The higher mountain-ranges rise far above the zone of life and have
summits that are deeply overladen with ancient snow and ice, but the
upper slopes and summits of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and the
Sierra of California are not barren and lifeless, even though they
stand far above the timber-line. There is no other mountain-range on
the earth that I know of that can show such a varied and vigorous
array of life above the tree-line as do these ranges. In the Alps the
upper slopes and summits stand in eternal desolation, without life
even in summertime. The icy stratum that overlies the summit Alps is
centuries old, and is perpetual down to nine thousand feet.
Timber-line there is only sixty-four hundred feet above sea-level. How
different the climatic conditions in the Rocky Mountains and in the
Sierra, where timber-line is at approximately eleven thousand five
hundred feet, or a vertical mile higher than it is in the Alps!
Even the high peaks of this region have touches of plant-life and are
visited by birds and beasts. The list of living things which I have
seen on the summit of Long's Peak (14,255 feet above sea-level)
includes the inevitable and many-tinted lichens, spike-grass, dainty
blue polemonium, and clumps of crimson purple primroses, all
exquisitely beautiful. There are straggling bumblebees, grasshoppers,
and at least two kinds of prettily robed butterflies. Among the
mammals visiting the summit I have seen a mountain lion, a bob-cat, a
rabbit, and a silver fox, though only one of each. The bird callers
embrace flocks of rosy finches, ptarmigan, and American pipits, and
numbers of white-crowned sparrows and juncos, together with a
scattering of robins, bluebirds, golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, and
hummingbirds!
The summit life zone in the Rocky Mountains not only sweeps up to
exceptionally high altitudes, but it embraces vast territory. In
Colorado alone the Arctic-Alpine territory above the tree-line
probably extends over five million or more acres. Thrust high in this
summit area are the tops of more than three hundred peaks. Many of
these tower three thousand feet above the timber-line. Much of this
region is made up of steep slopes, shattered summits, and precipitous
walls, many of which bound cañons. There is a scattering of lakes,
gentle slopes, stretches of rolling moorlands, and bits of wet meadow
or arctic tundra. In this high and far-extending mountain land one may
travel day after day always above the uppermost reaches of the forest.
In this strange treeless realm there is a largeness of view. Up close
to the clouds and the sky, the big world far below, the scene
stretches away in boundless, magnificent distances.
The snow-fall of this region varies with locality, and ranges from a
few feet up to fifty feet annually. In most localities this snow is
rapidly evaporated by the exceedingly dry air of the heights. The
remnants of each year's fall commonly rest upon the accumulations of
preceding years, but during midsummer not one tenth of the heights is
snow-covered. Vast areas are occupied by craggy peaks and barren
rock-fields. The barrenness is due almost entirely to a lack of soil,
not to altitude nor to the rigors of the climate. The climate is in
many respects similar to that which wraps the Arctic Circle near
sea-level, and it allows many forms of vigorous life.
Numerous moraines, terraces, steppes, and moorlands--the wide sky
plains--have their soil, and this in the warmth of summer generously
produces green grass and brilliant flowers. These, together with big
game, birds, and circling butterflies, people this zone with life and
turn the towering and terraced heights into the rarest of hanging wild
gardens. In favored places for a mile or so above timber-line are
scattered acres of heathy growths. Stunted by cold, clipped off by the
wind, and heavily pressed by the snow, these growths are thickly
tangled, bristly, and rarely more than a few inches in height. Among
these are wintergreen, bunchberry, huckleberry, kalmia, currant, black
birch, and arctic willow. There are miles of moorlands covered with
short, thin grasses, while deeply soil-covered terraces, cozy slopes,
and wet meadows have plushy grass carpets several inches thick. These
growths form the basic food-supply of both the insects and the
warm-blooded life of the heights.
[Illustration: ALPINE PASTURES ABOVE TIMBER-LINE
Near Specimen Mountain in the Rocky Mountain National Park]
These alpine pastures are the home of many mountain sheep. Between
Long's Peak and Mt. Meeker there is a shattered shoulder of granite
that is fourteen thousand feet above sea-level and at all times partly
covered with an ancient snow-field, the remains of a former glacier.
