A Glimpse of Life on the Top
Photographer Galen Rowell and writer Dennis Hanson decided to climb the Tower in October 1978 to find out for themselves what’s up there. After a strenuous five-hour climb, interrupted by occasional clouds of rock doves (below), they reached the top and found the surface is not as flat as it appears from down below or even from an airplane. Besides grasses, they found sagebrush, currant, and prickly pear cactus (below). As they were cooking dinner, a wood rat (below) joined them, nibbling at their food packets, peering into a pot, and nosing about their climbing gear. They also saw chipmunks and plenty of birds (See pages [44]-45, [60]-61), but, perhaps because of the coolness of October, they did not see any rattlesnakes, which others have found there sometimes. How did the animals get to the top? Some people have speculated that they were dropped by predatory birds, but that is questionable: they probably would have been killed by the birds’ talons or by the plunge to the surface. More than likely they just climbed up the Tower’s sides and took up residence. Many climbers, of the human sort, have reported seeing snakes and rodents working their way up fissures.
What’s on top of the Tower? Most climbers report that the summit is similar to the surrounding landscape. Grasses cover much of the rocky surface, but better than that, a few snakes and mammals live there!
Wood rat.
Prickly pear cactus.
Rock doves.
In addition, most plains animals contend with the semi-arid conditions of their environment by making efficient use of available moisture. Pronghorn, prairie dogs, and kangaroo rats, for example, need never take a drink since they obtain necessary water from the plants they eat. Such plant and animal adaptations explain why the shortgrass plains can sustain such a vast panorama of life.
From a tall pine upslope, a red squirrel chatters with indignation at discovering my intrusion into its domain. The bell-like song of a rock wren answers from an outcrop nearby. The small gray bird appears atop a boulder, motionless but for an instant, then hops down to resume its search for insects among the bright, arid cliffs it claims for its own.
I realize that I am seeing more than scenery here. All around me are boundaries—conspicuous where defined by plants, but invisible where respected by animals. No prairie dog has ever traveled across this slope, and no red squirrel has ever scurried into the treeless expanse of the prairie dog town. On no occasion would a rock wren enter the deep pine forest. Should its food supply somehow vanish, it would perish among the bare earth and gully washes of its own habitat rather than hunt the dog town or forest floor.
Each animal species is adapted to the conditions of its preferred environment. The prairie dog and red squirrel have similar roles in their respective habitats, as do the meadowlark in the grassland, the house wren in the deciduous woodlands, the rock wren on barren slopes, and the brilliant western tanager of the pine forests that is calling “pit-ik, pit-ik, pit-ik” from a branch overhead.
Whether herbivore, carnivore, scavenger, or decomposer, all of the countless, magnificently varied life-forms of each community share in the endless flow of chemical energy that originates with the touch of sun on chlorophyll. Eagle, prairie dog, bacterium, man—we all owe our lives, directly or indirectly, to the green leaf’s unique ability to convert light energy into chemical energy.
So does this colony of black ants foraging near my feet. Back and forth the living lines run, each individual obeying its ancient, perfected legacy of instinct. One carries aloft the bright green corpse of a lacewing. With a little last-minute help from fellow workers, the ant carries its burden down into the nest hole. With its powerful jaws, another ant tugs the brittle remains of a once formidable foe—a jumping spider. So intent is the ant in its labor, it fails to avoid a deadly trap, however. In the soft ground along the margins of the trail is a craterfield of funnel-shaped pits. At the bottom of each, hidden just below the soil, waits quick death in the form of jaws even stronger than the ant’s. These insects, called antlions, are the larval stages of the equally voracious tiger-beetle.
Having tipped its load over the rim of the funnel, the ant disengages itself and attempts to crawl up the incline and get to the other side of the spider to pull it out again. But the loose soil particles offer little traction and the ant begins to slip. Frantic, it works its legs faster, making it slide downward more quickly. Alerted now by vibrations from the struggling insect, a hidden antlion waits its moment to strike. When the ant touches bottom, the hooked jaws appear, snapping once, twice, and finally closing shut about the thorax of its prey.
In a moment, all is over, the ant dragged beneath the soil at the bottom of the crater. The corpse of the spider, part way down the incline, is occasionally investigated by other passing ants. But the ants at the lip of the trap seem to sense the danger and leave the stranded prize alone. Other antlions, at the bottom of their expertly engineered traps, lie hidden from the passing parade of life above. Obeying their own instinct messages, they need only wait to survive.
A disturbance in the dog town starts the animals to barking and scurrying in every direction toward their burrows. Two figures from the campground have appeared up the incline. Their determined stride and the coils of rope at their shoulders suggest that the Tower’s summit may well be explored again today.
Already tall cumulus clouds, the beginnings of thunderheads, are building along the eastern horizon. A gust of hot air from the sun-baked ground below rushes into the pines, making the branches whizz into motion. A pine cone bounds against rock, setting the red squirrel to chattering again. I head for the Tower Trail, leaving behind the ant colony’s ordered turbulence and the view of the deserted dog town dancing in the sun.
Eye of the Falcon
At the juncture with the Red Beds Trail, I decide to follow the longer circuit of the Tower. The higher, shorter Tower Trail, which bracelets the rock-strewn base, can be picked up at the Visitor Center, where this trail ends. Folding the map, I hear the climbers approach.
“Good morning.”
The girl’s smile does not soften the concentrated expression all climbers wear before ascent.
