Camping in the Canadian Rockies / an account of camp life in the wilder parts of the Canadian Rocky mountains, together with a description of the region about Banff, Lake Louise, and Glacier, and a sketch of early explorations.

by Walter Dwight Wilcox

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,—

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.”

Head of Rocky Mountain Sheep.

Such indeed is a Selkirk forest.

The idea that is at length developed in the mind, by a long rest in one of these deep and sombre forests, is that of the majesty, and silent, motionless power of vegetation. The creations of the vegetable world stand on all sides. They wellnigh cover the ground; they limit the horizon, and conceal the sky. The tall cedars have a shreddy bark that hangs in long strips on their tapering boles and makes the strongest contrast with the rough bark of the firs. What could be more unlike, too, among evergreens, than the spreading fanlike foliage of the cedars, the needle-like leaves of the firs, and the delicate spray of the hemlocks?

What a vast amount of energy has been preserved in these forest giants; with what a crash they would fall to the ground; and what a quantity of heat—which they have stored up from the sun through hundreds of summers—would they give out when burned slowly in a fireplace! If we examine a single needle, or a thin shaving of wood, under the microscope, and obtain a glimpse of the complexity of the cells and pores with which this vegetable life is carried on; or consider the wonderful processes by which the flowers are fertilized, and the cones mature, so that the species may never die out; and then regard the immensity of the whole forest stretching boundless in every direction, all constructed from an infinity of atoms, the mind and imagination are soon led beyond their depth.

Now let the pure, cold light of science, with its precise and exact laws, fade away into the warm, mellow glow of romance, till we picture the forest as an epitome of human life, with its struggles, its suffering, and the slow but certain progress from infancy to old age and death. For here, among the forest trees, are every age and condition represented. Beneath, are young trees, vigorous and full of promise, hoping, as it were, some day to push their highest branches above the general plane of tree tops and share the life-giving sun, though, during the struggle, many will surely weaken and die in the pale and inefficient light beneath the older trees. Then there are the larger trees in the full glory of their prime, with massive trunks, straight and tall, giving promise of many years of life yet to come; and finally, the giants of the forest, their branches torn off by storms or their trunks rent and scarred by lightning. Everything about the oldest trees betokens the slow decay and all-conquering death, which is gradually sapping their life blood and pointing to their certain, final destruction. The long, gray moss, gently waving in the faintest breath of air, hangs from every limb, and makes these venerable monarchs resemble bearded patriarchs, which have stood here perhaps a thousand years battling with the elements, the wind, and the lightning, silent witnesses to the relentless progress of the seasons.