During earlier years I occasionally used the sky-line by this
snow-field for a view-point and a lingering-place. One day after a
long outlook, I emerged from between two blocks of granite and
surprised a flock of mountain sheep near by. A majority of them were
lying comfortably among the stones. One was nosing about, another was
scratching his side with his hind hoof, while the patriarchal ram was
poised on a huge block of granite. He, too, was looking down upon the
world, but he was also scouting for enemies. Upon my appearance, the
flock broke away at good speed but in excellent order, the old ram
leading the way. In scrambling up for a farewell view, I disturbed a
mountain lion. He bounded among the scattered wreckage of granite and
vanished. Here was big game and its well-fed pursuer, in the mountain
heights, above the limits of tree growth and almost three miles above
the surface of the sea. Many flocks live at an altitude of twelve
thousand feet. Here the lambs are born, and from this place they all
make spring foraging excursions far down the slopes into a warmer zone
for green stuffs not yet in season on the heights. Their warm covering
of soft hair protects them from the coldest blasts. Winter quarters
appear to be chosen in localities from which winds regularly sweep the
snow. This sweeping prevents the snow from burying food beyond reach,
and lessens the danger of these short-legged mountaineers becoming
snowbound. They commonly endure wind-storms by crowding closely
against the lee side of a ledge. Now and then they are so deeply
drifted over with snow that many of the weaker ones perish, unable to
wallow out. The snow-slide, the white terror of the heights,
occasionally carries off an entire flock of these bold, vigilant
sheep.
The mountain lion is a prowler, a cowardly, rapacious slaughterer, and
may visit the heights at any time. Though apparently irregular in his
visits, he seems to keep track of the seasons and to know the date for
spring lamb, and he is likely to appear while the sheep are weak or
snowbound. He is a wanton killer and is ever vigilant to slay. He
lurks and lies in wait and preys upon all the birds and beasts except
the bear.
This treeless realm is roamed by both the grizzly and the black bear;
both pay most visits during the autumn, and the grizzly occasionally
hibernates in these uplands. In summer they range the forests far
below, but with the coming of autumn they climb the slopes to dig out
fat woodchucks and to get the last of the season's berries, with which
to put on final fat for hibernating. They overturn stones for mice and
lick up the accumulations of chilled insects which they find along the
snow and ice fields. Myriads of flies, moths, grasshoppers, and other
insects often accumulate along or on the edge of snow or ice fields in
the heights, attracted, apparently, by the brilliant whiteness of the
ice or the snow. The cold closely surrounding air zone appears to
benumb or paralyze them, and they drop in great numbers near the
margin. Occasionally swarms of insects are carried by storms up the
heights and dropped upon the snow or ice fields which lie in the
eddying-places of the wind.
One autumn I accompanied a gentleman to the Hallett Glacier. On
arriving, we explored a crevasse and examined the bergschrund at the
top. When we emerged from the bergschrund, the new snow on the glacier
was so softened in the sunshine that we decided to have the fun of
coasting down the steep face to the bottom of the slope. Just as we
slid away, I espied a bear at the bottom, toward which we were
speeding. He was so busily engaged in licking up insects that he had
not noticed us. Naturally the gentleman with me was frightened, but it
was impossible to stop on the steep, steel-like, and snow-lubricated
slope. Knowing something of bear nature, the situation, though most
interesting, did not appear serious to me. Meantime, the bear heard us
and made lively and awkward efforts to be gone. He fled at a racing
gallop, and gave us an excellent side view of his clumsy,
far-outreaching lively hind legs going it flatfooted.
Deer are among the summer visitors in the cool uplands, climbing a
thousand feet or more above the uppermost trees. With the first autumn
snow they start to descend, and they commonly winter from three to six
thousand feet below their summer range. There are a few woodchuck
colonies as high as twelve thousand feet. The woodchuck, in the
spring, despite short legs and heavy body, gives way to _wanderlust_,
and as a change from hibernation wanders afar and occasionally climbs
a mountain-peak. Sometimes, too, a mountain lion prevents his return.
The silver fox is a permanent resident of these heights and ranges
widely over them. He catches woodchucks and ptarmigan and feasts on
big game that has met with accident or that has been left to waste by
that wild game-hog, the mountain lion. In summer, and occasionally in
winter, both the coyote and the wolf come into the fox's territory.
In slide rock and in bouldery moraines up as high as thirteen thousand
feet, one finds the pika, or cony. Almost nothing is known of his
domestic life. Apparently he does not hibernate, for on sunny days he
may be seen the year round. Like the beaver he each autumn lays up
supplies for winter. Hay is his harvest. This hay is frequently placed
in conical piles in the shelter of shelving rocks. These piles are
sometimes two feet in diameter. His haymaking is done with much hurry.
After quickly biting off a number of plants or grasses, he commonly
seizes these by their ends and simply scampers for the harvest pile.
Quickly thrusting them in, he hurries away for more. His ways are
decidedly in contrast to the beaver's deliberate movements. When he is
sunning himself, one may, by moving slowly, approach within a few
feet. He has a squeaky whistle and a birdlike call, each of which it
is difficult to describe. He is a tailless little fellow, and has
round ratlike ears; is dark gray above and whitish beneath. In
appearance he reminds one of a small guinea-pig, or a young rabbit.
