Mountain Parks

The grassy park openings within the mountain forests are among the

great charms of the outdoor world. These are as varied in their forms

as clouds, delightfully irregular of outline. Their ragged-edged

border of forest, with its grassy bays and peninsulas of trees, is a

delight. Numbers are bordered by a lake or a crag, and many are

crossed by brooks and decorated with scattered trees and tree-clumps.

Others extend across swelling moraines. All are formed on Nature's

free and flowing lines, have the charms of the irregular, and are

model parks which many landscape gardeners have tried in vain to

imitate. They vary in size from a mere grass-plot to a wide prairie

within the forest.

"Park" is the name given to most of these openings, be they large or

small. There are many of these scattered through the Rocky Mountains.

North, South, and Middle Parks of Colorado are among the largest.

These larger ones are simply meadows on a magnificent scale. Each is

an extensive prairie of irregular outline surrounded by high

forest-draped mountains with snowy peaks,--an inter-mountain plain

broken by grassy hills and forested ridges. Here a mountain peninsula

thrusts out into the lowland, and there a grassy bay extends a few

miles back into the forested mountains. Samuel Bowles, in the

"Springfield Republican," gave the following description of Middle

Park while it was still primeval: "Above us the mountain peaks go up

sharp with snow and rock, and shut in our view; but below and beyond

through wide and thick forests lies Middle Park, a varied picture of

plain and hill, with snowy peaks beyond and around.... It offers as

much of varied and sublime beauty in mountain scenery as any so

comparatively easy a trip within our experience possibly can.... A

short ride brought us into miles of clear prairie, with grass one to

two feet high, and hearty streams struggling to be first into the

Pacific Ocean. This was the Middle Park, and we had a long twenty-five

miles ride northerly through it that day. It was not monotonous by

any means. Frequent ranges of hills break the prairie; the latter

changes from rich bottom lands with heavy grass, to light, cold

gravelly uplands, thin with bunch grass and sage brush; sluggish

streams and quick streams alternate; belts of hardy pines and

tender-looking aspens (cottonwood) lie along the crests or sides of

the hills; farther away are higher hills fully wooded, and still

beyond the range that bounds the Park and circles it with eternal

snows."

[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN PARK IN THE SAN JUAN MOUNTAINS]

During one of his early exploring expeditions, John C. Frémont visited

North Park and wrote of it as follows: "The valley narrowed as we

ascended and presently degenerated into a gorge, through which the

river passed as through a gate--a beautiful circular valley of thirty

miles in diameter, walled in all around with snowy mountains, rich

with water and with grass, fringed with pine on the mountain sides

below the snow line and a paradise to all grazing animals. We

continued our way among the waters of the park over the foothills of

the bordering mountains."

Hayden Valley in the Yellowstone National Park is another large grassy

opening in a mountain forest. This valley apparently was once a vast

arm of Yellowstone Lake.

Estes Park, in Colorado, is one of the most attractive as well as the

best known of the mountain parks. Although much smaller than Middle or

South Park, it is much larger than hundreds of the other beautiful

mountain parks. The Estes Park region embraces about one hundred

square miles, though only one third of this is open. The approximate

altitude of the ragged lowland park is a trifle less than eight

thousand feet. This is entirely surrounded by high mountains which

uphold a number of rocky, snowy peaks. In 1875 Dr. F. V. Hayden,

father of the Yellowstone Park, wrote of this region: "Within the

district treated we will scarcely be able to find a region so

favorably distinguished as that presented by Estes Park. Not only has

nature amply supplied this valley with features of rare beauty and

surroundings of admirable grandeur, but it has thus distributed them

that the eye of an artist may rest with perfect satisfaction on the

complete picture presented." Erosion and glacial action have given

this region its form, while fire made the beautiful opening or park

within a forest.