“Which way are you going?” I ask, trying to conceal my lack of knowledge about any of the routes and knowing full well I would never venture what they are about to do.
“Left arm of the south face this time,” says the man. He obviously does not desire the delay of conversation but does volunteer that he had made several climbs the summer he worked here.
I hold them with another question: is there anything interesting on top?
“Terrific view. Grass on the summit; lots of chipmunks; once a rattlesnake was sighted. Well, we better get moving.”
“Good luck,” I call after them. The expression seems a lame wish for rock climbers. Soon they are brightly clad specks weaving through the trees. Looking up at the summit that towers above them, I wonder how a chipmunk or snake could have possibly gotten there—perhaps only by escaping the talons of an eagle or hawk. But could that happen?
More than 1,000 ascents of Devils Tower are now made each year. The almost casual manner in which experienced climbers regard the structure—often scaling it to keep in shape for “difficult” climbs—would have astounded early explorers, who regarded it as unscalable.
Shrill, rapid cries of a prairie falcon echo from the Tower wall. Although hidden from my view by the pines, its circling flight is revealed by its bursts of screams. It scolds the climbers who are now pressing upward and perhaps invading the security of its nest site. But the commotion soon dies away, indicating that the sharp-eyed falcon is more annoyed than threatened. Should the climbers inadvertently come close to the nest, however, the protective bird would repeatedly dive at the intruders in an attempt to drive them away, a distraction I would not relish.
I continue down the trail, which gradually drops toward the river. The pines yield to communities of deciduous vegetation interspersed with grassy meadows. A whitetail deer stands at the far edge of the narrow meadow the trail is about to enter. Not yet aware of my presence, it continues to browse the succulent new growth of a chokecherry.
Were it not for the meadows and wooded ravines that surround the higher reaches of the pine forest, the Monument could not support as many deer as it does. Deer like a mix of woodland and meadow. The dense cover of shrub thickets, canopied by closely spaced elm, chokecherry, hawthorn, and other trees, offers sanctuary and browse. The nearby meadows provide essential diet supplements of grasses and herbs.
As I move on, the deer dashes away. A cottontail bounds across the trail and overhead, on a long, twisted branch of a burr oak, a fox squirrel scurries upward to safety. A brown thrasher scolds momentarily but soon resumes its complex song. Its music is as various in shading and structure as the many leaf shapes that can be discovered in its habitat.
Before abruptly reversing itself, the trail makes a long swing northward. Leaving the pines, it crosses the maroon sediments that give the Red Beds Trail its name. The exposed formation has been cut into steep cliffs by the river. Deposited some 180 million years ago during the Jurassic Period, when the land surface was low and adjacent to a sea, this mixture of siltstone and sandstone is poorly cemented together. As a result, it weathers easily, forming a striking, ravine-cut outcrop wherever the stratum is exposed. Few plants colonize this handsome formation, making it stand out against the dull, igneous-gray Tower and its dark wreath of ponderosa.
As the sun approaches zenith, I am nearing the end of the trail circuit. Coming back closer to the Tower, the trail re-enters the pine forest. I welcome the perceptibly cooler air and dimmer surroundings beneath these big, yellow-barked trees. Here, where lichen and moss cap boulders and fallen logs, is a good spot for lunch. I sit with my back to the trunk of an ancient, fallen giant whose length has collapsed and defines the contours of the ground. Its exposed, rotten heartwood nourishes miniature fungi-gardens.
Compared to the sharp shadows and glare of the meadows and thickets I have left behind, the evenly shaded pine forest seems serene. Except for a diminutive red-breasted nuthatch that patrols up and down a nearby tree trunk, gleaning grubs and other insects as it goes, there is no perceptible motion. Even the few shafts of sunlight that touch the forest floor here seem, like me, to be intruders. Sound itself seems unwelcome. No birds sing or squabble or dart their colors to catch the eye. If anything walks or hops about, no leaves rustle to reveal its presence. Years of needle-cast shroud the uneven ground, giving the dissimilar shapes of rock and downed trees a sameness of color and texture.
Comparatively few life-forms inhabit the pine forest. Fewer kinds of plants grow beneath the pines than grow in the deciduous woodland. And fewer plant types mean a more limited diet for herbivores such as insects, mice, cottontails, and deer. The scarcity of insects also reduces the number of bird species that will find the habitat attractive.
The relative absence of life on the forest floor begins in the soil. Pines create acid soil conditions which do not promote bacterial growth. Decay, therefore, carried on primarily by fungi, takes place very slowly. The result is the thick accumulation of discarded needles and branches, the resinous, sweet-smelling “duff.”
Not far upslope from the trail a porcupine scuttles toward a stand of young pines. It moves slowly and silently, its quills making it look prehistoric. Again I am struck by the apparent changelessness of the pine forest.
But looking around, I find everywhere signs that indicate change and struggle. At the bases of the giant pines—some of which may be more than 200 years old—are fire scars. Most of the mature trees survived the frequent fires that once raced through here. Their bark was thick and fire-resistant, and they had few lower branches to pass the flames up into the vulnerable upper branches. But that was before the white man interrupted the long reign of wildfire. Ironically, fire had actually helped to maintain the health of the forest. Grass fires, sweeping into the pines, burned off the accumulations of litter and killed many of the crowded younger trees. Tinder was thus removed before it could build to dangerous levels.
continues on [page 40]