Up in this region, the most skyward of life zones, nature, as
everywhere, is red in tooth and claw. There are strength and cunning,
victor and vanquished, pursuit and death. One day, while watching a
beetle, I saw a deadly attack. For more than an hour the beetle had
been doing nothing except turn this way and then that without getting
two inches from the grass-edge on the top of a stone. Suddenly a black
bit darted past my face, struck the beetle, and knocked him over. It
was a wasp, and for a few seconds these two warriors clinched, and
fought with all their strength, cunning, and weapons. While locked in
deadly struggle, they fell over a cliff that was twelve inches high;
the fall broke their hold; this was instantly renewed, but presently
they ceased to struggle, with the wasp victor.
The weasel is the white wolf among the small people of the heights. In
winter his pure white fur allows him to slip almost unsuspected
through the snow. He preys upon the cony and the birds of the alpine
zone. Like the mountain lion and some human hunters, he does wanton
killing just for amusement. He is bloodthirsty, cunning, and even
bold. Many times, within a few feet, he has glared fiendishly at me,
seeming almost determined to attack; his long, low-geared body and
sinister and snaky eyes make him a mean object to look upon.
An experience with a number of rosy finches in the midst of a blizzard
was one of the most cheerful ever given me by wild fellow creatures.
While snowshoeing across one of the high passes, I was caught in a
terrific gale, which dashed the powdered snow-dust so thickly and
incessantly that breathing was difficult and at times almost
strangling. Crawling beneath an enormous rock-slab to rest and
breathe, I disturbed a dozen or so rosy finches already in possession
and evidently there for the same purpose as myself. They moved to one
side and made room for me, but did not go out. As I settled down, they
looked at me frankly and without a fear. Such trust! After one calm
look, they gave me no further attention. Although trustful and
friendly, they were reserved and mannerly. From time to time there
were comings and goings among them. Almost every snow-dashed incoming
stranger gave me a look as he entered, and then without the least
suspicion turned to his own feathers and affairs. With such honor, I
forgot my frosted nose and the blizzard. Presently, however, I crawled
forth and groped through the blinding hurricane and entered a friendly
forest, where wind-shaped trees at timber-line barely peeped beneath
the drifted snow.
The rosy finch, the brown-capped leucosticte of the Rockies (in the
Sierra it is the gray-crowned), is a little larger than a junco and is
one of the bravest and most trusting of the winged mountaineers. It is
the most numerous of the resident bird-population. These cheery little
bits live in the mountain snows, rarely descending below timber-line.
Occasionally they nest as high as thirteen thousand five hundred feet.
The largest bird resident of the snowy heights is the ptarmigan.
Rarely does this bird descend below the timber-line. But a late and
prolonged winter storm may drive him and his neighbor the rosy finch a
mile or so down the slopes. The first fine day he is back again to the
happy heights. The ptarmigan lives in the heathery growths among huge
rocky débris. Much of the winter-time he shelters himself in deeply
penetrating holes or runs in the compacted snow. His food consists of
the seeds and buds of alpine plants, grasses, and insects. His ways
remind one of a grouse, though he is a smaller bird. During winter he
appears in suit of white, stockings and all. In spring a few black and
cinnamon-colored feathers are added, and by midsummer his dress is
grayish-brown. During all seasons he is fairly well concealed from
enemies by the protective coloration of his clothes, and he depends
largely upon this for protection. He is preyed upon by the weasel,
fox, bear, eagle, and lion.
Although the mountain-tops have only a few resident birds, they have
numerous summer bird builders and sojourners. Many birds nest in these
heights instead of going to similar conditions in the great Arctic
Circle nursery. Thus most birds met with in the heights during the
summer season are the migratory ones. Among the summer residents are
the American pipit, the white-crowned sparrow, and the gray-headed
junco, the latter occasionally raising two broods in a summer. Here,
too, in autumn come flocks of robins and other birds for late berries
before starting southward.
The golden eagle may soar above the peaks during all the seasons, but
he can hardly be classed as a resident, for much of the winter he
spends in the lower slopes of the mountains. Early in the spring he
appears in the high places and nests among the crags, occasionally
twelve thousand feet above sea-level. The young eaglets are fed in
part upon spring lamb from the near-by wild flocks.
One day, while in a bleak upland above the timber-line, I paused by a
berg-filled lake, a miniature Arctic Ocean, with barren rock-bound
shores. A partly snow-piled, half-frozen moor stretched away into an
arctic distance. Everything was silent. Near by a flock of ptarmigan
fed upon the buds of a clump of arctic willow that was dwarfed almost
out of existence. I felt as though in the polar world. "Here is the
environment of the Eskimo," I discoursed to myself. "He ought to be
found in this kind of place. Here are icebergs, frozen tundras, white
ptarmigan, dwarf willows, treeless distances. If arctic plants were
transported down here on the Big Ice Floe, surely some Eskimo must
have been swept along. Why didn't he stay? The climate was better, but
perhaps he missed his blubber and sea food, and there was no midnight
sun and the nights were extremely short. The pale and infrequent
aurora borealis must have reminded him of better nights, if not better
days. Anyway, even for the Eskimo, there is no place like home, even
though it be in a domed and dingy ice house amid the eternal snows and
beneath the wonderful sky of northern lights."
