The Rocky Mountain Wonderland Part 10

Occasionally, too, a blackened tree-snag stands suggestively in these treeless gardens. In the compet.i.tion for this territory, in which gra.s.s, spruces, aspens, and kinnikinick compete, gra.s.s was successful.

Just what conditions may have been favorable to gra.s.s cannot be told, though probably one point was the abundance of moisture. Possibly the fire destroyed all near-by seed trees, or trees not destroyed may not have borne seed until the year following the fire. Anyway, gra.s.s often seizes and covers fire-cleared areas so thickly and so continuously with sod that tree seeds find no opening, and gra.s.s thus holds possession for decades, and, in favorable places, possibly for a century.

Trees grow up around these areas and in due time the gra.s.sy park is surrounded by a forest. The trees along the edge of this park extend long limbs out into it. These limbs shade and kill the gra.s.s beneath.

Tree seeds sprout where the gra.s.s is killed, and these seedlings in turn produce trees with long limbs reaching into the park. These shade and smother more gra.s.s and thus advance the forest another limb's length. Slowly but surely the park is diminished.

Struggling trees may sometimes obtain a place in advance of the others or a start in the centre of the park, and thus hasten the death of the park and speed the triumph of the trees. A mere incident may shorten the life of a park. A grizzly bear that I followed one day, paused on a dry point in a park to dig out some mice. In reaching these he discovered a chipmunk burrow. By the time he had secured all these he had torn up several square yards of sod. In this fresh earth the surrounding trees sowed triumphant seeds, from which a cl.u.s.ter of spruces expanded and went out to meet the surrounding advancing forest. Fighting deer sometimes cut the sod and thus allow a few tree seeds to a.s.sert themselves. Wind may blow down a tall tree which lands in the edge of the park. Along its full length grows a line of invading forest. Occasionally the earth piled out by a gopher, or by a coyote in digging out a gopher, offers an opportunity that is seized by a tree seed. An ant-hill in a meadow may afford a footing for invading tree seeds. On one occasion a cliff tumbled and a huge rock-fragment bounded far into the sloping meadow. Trees sprang up in each place where the rock tore the sod and also around where it came to rest in the gra.s.s.

These breaks in the sod made by animals or other agencies do not always give triumph to the trees. Seedlings may eagerly start in these openings, but, being isolated, they are in greater danger, perhaps, than seedlings in the forest. Rabbits may nibble them, woodchucks devour, or insects overrun them. The surrounding gra.s.s may smother them and reclaim the temporarily lost opening.

But, though only one tree may grow, this in due time shades the gra.s.s, a circle of young trees rise around it, and these in turn carry forward the work of winning territory. At last the park is overgrown with trees!

Glacier meadows may be seen in all stages of evolution. The lake-basin gouged by a glacier goes through many changes before it is covered by a forest and forgotten. No sooner does ice vanish and a glacier lake appear than its filling-in is commenced. Landslips and snow-slides thrust boulders and cliff-fragments into it; running water is constantly depositing sand and sediment upon its bottom. Sedge and moss commence covering its surface as soon as its water becomes shallow. In due time it becomes a bog with a thick covering like a wet mattress, composed of the matted roots of sedge and gra.s.s. Over this, wind and water deposit earthy matter, but centuries may pa.s.s before the bog is filled in sufficiently to have a dry surface and produce gra.s.s and flowers and finally trees.

Once while strolling through a forested flat in central Colorado, I concluded from the topography of the country that it must formerly have been a glacier lake. I procured tools and sank a shaft into the earth between the spruces. At a depth of two feet was a gravelly soil-deposit, and beneath this a matting of willow roots and sedge roots and stalks. These rested in a kind of turf at water-level, beneath which were boulders, while under these was bed-rock. Numerous romantic changes time had made here.

Many of these meadows are as level as the surface of a lake. Commonly the surface is comparatively smooth, even though one edge may be higher than the other. I measured one meadow that was three thousand feet long by two hundred and fifty feet wide. Tree-ranks of the surrounding forest crowded to its very edge. On the north the country extended away only a foot or two higher than meadow-level. On the south a mountain rose steeply, and this surface of the meadow was four feet higher than the one opposite. The up-the-mountain end was about three feet higher than the end which had been the old outlet of the lake. The steep south sh.o.r.e had sent down more material than the level one on the north. In fact, water-level on the north sh.o.r.e, though concealed by gra.s.s, was almost precisely the same as when the waters of the lake shone from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. In one corner of the meadow was an aspen grove. From the mountain-side above, a landslide had come down. Rains had eroded this area to bed-rock and had torn out a gully that was several feet wide on the slope below. This washed material was spread out in a delta-like deposit on the surface of the meadow.

