Continuing our climb toward the alpine regions, we reach an elevation where the trees begin to show the effects of the winter storms. The fact that life is not so easy as it is farther down the slopes is apparent from the gnarled and stunted trunks. Here are the alpine hemlocks, dwarf pines, and junipers.
The juniper somewhat resembles the cedar, but has a short, thick trunk. Near the timber line this tree grows but a few feet high and becomes exceedingly gnarled. It seems to like the most exposed and rocky places, but in truth, like many another form of plant life, it has become accustomed to such locations because it cannot successfully compete with other trees in happier ones.
Most weird and picturesque of all are the dwarf white pines, growing upon the extensive mountain shoulders and ridges at a height of ten thousand to eleven thousand five hundred feet above the sea. Since an arctic climate surrounds them for nine months in the year, their growth is very slow. Their short, gnarled trunks and branches are twisted into all sorts of fantastic shapes. When, after struggling with the cold and the storms, the trees at last die, they do not quickly decay and fall, but continue to stand for many years.
These trees become smaller and smaller in size until at the extreme timber line they are almost prostrate upon the ground. In many cases they rise only three or four feet, and have the appearance of shrubs rather than trees. Still above them, however, there are rocky slopes and snow-banks reaching to an elevation of over fourteen thousand feet. If we examine these upper slopes carefully we shall find that they are not utterly devoid of life, but that certain plants have been able to obtain a foothold upon them. In sheltered nooks there are little shrubs and lichens. In some places among the rocks, beneath overhanging snow-banks, beautiful flowers spring up at the coming of the late summer, blossom, mature their seeds, and die with the return of the winter cold.
FIG. 129.—THE UPPER LIMIT OF THE TIMBER
Sierra Nevada Mountains
The magnificent forests through which we have passed in our long climb, if destroyed by the lumberman, cannot be replaced for hundreds of years. They contribute much to the glory of the mountains. They hold back the water so that it does not run off rapidly, and thus aid in giving rise to innumerable clear, cold springs. The springs help feed the streams during the long, dry summers, when the water is so sorely needed in the hot valleys below.
[THE NATIONAL PARKS AND FOREST RESERVES]
The people who first pushed into the unknown country west of the Mississippi, in the earlier half of the last century, were chiefly hunters and trappers. They did not intend to make permanent homes in the wilds, but rather to stay only so long as they could secure an abundance of fur-bearing animals.