this colony obtained most of its water-supply from springs poured
forth abundantly on the uppermost terrace, where the water was led
into one pond and a number of basins. Overflowing from these, it
either made a merry, tiny cascade or went to lubricate a slide on the
short slopes which led to the ponds on the terrace below. The waters
from all terraces were gathered into a large pond at the bottom. This
pond measured six hundred feet in circumference. The crooked and
almost encircling grass-grown dam was six feet high, and four hundred
feet long. In its upper edge stood the main house, which was eighty
feet high and forty feet in circumference. There was also another
house on one of the terraces.
After notching the aspens I spent some time exploring the colony
grounds and did not return to the marked trees until forty-eight hours
had elapsed. Harvest had begun, and one of the largest notched trees
had been felled and removed. Its gnawed stump was six inches in
diameter and stood fifteen inches high. The limbs had been trimmed
off, and a number of these lay scattered about the stump. The trunk,
which must have been about eighteen feet long, had disappeared, cut
into lengths of from three to six feet, probably, and started toward
the harvest pile. Wondering for which house these logs were intended,
I followed, hoping to trace and trail them to the house, or find them
_en route_. From the spot where they were cut, they had evidently been
rolled down a steep, grassy seventy-foot slope, at the bottom of this
dragged an equal distance over a level stretch among some lodge-pole
pines, and then pushed or dragged along a narrow runway that had been
cut through a rank growth of willows. Once through the willows, they
were pushed into the uppermost pond. They were taken across this,
forced over the dam on the opposite side, and shot down a slide into
the pond which contained the smaller house. Only forty-eight hours
before, the little logs which I was following were in a tree, and now
I expected to find them by this house. It was good work to have got
them here so quickly, I thought. But no logs could be found by the
house or in the pond! The folks at this place had not yet laid up
anything for winter. The logs must have gone farther.
On the opposite side of this pond I found where the logs had been
dragged across the broad dam and then heaved into a long, wet slide
which landed them in a small, shallow harbor in the grass. From this
point a canal about eighty feet long ran around the brow of the
terrace and ended at the top of a long slide which reached to the big
pond. This canal was new and probably had been dug especially for this
harvest. For sixty feet of its length it was quite regular in form and
had an average width of thirty inches and a depth of fourteen. The mud
dug in making it was piled evenly along the lower side. Altogether it
looked more like the work of a careful man with a shovel than of
beaver without tools. Seepage and overflow water from the ponds above
filled and flowed slowly through it and out at the farther end, where
it swept down the long slide into the big pond. Through this canal the
logs had been taken one by one. At the farther end I found the
butt-end log. It probably had been too heavy to heave out of the
canal, but tracks in the mud indicated that there was a hard tussle
before it was abandoned.
[Illustration: A BEAVER CANAL
Length 334 feet, average depth 15 inches, average width 26 inches]
The pile of winter supplies was started. Close to the big house a
few aspen leaves fluttered on twigs in the water; evidently these
twigs were attached to limbs or larger pieces of aspen that were piled
beneath the surface. Could it be that the aspen which I had marked on
the mountainside a quarter of a mile distant so short a time before,
and which I had followed over slope and slide, canal and basin, was
now piled on the bottom of this pond? I waded out into the water,
prodded about with a pole, and found several smaller logs. Dragging
one of these to the surface, I found there were three notches on it.
Evidently these heavy green tree cuttings had been sunk to the bottom
simply by the piling of other similar cuttings upon them. With this
heavy material in the still water a slight contact with the bottom
would prevent the drifting of accumulating cuttings until a heavy pile
could be formed. However, in deep or swift water I have noticed that
an anchorage for the first few pieces was secured by placing these
upon the lower slope of the house or against the dam.
Scores of aspens were felled in the grove where the notched ones were.