The majority of parks or meadow gardens which decorate the forests of

the Rocky Mountains probably owe their existence to fire. Trees and

grass are endlessly contending for the possession of the earth. In

this incessant silent struggle a sweeping fire is generally of

advantage to the grass. Trees suffer more from fire than does grass.

It is probable that repeated fires enable the grass to hold the plains

and prairies against the encroachments of the trees. Each forest fire

commonly gives the grass possession of a part of the area formerly

dominated by the forest. Usually both grass and trees are prompt to

seize any fire-cleared area. The grass may be first to come, or some

space may be wet or in some other way unfavorable to tree seed but

encouraging to grass seed.

While forest fires bring many of these parks, others are glacier

meadows, lake-basins which time has filled with sediment and sodded

with grass. Many are due to the presence of water, either

outspreading surface water or an excess of underground water just

beneath the surface,--to streams visible or invisible. A few result

from boggy places which result from impaired drainage caused by

landslips or fallen trees. Thousands were made by beaver dams,--are

old beaver ponds that filled with sediment and then grassed over.

Most parks that owe their origin to forest fires have charcoal beneath

the surface. A little digging commonly reveals charred logs or roots.

Occasionally, too, a blackened tree-snag stands suggestively in these

treeless gardens. In the competition for this territory, in which

grass, spruces, aspens, and kinnikinick compete, grass was successful.

Just what conditions may have been favorable to grass cannot be told,

though probably one point was the abundance of moisture. Possibly the

fire destroyed all near-by seed trees, or trees not destroyed may not

have borne seed until the year following the fire. Anyway, grass often

seizes and covers fire-cleared areas so thickly and so continuously

with sod that tree seeds find no opening, and grass thus holds

possession for decades, and, in favorable places, possibly for a

century.

Trees grow up around these areas and in due time the grassy park is

surrounded by a forest. The trees along the edge of this park extend

long limbs out into it. These limbs shade and kill the grass beneath.

Tree seeds sprout where the grass is killed, and these seedlings in

turn produce trees with long limbs reaching into the park. These shade

and smother more grass and thus advance the forest another limb's

length. Slowly but surely the park is diminished.

Struggling trees may sometimes obtain a place in advance of the others

or a start in the centre of the park, and thus hasten the death of the

park and speed the triumph of the trees. A mere incident may shorten

the life of a park. A grizzly bear that I followed one day, paused on

a dry point in a park to dig out some mice. In reaching these he

discovered a chipmunk burrow. By the time he had secured all these he

had torn up several square yards of sod. In this fresh earth the

surrounding trees sowed triumphant seeds, from which a cluster of

spruces expanded and went out to meet the surrounding advancing

forest. Fighting deer sometimes cut the sod and thus allow a few tree

seeds to assert themselves. Wind may blow down a tall tree which lands

in the edge of the park. Along its full length grows a line of

invading forest. Occasionally the earth piled out by a gopher, or by a

coyote in digging out a gopher, offers an opportunity that is seized

by a tree seed. An ant-hill in a meadow may afford a footing for

invading tree seeds. On one occasion a cliff tumbled and a huge

rock-fragment bounded far into the sloping meadow. Trees sprang up in

each place where the rock tore the sod and also around where it came

to rest in the grass.

These breaks in the sod made by animals or other agencies do not

always give triumph to the trees. Seedlings may eagerly start in these

openings, but, being isolated, they are in greater danger, perhaps,

than seedlings in the forest. Rabbits may nibble them, woodchucks

devour, or insects overrun them. The surrounding grass may smother

them and reclaim the temporarily lost opening.

But, though only one tree may grow, this in due time shades the grass,

a circle of young trees rise around it, and these in turn carry

forward the work of winning territory. At last the park is overgrown

with trees!