Aspens took possession of this delta.

Glacier meadows are usually longer-lived than other mountain parks. In favorable places they sometimes endure for centuries. Commonly they are slowly replaced by the extending forest. The peaty, turfy growth which covers them is of fine matted roots, almost free of earthy or mineral matter, and often is a saturated mattress several feet in thickness. The water-level is usually at the surface, but during an extremely dry time it may sink several inches or even a few feet. If fires run during a dry period of this kind, the fire will burn to water-level. The ashes of this fire, together with the mineral matter which it concentrates, commonly form a soil-bed which promptly produces trees. Sometimes, however, gra.s.s returns. Thus, while fire brings forth many meadows in the forest, it sometimes is the end of one evolved from glacial action. A landslip often plunges a peninsula of soil out upon a glacial meadow. This is usually captured by trees in a year or two.

These parks make ideal camping-places,--wild, beautiful, and alluring in every season. I have enjoyed them when they were white with snow, mysterious with cloud and mist, romantic with moonlight, and knee-deep in the floral wealth of June. Often I have burst out upon a sunny meadow hidden away in the solitude of the forest. As it lies silent in the sunshine, b.u.t.terflies with beautifully colored wings circle lightly above its brilliant ma.s.ses of flowers. Here bears prowl, deer feed, and birds a.s.semble in such numbers that the park appears to be their social centre. In these wild gardens the matchless solitaire is found. Often he sings from the top of a spruce and accompanies his song by darting off or upward on happy wings, returning and darting again, singing all the time as if enchanted.

Among the hundreds of these happy resting-grounds in which I have camped, one in the San Juan Mountains has left me the most memories. I came there one evening during a severe gale. The wind roared and thundered as impressively as breakers on a rock-bound sh.o.r.e. By midnight the storm ceased, and the tall trees stood as quietly as if content to rest after their vigorous exercise in the friendly wrestling-match with the wind. The spruces had become towering folded flags of fluffy black. After the gale the sky was luminous with crowding stars. I lingered in the centre of the opening to watch them.

The heavens appeared to be made of many star-filled skies, one behind the other. The farthest one was very remote, while the closest seemed strangely near me, just above the tops of the trees.

Many times I have come out of the subdued light of the pathless forest to enjoy these sunny openings. Often I have stood within them watching the b.u.t.terflies circling in the sun or a deer and her fawns feeding quietly across, and, as I looked, I have listened to the scolding of the squirrel and the mellow ringing of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r far away in the forest. Here I have watched the coming storm, have enjoyed its presence, and in its breaking have seen the brilliant bow rest its foundations in front of the trees just across the meadow. Sometimes the moon showed its soft bow in the edge of the advancing or the breaking storm.

One evening, before the moon looked into this fairy garden, I watched a dance of crowding fireflies. They were as thick as snowflakes, but all vanished when the moonlight turned the park into fairyland. Rare shadow etchings the tall, short-armed spruces made, as they lay in light along the eastern border of this moon-filled park. A blue tower of shadow stretched from a lone spruce in the open to the forest wall beyond. As the moon rose higher, one of the dead trees in the edge of the forest appeared to rise out of the darkness and stand to watch or to serve. Then another rose, and presently two appeared side by side and edged into the light. They might have been conversing. As the night advanced, the shadow of the spruces shortened as their shadow points moved round to the north. As the moon sank behind a mountain, the dead trees settled back into the darkness, and, just before light left the park, the two broken trees moved behind a shadow and vanished. They were scarcely out of sight when the weird cries of a fox sounded from the farther edge of the woods.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPITOL PEAK AND SNOW Ma.s.s MOUNTAIN FROM GALENA PARK]

Those who believe in fairies will receive the most from Nature. The unfenced wilderness is full of wild folk, full of fairy gardens and homes. With these a careless prowler is rarely welcome. Wasps and bees early gave me sharp hints on blundering, hurried intrusion, and a mother grizzly with two cubs by her side also impressed me concerning this matter. Birds sometimes made me ashamed for breaking in upon them. I did no shooting, carried only a kodak, and was careful to avoid rushing from one place to another; but refined wilderness etiquette was yet to be learned. Usually I felt welcome in the most secluded place, but one day, having wandered out into the corner of the meadow, I felt that I was not only an uninvited guest, but a most unwelcome intruder.

