balsam fir
(_Abies lasiocarpa_). The balsam fir is generally found in company
with the alders or the silver spruce near a brook. It is strikingly
symmetrical and often forms a perfect slender cone. The balsam fir and
the silver spruce are the evergreen poems of the wild. They get into
one's heart like the hollyhock. Several years ago the school-children
of Colorado selected by vote a State flower and a State tree. Although
more than fifty flowers received votes, two thirds of all the votes
went to the Rocky Mountain columbine. When it came to selecting a
tree, every vote was cast for the silver spruce.
Edwinia, with its attractive waxy white flowers, and potentilla, with
bloom of gold, are shrubs which lend a charm to much of the
mountain-section. Black birch and alder trim many of the streams,
and the mountain maple is thinly scattered from the foothills to nine
thousand feet altitude. Wild roses are frequently found near the
maple, and gooseberry bushes fringe many a brook. Huckleberries
flourish on the timbered slopes, and kinnikinick gladdens many a
gravelly stretch or slope.
[Illustration: A GROVE OF SILVER SPRUCE]
Between the altitudes of eight thousand and ten thousand feet there
are extensive forests of the indomitable lodge-pole pine. This borders
even more extensive forests of Engelmann spruce. Lodge-pole touches
timber-line in a few places, and Engelmann spruce climbs up to it in
every cañon or moist depression. Along with these, at timber-line, are
_flexilis_ pine, balsam fir, arctic willow, dwarf black birch, and the
restless little aspen. All timber-line trees are dwarfed and most
of them distorted. Conditions at timber-line are severe, but the
presence, in places, of young trees farthest up the slopes suggests
that these severe conditions may be developing hardier trees than any
that now are growing on this forest frontier. If this be true, then
timber-line on the Rockies is yet to gain a higher limit.
Since the day of "Pike's Peak or bust," fires have swept over more
than half of the primeval forest area in Colorado. Some years ago,
while making special efforts to prevent forest fires from starting, I
endeavored to find out the cause of these fires. I regretfully found
that most of them were the result of carelessness, and I also made a
note to the effect that there are few worse things to be guilty of
than carelessly setting fire to a forest. Most of these forest fires
had their origin from camp-fires which the departing campers had left
unextinguished. There were sixteen fires in one summer, which I
attributed to the following causes: campers, nine; cigar, one;
lightning, one; locomotive, one; stockmen, two; sheep-herders, one;
and sawmill, one.
Fires have made the Rocky Mountains still more rocky. In many places
the fires burn their way to solid rock. In other places the humus, or
vegetable mould, is partly consumed by fire, and the remainder is in a
short time blown away by wind or washed away by water. Fires often
leave only blackened granite rock behind, so that in many places they
have not only consumed the forests, but also the food upon which the
new forests might have fed. Many areas where splendid forests grew,
after being fire-swept, show only barren granite. As some of the
granite on the Rockies disintegrates slowly, it will probably require
several hundred years for Nature to resoil and reforest some of these
fire-scarred places. However, upon thousands of acres of the Rockies
millions of young trees are just beginning to grow, and if these trees
be protected from fire, a forest will early result.
I never see a little tree bursting from the earth, peeping confidently
up among the withered leaves, without wondering how long it will live
or what trials or triumphs it will have. I always hope that it will
find life worth living, and that it will live long to better and to
beautify the earth. I hope it will love the blue sky and the white
clouds passing by. I trust it will welcome all seasons and ever join
merrily in the music, the motion, and the movement of the elemental
dance with the winds. I hope it will live with rapture in the
flower-opening days of spring and also enjoy the quiet summer rain.
I hope it will be a home for the birds and hear their low, sweet
mating-songs. I trust that when comes the golden peace of autumn days,
it will be ready with fruited boughs for the life to come. I never
fail to hope that if this tree is cut down, it may be used for a
flagpole to keep our glorious banner in the blue above, or that it may
be built into a cottage where love will abide; or if it must be burnt,
that it will blaze on the hearthstone in a home where children play
in the firelight on the floor.
In many places the Rockies rise more than three thousand feet above
the heights where live the highest struggling trees at timber-line,
but these steep alpine slopes are not bare. The rocks are tinted with
lichens. In places are miles of grassy slopes and miniature meadows,
covered with coarse sedges and bright tender flowers. Among the
shrubs the _Betula glandulosa_ is probably commonest, while _Dasiphora
fruticosa_ and _Salix chlorophylla_ are next in prominence. Here and
there you will see the golden gaillardia, the silver and blue
columbines, splendid arrays of sedum, many marsh-marigolds, lungworts,
paint-brushes of red and white and yellow green, beds of purple
primroses, sprinklings of alpine gentians, many clusters of
live-forever, bunches of honey-smelling valerian, with here and there
standing the tall stalks of fraseria, or monument-plant. There are
hundreds of other varieties of plants, and the region above
timber-line holds many treasures that are dear to those who love
flowers and who appreciate them especially where cold and snow keep
them tiny.
Above timber-line are many bright blossoms that are familiar to us,
but dwarfed to small size. One needs to get down and lie upon the
ground and search carefully with a magnifying-glass, or he will
overlook many of these brave bright but tiny flowers. Here are blue
gentians less than half an inch in height, bell-flowers only a trifle
higher, and alpine willows so tiny that their catkins touch the
ground. One of the most attractive and beautiful of these alpine
flowers is the blue honeysuckle or polemonium, about an inch in
height. I have found it on mountain-tops, in its fresh, clear
coloring, at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet, as serene as
the sky above it.
A climb up the Rockies will develop a love for nature, strengthen
one's appreciation of the beautiful world outdoors, and put one in
tune with the Infinite. It will inspire one with the feeling that the
Rockies have a rare mountain wealth of their own. They are not to be
compared with the Selkirks or the Alps or any other unlike range of
mountains. The Rockies are not a type, but an individuality,
singularly rich in mountain scenes which stir one's blood and which
strengthen and sweeten life.
Besieged by Bears