Post 02335
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These cheerful wild gardens are threatened with ruin. Cattle and sheep are invading them farther and farther, and leaving ruin behind. With their steep slopes, coarse soil, and shallow root-growths these alpine growths cannot endure pasturage. The biting, the pulling, and the choppy hoof-action are ruinous. Destined to early ruin if pastured, and having but little value when so used, these sky gardens might rightly be kept unimpaired for ourselves. They would make delightful National Parks. They have a rapidly increasing value for parks. Used for recreation places, they would have a high commercial value; and thus used they would steadily pay dividends in humanity.
Two picturesque pine stumps stood for years in the edge of a grove near my cabin. They looked as old as the hills. Although they had wasted a little through weathering, they showed no sign of decay. Probably they were the ruins of yellow pine trees that before my day had perished in a forest fire. The heat of the fire that had caused their death had boiled the pores of these stumps full of pitch. They were thus preserved, and would endure a long, long time.
I often wondered how old they were. A chance to get this information came one morning when a number of old pines that grew around these stumps were blown over. Among those that went down were three large and ancient yellow pines and several smaller lodge-pole pines. These I dissected and studied, with the idea that their annual wood rings, together with the scars and embossments, might give information concerning the death of the old brown-gray stumps.