They were trimmed, cut into sections, and limbs, logs, and all taken
over the route of the one I had followed, and at last placed in a pile
beside the big house. This harvest gathering went on for a month. All
about was busy, earnest preparation for winter. The squirrels from the
tree-tops kept a rattling rain of cones on the leaf-strewn forest
floor, the cheery chipmunk foraged and frolicked among the withered
leaves and plants, while aspens with leaves of gold fell before the
ivory sickles of the beaver. Splendid glimpses, grand views, I had of
this strange harvest-home. How busy the beavers were! They were busy
in the grove on the steep mountainside; they tugged logs along the
runways; they hurried them across the water-basins, wrestled with them
in canals, and merrily piled them by the rude house in the water. And
I watched them through the changing hours; I saw their shadowy
activity in the starry, silent night; I saw them hopefully leave home
for the harvest groves in the serene twilight, and I watched them
working busily in the light of the noonday sun.
Most of the aspens were cut off between thirteen and fifteen inches
above the ground. A few stumps were less than five inches high, while
a number were four feet high. These high cuttings were probably made
from reclining trunks of lodged aspens which were afterward removed.
The average diameter of the aspens cut was four and one half inches at
the top of the stump. Numerous seedlings of an inch diameter were cut,
and the largest tree felled for this harvest measured fourteen inches
across the stump. This had been laid low only a few hours before I
found it, and a bushel of white chips and cuttings encircled the
lifeless stump like a wreath. In falling, the top had become entangled
in an alder thicket and lodged six feet from the ground. It remained
in this position for several days and was apparently abandoned; but
the last time I went to see it the alders which upheld it were being
cut away. Although the alders were thick upon the ground, only those
which had upheld the aspen had been cut. It may be that the beaver
which felled them looked and thought before they went ahead with the
cutting.
Why had this and several other large aspens been left uncut in a place
where all were convenient for harvest? All other neighboring aspens
were cut years ago. One explanation is that the beaver realized that
the tops of the aspens were entangled and interlocked in the limbs of
crowding spruces and would not fall if cut off at the bottom. This and
one other were the only large ones that were felled, and the tops of
these had been recently released by the overturning of some spruces
and the breaking of several branches on others. Other scattered large
aspens were left uncut, but all of these were clasped in the arms of
near-by spruces.
It was the habit of these colonists to transfer a tree to the harvest
pile promptly after cutting it down. But one morning I found logs on
slides and in canals, and unfinished work in the grove, as though
everything had been suddenly dropped in the night when work was at its
height. Coyotes had howled freely during the night, but this was not
uncommon. In going over the grounds I found the explanation of this
untidy work in a bear track and numerous wolf tracks, freshly moulded
in the muddy places.
After the bulk of the harvest was gathered, I went one day to the
opposite side of the moraine and briefly observed the methods of the
Island beaver colony. The ways of the two colonies were in some things
very different. In the Spruce Tree Colony the custom was to move the
felled aspen promptly to the harvest pile. In the Island Colony the
custom was to cut down most of the harvest before transporting any of
it to the pile beside the house. Of the one hundred and sixty-two
trees that had been felled for this harvest, one hundred and
twenty-seven were still lying where they fell. However, the work of
transporting was getting under way; a few logs were in the pile beside
the house, and numerous others were scattered along the canals,
runways, and slides between the house and the harvest grove.
There was more wasted labor, too, in the Island Colony. This was
noticeable in the attempts that had been made to fell limb-entangled
trees that could not fall. One five-inch aspen had three times been
cut off at the bottom. The third cut was more than three feet from the
ground, and was made by a beaver working from the top of a fallen log.
Still this high-cut aspen refused to come down and there it hung like
a collapsed balloon entangled in tree-tops.
Before the white man came it is probable that beaver did most of their
work in the day-time. But at present, except in the most remote
localities, day work is perilous. Prowling hunters have compelled most
beaver to work at night. The Spruce Tree Colony was an isolated one,
and occasionally its members worked and even played in the sunshine.
Each day I secluded myself, kept still, and waited; and on a few
occasions watched them as they worked in the light.
