A Lowland Ravine. Cedars, Vine Maples, Devil's Club and Ferns, near Mount St. Helens.
Here ravines, decked with heather, hold streams from the snowdrifts—streams that hunt the steepest descents, and glory in their leaps from rock to rock and from cliff to pool. If it be the spring-time of the mountains—late July—the mossy rills will be half concealed beneath fragrant white azaleas that nod in the breezes blowing up with the ascending sun and down with the turn of day. Trailing over the rocks, or banked in the shelter of larger trees, creeping juniper (Juniperus communis), least of our evergreens, stays the drifting sands against the drive of winds or the wash of melting snows.
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Along the streams and on sunny slopes and benches are the homes of the pointed firs. Seeking protection from the storm, the spire-like trees cluster in tiny groves, among which, like little bays of a lake, the grassy flowered meadows run in and out, sun-lit, and sweet with rivulets from the snows above. If you do not know these upland "parks," there is rare pleasure awaiting you. A hundred mountain blossoms work figures of white and red and orange and blue in the soft tapestry of green. In such glades the hush is deep. Only the voice of a waterfall comes up from the canyon, or the whistle of a marmot, the call of the white-winged crows and the drone of insects break the stillness.
Dense Hemlock Forest, lower west slope of Mount Hood.
Mount Hood from Ghost-tree Ridge. Whitened trunks of trees killed by forest fires.
The outer rank of hemlock and fir droops its branches to the ground to break the tempest's attack. Within, silver or lovely fir (Abies amabilis) mingles with hardier forms. Its gray, mottled trunks are flecked with the yellow-green of lichen or festooned with wisps of moss down to the level of the big snows. And here, a vertical mile above the sea, you meet the daring western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), which braves the gale of ocean and mountain alike, indifferent to all but fire. It is of gentle birth yet humble spirit. It accepts all trees as neighbors. You meet it everywhere as you journey to the sea. But on the uplands only, in a narrow belt like a scarf thrown across the shoulders of the mountain, sub-alpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) sends up its dark, attenuated spires, in striking contrast with the rounded crowns of its companions.