Post 24925
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This is the nursery, or summer residence, of many kinds of birds. The “camp-bird,” the Rocky Mountain jay, is a resident. Here in spring the white-crowned sparrow sings and sings. During early summer the solitaire, the most eloquent songster I have ever heard, comes up from his nest just down the slope to pay a tribute of divine melody to the listening, time-worn trees. In autumn the Clarke crow appears and, with wild and half-weird calls of merriment, devours the fat nuts in the cones of the limber pine. During this nutting, magpies are present with less business than at any other time and apparently without a plan for deviltry. Possibly they are attracted and entertained by the boisterousness of the crows.
Lovely wild-flower gardens occupy many of the openings in this torn and bristling edge of the forest. In places acres are crowded so closely with thrifty, brilliant bloom that one hesitates to walk through and trample the flowers. Here the columbine, the paintbrush, the monument-plant, and scores of other bright blossoms cheer the wild frontier.
Rarely are strangers in the mountains thoroughly aroused. They need time or explanation in order to comprehend or appreciate the larger scenes, though they do, of course, have periodic outbursts in adjectives. But at timber-line the monumental scene at once has the attention, and no explanation is needed. Timber-line tells its own stirring story of frontier experience by a forest of powerful and eloquent tree statues and bold, battered, and far-extending figures in relief.