Glacier meadows may be seen in all stages of evolution. The lake-basin

gouged by a glacier goes through many changes before it is covered by

a forest and forgotten. No sooner does ice vanish and a glacier lake

appear than its filling-in is commenced. Landslips and snow-slides

thrust boulders and cliff-fragments into it; running water is

constantly depositing sand and sediment upon its bottom. Sedge and

moss commence covering its surface as soon as its water becomes

shallow. In due time it becomes a bog with a thick covering like a wet

mattress, composed of the matted roots of sedge and grass. Over this,

wind and water deposit earthy matter, but centuries may pass before

the bog is filled in sufficiently to have a dry surface and produce

grass and flowers and finally trees.

Once while strolling through a forested flat in central Colorado, I

concluded from the topography of the country that it must formerly

have been a glacier lake. I procured tools and sank a shaft into the

earth between the spruces. At a depth of two feet was a gravelly

soil-deposit, and beneath this a matting of willow roots and sedge

roots and stalks. These rested in a kind of turf at water-level,

beneath which were boulders, while under these was bed-rock. Numerous

romantic changes time had made here.

Many of these meadows are as level as the surface of a lake. Commonly

the surface is comparatively smooth, even though one edge may be

higher than the other. I measured one meadow that was three thousand

feet long by two hundred and fifty feet wide. Tree-ranks of the

surrounding forest crowded to its very edge. On the north the country

extended away only a foot or two higher than meadow-level. On the

south a mountain rose steeply, and this surface of the meadow was four

feet higher than the one opposite. The up-the-mountain end was about

three feet higher than the end which had been the old outlet of the

lake. The steep south shore had sent down more material than the level

one on the north. In fact, water-level on the north shore, though

concealed by grass, was almost precisely the same as when the waters

of the lake shone from shore to shore. In one corner of the meadow was

an aspen grove. From the mountain-side above, a landslide had come

down. Rains had eroded this area to bed-rock and had torn out a gully

that was several feet wide on the slope below. This washed material

was spread out in a delta-like deposit on the surface of the meadow.

Aspens took possession of this delta.

Glacier meadows are usually longer-lived than other mountain parks. In

favorable places they sometimes endure for centuries. Commonly they

are slowly replaced by the extending forest. The peaty, turfy growth

which covers them is of fine matted roots, almost free of earthy or

mineral matter, and often is a saturated mattress several feet in

thickness. The water-level is usually at the surface, but during an

extremely dry time it may sink several inches or even a few feet. If

fires run during a dry period of this kind, the fire will burn to

water-level. The ashes of this fire, together with the mineral matter

which it concentrates, commonly form a soil-bed which promptly

produces trees. Sometimes, however, grass returns. Thus, while fire

brings forth many meadows in the forest, it sometimes is the end of

one evolved from glacial action. A landslip often plunges a peninsula

of soil out upon a glacial meadow. This is usually captured by trees

in a year or two.

These parks make ideal camping-places,--wild, beautiful, and alluring

in every season. I have enjoyed them when they were white with snow,

mysterious with cloud and mist, romantic with moonlight, and knee-deep

in the floral wealth of June. Often I have burst out upon a sunny

meadow hidden away in the solitude of the forest. As it lies silent in

the sunshine, butterflies with beautifully colored wings circle

lightly above its brilliant masses of flowers. Here bears prowl, deer

feed, and birds assemble in such numbers that the park appears to be

their social centre. In these wild gardens the matchless solitaire is

found. Often he sings from the top of a spruce and accompanies his

song by darting off or upward on happy wings, returning and darting

again, singing all the time as if enchanted.

Among the hundreds of these happy resting-grounds in which I have

camped, one in the San Juan Mountains has left me the most memories. I

came there one evening during a severe gale. The wind roared and

thundered as impressively as breakers on a rock-bound shore. By

midnight the storm ceased, and the tall trees stood as quietly as if

content to rest after their vigorous exercise in the friendly

wrestling-match with the wind. The spruces had become towering folded

flags of fluffy black. After the gale the sky was luminous with

crowding stars. I lingered in the centre of the opening to watch them.