One windy day, just as I was unroping myself from the shaking limb of
a spruce, four beaver were plodding along in single file beneath. They
had come out of a hole between the roots of the spruce. At an aspen
growth about fifty feet distant they separated. Though they had been
closely assembled, each appeared utterly oblivious of the presence of
the others. One squatted on the ground by an aspen, took a bite of
bark out of it and ate leisurely. By and by he rose, clasped the aspen
with fore paws and began to bite chips from it systematically. He was
deliberately cutting it down. The most aged beaver waddled near an
aspen, gazed into its top for a few seconds, then moved away about ten
feet and started to fell a five-inch aspen. The one rejected was
entangled at the top. Presently the third beaver selected a tree, and
after some trouble to get comfortably seated, or squatted, also began
cutting. The fourth beaver disappeared and I did not see him again.
While I was looking for this one the huge, aged beaver whose venerable
appearance had impressed me the first evening appeared on the scene.
He came out of a hole beneath some spruces about a hundred feet
distant. He looked neither to right nor to left, nor up nor down, as
he ambled toward the aspen growth. When about halfway there he
wheeled suddenly and took an uneasy survey of the open he had
traversed, as though he had heard an enemy behind. Then with
apparently stolid indifference he went on leisurely, and for a time
paused among the cutters, which did nothing to indicate that they
realized his presence. He ate some bark from a green limb on the
ground, moved on, and went into the hole beneath me. He appeared so
large that I afterward measured the distance between the two aspens
where he paused. He was not less than three and a half feet long and
probably weighed fifty pounds. He had all his toes; there was no white
spot on his body; in fact, there was neither mark nor blemish by which
I could positively identify him. Yet I feel that in my month around
the colony I beheld the patriarch of the first evening in several
scenes of action.
[Illustration: ASPENS CUT BY BEAVER]
Sixty-seven minutes after the second beaver began cutting he made a
brief pause; then he suddenly thudded the ground with his tail,
hurriedly took out a few more chips, and ran away, with the other two
beaver a little in advance, just as his four-inch aspen settled
over and then fell. All paused for a time close to the hole beneath
me, and then the old beaver returned to his work. The one that had
felled his tree followed closely and at once began on another aspen.
The other beaver, with his aspen half cut off, went into the hole and
did not again come out. By and by an old and a young beaver came out
of the hole. The young one at once began cutting limbs off the
recently felled aspen, while the other began work on the half-cut
tree; but he ignored the work already done, and finally severed the
trunk about four inches above the cut made by the other. Suddenly the
old beaver whacked the ground and ran, but at thirty feet distant he
paused and nervously thumped the ground with his tail, as his aspen
slowly settled and fell. Then he went into the hole beneath me.
This year's harvest was so much larger than usual that it may be the
population of this colony had been increased by the arrival of
emigrants from a persecuted colony down in the valley. The total
harvest numbered four hundred and forty-three trees. These made a
harvest pile four feet high and ninety feet in circumference. A thick
covering of willows was placed on top of the harvest pile,--I cannot
tell for what reason unless it was to sink all the aspen below reach
of the ice. This bulk of stores together with numerous roots of willow
and water plants, which in the water are eaten from the bottom of the
pond, would support a numerous beaver population through the days of
ice and snow.
On the last tour through the colony everything was ready for the long
and cold winter. Dams were in repair and ponds were brimming over with
water, the fresh coats of mud on the houses were freezing to defy
enemies, and a bountiful harvest was home. Harvest-gathering is full
of hope and romance. What a joy it must be to every man or animal who
has a hand in it! What a satisfaction, too, for all dependent upon a
harvest, to know that there is abundance stored for all the frosty
days!
The people of this wild, strange, picturesque colony had planned and
prepared well. I wished them a winter unvisited by cruel fate or foe,
and trusted that when June came again the fat and furry young beaver
would play with the aged one amid the tiger lilies in the shadows of
the big spruce trees.