The meadow was a deeply secluded one, such as the fairies would naturally reserve for themselves. Towering spruces shut it out from the world. A summer play was surely in progress when I blundered upon the scene. With my intrusion everything stopped abruptly. Each flower paused in the midst of its part, the music of the thrush broke off, the tall spruces scowled stiffly, and the slender, observant young trees stood unwillingly still. Plainly all were annoyed at my presence, and all were waiting impatiently for me to be gone. As I retreated into the woods, a breeze whispered and the spruces made stately movements. The flowers in the meadow resumed their dance, the aspen leaves their merry accompaniment, the young trees their graceful swaying and bowing, and the fairies and bees became as happy as before.

A camp-fire anywhere in the wilderness appeals strongly to the imagination. To me it was most captivating in a little mountain meadow. Even in a circle of friends it may shut out all else, and with it one may return through "yesterday's seven thousand years." But to be completely under its spell one must be alone with its changing flame. Although I have watched the camp-fire all alone in many scenes,--in the wilderness, at the sh.o.r.e of the sea, at timber-line, and on the desert in the shadow of the prehistoric cactus,--nowhere has my imagination been more deeply stirred than it was one night by my camp-fire in a little mountain meadow. Around were the silent ranks of trees. Here the world was new and the fire blazed in primeval scenes. Its strange dance of lights and shadows against the trees rebuilt for me the past. Once more I felt the hopes and dreads of savage life. Once more I knew the legends that were told when the first camp-fire burned.

Drought in Beaver World

Drought in Beaver World

Not until one year of drought did I realize how dependent the beaver is upon a constant water-supply that is both fresh and ample. A number of beaver colonies close to my cabin were badly afflicted by this dry period. I was already making special studies of beaver ways among the forty-odd beaver colonies that were within a few miles of my mountain home, and toward the close of this droughty summer I made frequent rounds among the beaver. By the middle of September I confined these attentions to five of the colonies that were most affected by low water. Two were close to each other, but upon separate brooks. The other three were upon one tumbling streamlet.

Autumn is the busiest time of the year in beaver world. Harvest is then gathered, the dam is repaired, sometimes the pond is partly dredged, and the house is made ready for winter,--all before the pond freezes over. But drought had so afflicted these colonies that in only one had any of the harvest been gathered. This one I called the Cascade Colony. It was the uppermost of the three that were dependent upon this one stream. Among the five colonies that I observed that autumn, this one had the most desperate and tragic experience.

Toward the close of September the colonists in each of the five colonies gave most of their attention to the condition of their dam.

Every leak was stopped, and its water face was given a thick covering of mud, most of which was dredged from the bottom of the pond.

The beaver is intimately a.s.sociated with water. He is not a landsman, and only necessity will cause him to go far from the water. The water in a main beaver pond is usually three or more feet deep, a depth needed all the year around. Where nature has provided a place of this kind that is close to his food-supply, the beaver uses it; he will not trouble to build a dam and form a pond of deep water unless this is necessary. But deep water he must have; to him it is a daily necessity in getting a living, moving about the easiest way, and protecting his life.

Early in October the first colony below the Cascade had to leave the old home because of the scarcity of water. There were seven or eight of them, and all went down-stream and joined another colony. From what I know of the two colonies I judge that this was probably a case of the old folks being forced to take refuge with their fortunate children. Apparently they were welcome.

A few days later the lowest of the three colonies on the Cascade streamlet was also abandoned. Two days before leaving home the beaver had commenced to harvest aspen for winter food. A few aspens were standing partly cut; a number untrimmed were lying where they fell; several had been dragged into the pond. But suddenly the beaver deserted the place.

The fifteen or sixteen in this colony went down-stream and took possession of an old and abandoned house and pond. They hastily repaired the dam and the house, and they had only just begun to gather supplies for the winter when the pond froze over. In the bottom of the pond, below the ice, there may have been an abundance of the tuberous growths of the pond-lily or a supply of intruding willow roots; both of these the beaver often dig out even while the pond is frozen over. These beaver in this old pond may have pieced out their scanty food-supply with these roots and endured until springtime; but I fear that at best they had a close squeak.

One brook went dry and the beaver folk on it moved up-stream. They left the dam well repaired, a new house, and a pile of green aspen cuttings in the pond. They were ready for winter when the water-failure forced them to find a new home. They scooped out a small basin by a spring in the top of a moraine, used the material for a dam, and into the pond thus formed dragged a few aspens and willows. A winter den was dug in the bank.

The colonists at the other low-water place abandoned their home and moved three miles down-stream. The tracks in the mud, a few bits of fur, told too well a story of a tragedy during this enforced journey.