The heavens appeared to be made of many star-filled skies, one behind

the other. The farthest one was very remote, while the closest seemed

strangely near me, just above the tops of the trees.

Many times I have come out of the subdued light of the pathless forest

to enjoy these sunny openings. Often I have stood within them watching

the butterflies circling in the sun or a deer and her fawns feeding

quietly across, and, as I looked, I have listened to the scolding of

the squirrel and the mellow ringing of the woodpecker far away in the

forest. Here I have watched the coming storm, have enjoyed its

presence, and in its breaking have seen the brilliant bow rest its

foundations in front of the trees just across the meadow. Sometimes

the moon showed its soft bow in the edge of the advancing or the

breaking storm.

One evening, before the moon looked into this fairy garden, I watched

a dance of crowding fireflies. They were as thick as snowflakes, but

all vanished when the moonlight turned the park into fairyland. Rare

shadow etchings the tall, short-armed spruces made, as they lay in

light along the eastern border of this moon-filled park. A blue tower

of shadow stretched from a lone spruce in the open to the forest wall

beyond. As the moon rose higher, one of the dead trees in the edge

of the forest appeared to rise out of the darkness and stand to watch

or to serve. Then another rose, and presently two appeared side by

side and edged into the light. They might have been conversing. As the

night advanced, the shadow of the spruces shortened as their shadow

points moved round to the north. As the moon sank behind a mountain,

the dead trees settled back into the darkness, and, just before light

left the park, the two broken trees moved behind a shadow and

vanished. They were scarcely out of sight when the weird cries of a

fox sounded from the farther edge of the woods.

[Illustration: CAPITOL PEAK AND SNOW MASS MOUNTAIN FROM GALENA PARK]

Those who believe in fairies will receive the most from Nature. The

unfenced wilderness is full of wild folk, full of fairy gardens and

homes. With these a careless prowler is rarely welcome. Wasps and bees

early gave me sharp hints on blundering, hurried intrusion, and a

mother grizzly with two cubs by her side also impressed me concerning

this matter. Birds sometimes made me ashamed for breaking in upon

them. I did no shooting, carried only a kodak, and was careful to

avoid rushing from one place to another; but refined wilderness

etiquette was yet to be learned. Usually I felt welcome in the most

secluded place, but one day, having wandered out into the corner of

the meadow, I felt that I was not only an uninvited guest, but a most

unwelcome intruder.

The meadow was a deeply secluded one, such as the fairies would

naturally reserve for themselves. Towering spruces shut it out from

the world. A summer play was surely in progress when I blundered upon

the scene. With my intrusion everything stopped abruptly. Each flower

paused in the midst of its part, the music of the thrush broke off,

the tall spruces scowled stiffly, and the slender, observant young

trees stood unwillingly still. Plainly all were annoyed at my

presence, and all were waiting impatiently for me to be gone. As I

retreated into the woods, a breeze whispered and the spruces made

stately movements. The flowers in the meadow resumed their dance, the

aspen leaves their merry accompaniment, the young trees their graceful

swaying and bowing, and the fairies and bees became as happy as

before.

A camp-fire anywhere in the wilderness appeals strongly to the

imagination. To me it was most captivating in a little mountain

meadow. Even in a circle of friends it may shut out all else, and with

it one may return through "yesterday's seven thousand years." But to

be completely under its spell one must be alone with its changing

flame. Although I have watched the camp-fire all alone in many

scenes,--in the wilderness, at the shore of the sea, at timber-line,

and on the desert in the shadow of the prehistoric cactus,--nowhere

has my imagination been more deeply stirred than it was one night by

my camp-fire in a little mountain meadow. Around were the silent ranks

of trees. Here the world was new and the fire blazed in primeval

scenes. Its strange dance of lights and shadows against the trees

rebuilt for me the past. Once more I felt the hopes and dreads of

savage life. Once more I knew the legends that were told when the

first camp-fire burned.