Mountain-Top Weather
Mountain-Top Weather
The narrow Alpine zone of peaks and snow that forms the crest of the
Rocky Mountains has its own individual elemental moods, its
characteristic winds, its electrical and other peculiarities, and a
climate of its own. Commonly its days are serene and sunny, but from
time to time it has hail and snow and showers of wind-blown rain, cold
as ice-water. It is subject to violent changes from clear, calm air to
blizzard.
I have enjoyed these strange, silent heights in every season of the
year. In climbing scores of these peaks, in crossing the passes,
often on snowshoes, and in camping here and there on the skyline,
I have encountered these climatic changes and had numerous
strange experiences. From these experiences I realize that the
transcontinental aviator, with this realm of peak and sky, will have
some delightful as well as serious surprises. He will encounter stern
conditions. He may, like a storm-defying bird, be carried from his
course by treacherous currents and battle with breakers or struggle in
vain in the monstrous, invisible maelstroms that beset this ocean of
air. Of these skyline factors the more imposing are wind, cold,
clouds, rain, snow, and subtle, capricious electricity.
High winds are common across the summits of these mountains; and they
are most prevalent in winter. Those of summer, though less frequent
and much more short-lived, are a menace on account of their fury and
the suddenness with which they surprise and sweep the heights.
Early one summer, while exploring a wide alpine moorland above the
timber-line, I--and some others--had an experience with one of those
sudden stormbursts. The region was utterly wild, but up to it
straggling tourists occasionally rode for a view of the surrounding
mountain world. All alone, I was studying the ways of the wild
inhabitants of the heights. I had spent the calm, sunny morning in
watching a solitary bighorn that was feeding among some boulders. He
was aged, and he ate as though his teeth were poor and walked as
though afflicted with rheumatism. Suddenly this patriarch forgot his
age and fled precipitately, with almost the speed of frightened youth.
I leaped upon a boulder to watch him, but was instantly knocked
headlong by a wild blast of wind. In falling I caught sight of a straw
hat and a wrecked umbrella falling out of the sky. Rising amid the
pelting gale of flung hail, ice-water, and snow, I pushed my way in
the teeth of the storm, hoping for shelter in the lee of a rock-pile
about a hundred yards distant. A lady's disheveled hat blew by me, and
with the howl of the wind came, almost drowned, excited human
utterances. Nearing the rock-pile, I caught a vague view of a
merry-go-round of man and horse, then a glimpse of the last gyration,
in which an elderly Eastern gentleman parted company with a stampeded
bronco.
Five tourists had ridden up in the sunshine to enjoy the heights, and
the suddenness and fierceness of the storm had thrown them into a
panic and stampeded their horses. They were drenched and severely
chilled, and they were frightened. I made haste to tell them that the
storm would be brief. While I was still trying to reassure them, the
clouds commenced to dissolve and the sun came out. Presently all were
watching the majestic soaring of two eagles up in the blue, while I
went off to collect five scattered saddle-ponies that were contentedly
feeding far away on the moor.
Though the winter winds are of slower development, they are more
prolonged and are tempestuously powerful. Occasionally these winds
blow for days; and where they follow a fall of snow they blow and
whirl this about so wildly that the air is befogged for several
hundred feet above the earth. So violently and thickly is the powdered
snow flung about that a few minutes at a time is the longest that one
can see or breathe in it. These high winter winds come out of the west
in a deep, broad stratum that is far above most of the surface over
which they blow. Commonly a high wind strikes the western slope of the
Continental Divide a little below the altitude of eleven thousand
feet. This striking throws it into fierce confusion. It rolls
whirling up the steeps and frequently shoots far above the highest
peaks. Across the passes it sweeps, roars down the cañons on the
eastern slope, and rushes out across the plains. Though the western
slope below eleven thousand feet is a calm zone, the entire eastern
slope is being whipped and scourged by a flood of wind. Occasionally
the temperature of these winds is warm.
These swift, insistent winds, torn, intercepted, and deflected
by dashing against the broken skyline, produce currents,
counter-currents, sleepy eddies, violent vertical whirls, and milling
maelstroms that are tilted at every angle. In places there is a gale
blowing upward, and here and there the air pours heavily down in an
invisible but almost crushing air-fall.
