Post 02016
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Few trees in this forest-front rise to a greater height than twelve feet. The average height is about eight feet, but the length of some of the prostrate ones is not far from the normal height. Wind and other hard conditions give a few trees the uncouth shapes of prehistoric animals. I measured a vine-like ichthyosaurus that was crawling to leeward, flat upon the earth. It was sixty-seven feet long, and close to the roots its body was thirty-eight inches in diameter. One cone-shaped spruce had a base diameter of four feet and came to a point a few inches less than four feet above the earth. Here and there a tough, tall tree manages to stand erect. The high wind either prevents growing or trims off all limbs that do not point to leeward. Some appear as though molded and pressed into shape. A profile of others, with long, streaming-bannered limbs, gives a hopeful view, for they present an unconquerable and conscious appearance, like tattered pennants or torn, triumphant battle-flags of the victorious forest!
The forest is incessantly aggressive and eternally vigilant to hold its territory and to advance. Winds are its most terrible and effective foe. To them is due its weird and picturesque front. Occasionally they rage for days without cessation, blowing constantly from the same quarter and at times with the rending and crushing velocity of more than one hundred miles an hour. These terrific winds frequently flay the trees with cutting blasts of sand. At times the wind rolls down the steeps with the crushing, flattening force of a tidal wave. Many places have the appearance of having been gone over by a terrible harrow or an enormous roller. In some localities all the trees, except the few protected by rocky ledges or closely braced by their encircling fellows, are crippled or overthrown.
Although I have visited timber-line in a number of States, most of my studies have been made on the eastern slope of the Continental Divide in Colorado. This ragged edge, with its ups and downs and curves, I have eagerly followed for hundreds of miles. Exploring this during every month of the year, I have had great days and nights along the timber-line. It was ever good to be with these trees in the clear air, up close to the wide and silent sky. Adventurers they appeared, strangely wrapped and enveloped in the shifting fog of low-drifting clouds. In the twilight they were always groups and forms of friendly figures, while by moonlight they were just a romantic camp of fraternal explorers.