While traveling along the almost dry bed of the stream and at a point where the water was too shallow to allow them to dive and escape, two, and probably three, of their number were captured by coyotes. The survivors found a deep hole in a large channel, and here they hurriedly acc.u.mulated a scanty supply of green aspen. As winter came on, they dug a burrow in the bank. This had a pa.s.sageway which opened into the water about two feet below the surface and close to their food-supply.

The Cascade colonists held on for the winter. Their pond was deep, and their careful repair of the dam had enabled them to retain water to the very top of it. However, beaver cannot long endure water that is stagnant. This is especially true in winter-time. A beaver house is almost without ventilation, but its entrance ways are full of water; the fresh water of the pond appears to absorb impurities from the air of the house. Apparently stagnant water will not do this. Then, too, a stagnant pond freezes much more rapidly than the waters of a pond that are constantly stirred and aerated by the inflow of fresh water.

The Cascade colonists entered the winter with an abundant food-supply that was stored close to the house. The pond was full of water, but it was becoming stagnant. The drought continued and no snow fell. This was another disadvantage to the colony. If a pond is thickly blanketed with snow, it does not freeze so deeply nor so rapidly as when its surface is bare. By the middle of October the pond was solidly frozen.

Drought and continued cold weather came and stayed. Christmas week not a drop of water was flowing from the pond and apparently none was flowing into it. The ice was clear, and, the day I called, there appeared to be digging going on in the pond beneath the ice; close to the dam the water was so roily that I could not see into it.

On the first of February I sounded the ice in a number of places. It seemed to be frozen solidly to the bottom. This pond was circular in outline, and the house stood near the centre in about three feet of water. I climbed up on the house and stood there for some time.

Commonly in the winter an inhabited beaver house gives a scent to the small amount of air that escapes from the top, and this tells of the presence of the living beaver inside. But I was unable to detect the slightest beaver scent in the air. Apparently the water in the pond was frozen from top to bottom; probably all the beaver had perished, unless they had managed to dig out, as they sometimes do, by tunneling beneath the dam into the brook-channel below. Many old beaver ponds have a subway in the mud of the bottom. One opening is close to the entrance of the house; the other at a point on sh.o.r.e a few feet or several yards beyond the edge of the pond. This offers a means of escape from the pond in case it is frozen to the bottom or if it be drained. A careful search failed to reveal any tunnel, new or old, through which these beaver might have escaped.

I determined to know their fate and went to my cabin for an axe and a shovel. A hole was cut in the ice midway between the beaver house and the food-pile,--a pile of green aspen cuttings about twelve feet away from the house. The pond was solidly frozen to the bottom, and the beaver had all been caught. The entrances to their house were full of ice. One beaver was found at the food-pile, where he apparently had been gnawing off a bark-covered stick. One was dead between the food-pile and the house. The others were dead by the entrance of an incomplete tunnel beneath the dam, which they apparently had been digging as a means of escape when death overtook them. One had died while gnawing at the ice-filled entrance of the house. Inside of the house were the bodies of two very old beaver and four young ones, frozen solid.

The death of these little people, one and all, in their home under the ice, may have come from suffocation, from cold, from starvation, or from a combination of all these; I do not know. But my observations made it clear that the drought was at the bottom of it all.

In the Winter Snows

In the Winter Snows

For years I wondered how big game managed to live through the hard winters. How did they obtain food while the snows lay deep? Two winters of snowshoeing through the Rocky Mountains as Snow Observer often brought me in contact with wild game. These wanderings, together with numerous winter camping-excursions through the woods in other scenes, gave me many a glimpse of the winter manners and customs of big wild folk.

One autumn a heavy snow-storm caught me in the mountains of Colorado without snowshoes. In getting out of this I found it easier to wade down a shallow unfrozen stream than to wallow through deep snow.

Presently I came upon a herd of deer who were also avoiding the deep snow by using a water-way. They were traveling along in the river and occasionally paused to feed off the banks. Out all floundered into the snow to let me pa.s.s. They reentered the water before I was out of sight.

A few days later I returned on snowshoes to see how they were faring.

Deep snow had not seriously concerned them. They were in a snow-less place near the river. During the storm an acc.u.mulation of sludgy, floating snow had formed a temporary dam in the stream, which raised the water and flooded a near-by flat. Presently the dam went out, and the water ran off; but the water carried with it some of the snow, and it had dissolved much of the remainder. In this cleared place the deer were feeding and loitering.

Wild life easily stands an ordinary storm and usually manages to survive even a deep, long-lying snow. The ability of big game to endure storms must in part be due to their acquaintance with every opportunity afforded by the restricted district in which they live.