One winter I placed an air-meter in Granite Pass, at twelve thousand
feet altitude on the slope of Long's Peak. During the first high wind
I fought my way up to read what the meter said. Both the meter and
myself found the wind exceeded the speed limit. Emerging above the
trees at timber-line, I had to face the unbroken fury of the gale as
it swept down the slope from the heights above. The region was barren
of snow. The wind dashed me with sandblasts and pelted me with gravel
volleys that were almost unbearable. My face and wrists were bruised,
and blood was drawn in many places where the gravel struck.
Seeking rest and shelter from this persistent punishment, I approached
a crag and when only a few yards away was struck and overturned by the
milling air-current around it. The air was so agitated around this
crag that its churnings followed me, like disturbed water, under and
behind the large rock-fragments, where shelter was hoped for but only
partly secured.
[Illustration: WIND-BLOWN TREES AT TIMBER-LINE]
On the last slope below the meter the wind simply played with me. I
was overthrown, tripped, knocked down, blown explosively off my feet
and dropped. Sometimes the wind dropped me heavily, but just as often
it eased me down. I made no attempt to stand erect; most of the time
this was impossible and at all times it was very dangerous. Now and
then the wind rolled me as I lay resting upon a smooth place.
Advancing was akin to swimming a whirlpool or to wrestling one's way
up a slope despite the ceaseless opposition of a vigorous, tireless
opponent.
At last I crawled and climbed up to the buzzing cups of the meter. So
swiftly were they rotating they formed a blurred circle, like a
fast-revolving life-preserver. The meter showed that the wind was
passing with a speed of from one hundred and sixty-five to one hundred
and seventy miles an hour. The meter blew up--or, rather, flew to
pieces--during a swifter spurt.
The wind so loudly ripped and roared round the top of the peak that I
determined to scale the summit and experience its wildest and most
eloquent efforts. All my strength and climbing knowledge were required
to prevent my being literally blown out of converging rock channels
through which the wind gushed; again and again I clung with all my
might to avoid being torn from the ledges. Fortunately not a bruise
was received, though many times this was narrowly avoided.
The top of the peak, an area of between three and four acres and
comparatively level, was in an easy eddy, almost a calm when compared
with the wind's activities below and near by. Apparently the
wind-current collided so forcefully with the western wall of the peak
that it was thrown far above the summit before recovering to continue
its way eastward; but against the resisting spurs and pinnacles a
little below summit-level the wind roared, boomed, and crashed in its
determined, passionate onsweep.
The better to hear this grand uproar, I advanced to the western edge
of the summit. Here my hat was torn off, but not quite grasped, by the
upshooting blast. It fell into the swirl above the summit and in large
circles floated upward at slow speed, rising directly above the top of
the peak. It rose and circled so slowly that I threw several stones at
it, trying to knock it down before it rose out of range. The diameter
of the circle through which it floated was about one hundred and fifty
feet; when it had risen five, or perhaps six, hundred feet above the
summit it suddenly tumbled over and over as though about to fall, but
instead of falling it sailed off toward the east as though a carrier
pigeon hurrying for a known and definite place in the horizon.
Some of the gulf-streams, hell-gates, whirlpools, rough channels, and
dangerous tides in the sea of air either are in fixed places or adjust
themselves to winds from a different quarter so definitely that their
location can be told by considering them in connection with the
direction of the wind. Thus the sea of air may be partly charted and
the position of some of its dangerous places, even in mountain-top
oceans, positively known.
However, there are dangerous mountain-top winds of one kind, or, more
properly, numerous local air-blasts, that are sometimes created within
these high winds, that do not appear to have any habits. It would be
easier to tell where the next thunderbolt would fall than where the
next one of these would explode. One of these might be called a
cannon wind. An old prospector, who had experienced countless high
winds among the crags, once stated that high, gusty winds on
mountain-slopes "sometimes shoot off a cannon." These explosive blasts
touch only a short, narrow space, but in this they are almost
irresistible.