[Illustration: AT THE EDGE OF THE ARCTIC-ALPINE LIFE ZONE IN THE SAN
JUAN MOUNTAINS]
There are fields of varied wild flowers. Brilliant in color, dainty,
beautiful, and graceful, they appear at their best amid the wild
magnificence of rocky peaks, alpine lakes, and aged snow-fields, and
on the far-extending lonely moorlands. Many of these flowers are
your lowland friends, slightly dwarfed in some cases, but with charms
even fresher, brighter, and more lovely than those of the blooms you
know. Numerous upland stretches are crowded and colored in
indescribable richness,--acres of purple, blue, and gold. The flowers,
by crowding the moist outskirts of snow-drifts, make striking
encircling gardens of bloom. In contributed and unstable soil-beds,
amid ice and boulders, they take romantic rides and bloom upon the
cold backs of the crawling glaciers, and thus touch with color and
beauty the most savage of wild scenes.
The distribution and arrangement of the flowers has all the charm of
the irregular, and for the most part is strikingly effective and
delightfully artistic. They grow in bunches and beds; the stalks are
long and short; rock towers and barren débris frown on meadow gardens
and add to the attractiveness of the millions of mixed blossoms that
dance or smile. Ragged tongues of green and blossoms extend for miles.
One of the peculiarities of a few of these plants is that they have
stems and axes horizontal rather than vertical. Others are masses of
mossy, cushion-like bloom. In many cases there is a marked enlargement
of the root-growth, but the flowers compare favorably in size,
sweetness, and brilliancy of coloring with their lowland relatives.
Among the blossoms that shine in these polar gardens are the spring
beauty, the daisy, the buttercup, and the forget-me-not. There are
numbers of the pink and the saxifrage families, white and purple
monkshood, purple asters, and goldenrod. Whole slopes are covered with
paintbrushes, and among these commonly is a scattering of tall,
white-tipped wild buckwheat. Some of these are scentless, while others
diffuse a rich perfume.
There are numerous hanging gardens that are grander than all the kings
of the earth could create! White cascades with the soft, fluttering
veils of spray pour through the brilliant bloom and the bright green
of the terraces. In these gardens may bloom the bluest of mertensia,
gentians, and polemonium, the brightest of yellow avens, the ruddy
stonecrop, and gaillardias as handsome as any black-eyed Susan; then
there is a fine scattering of shooting-stars, starworts, pentstemons
of prettiest shades, and the tall and stately columbine, a burst of
silver and blue.
Many of the polar plants that bloom in this Arctic world were probably
brought here from the Arctic Circle by the vast and prolonged flow of
ice from the north during the last ice age. Stranded here by the
receding, melting ice, they are growing up with the country under
conditions similar to those in the Northland. They are quick to seize
and beautify each new soil-bed that appears,--soil exposed by the
shrinking of snow-fields, piled by landslides, washed down by water,
or made by the dropped or deposited sweepings of the winds.
Bees and butterflies follow the flowers, and every wild garden has the
buzz of busy wings and the painted sails of idle ones. Mountain sheep
occasionally pose and group among the flowers and butterflies. Often
sheep, crags, ptarmigan, and green spaces, flowers, and waterfalls
are caught in one small space that sweeps up into the blue and cloud
in one grand picture.
In many localities there are such numbers of dwarfed plants that one
may blunder through a fairy flower-garden without seeing it. To see
these tiny flowers at their best, one needs to lie down and use a
reading-glass. There are diminutive bellflowers that rise only half an
inch above the earth and masses of cushion pinks and tiny phlox still
finer and shorter.
The Arctic-Alpine zone, with its cloud and bright sunshine, rests upon
the elevated and broken world of the Rockies. This realm is full of
interest through all the seasons, and with its magnificence are lovely
places, brilliant flowers, and merry birds to cheer its solitudes.
During winter these polar mountain-stretches have a strange charm, and
many a time my snowshoe tracks have left dotted trails upon their
snowy distances.
These cheerful wild gardens are threatened with ruin. Cattle and sheep
are invading them farther and farther, and leaving ruin behind. With
their steep slopes, coarse soil, and shallow root-growths these
alpine growths cannot endure pasturage. The biting, the pulling, and
the choppy hoof-action are ruinous. Destined to early ruin if
pastured, and having but little value when so used, these sky gardens
might rightly be kept unimpaired for ourselves. They would make
delightful National Parks. They have a rapidly increasing value for
parks. Used for recreation places, they would have a high commercial
value; and thus used they would steadily pay dividends in humanity.