The Spell of the Rockies Part 13

Though in many ways a grizzly in miniature and apparently as untamable as a tiger, the Fremont quickly responds to kind advances. Near my cabin a number became so tame that they took peanuts from my hand, sometimes even following me to the cabin door for this purpose.

These squirrels occasionally eat mushrooms, berries, and the inner bark of pine twigs, but they depend almost entirely upon conifer nuts or seeds, the greater part of these coming from the cones of pines and spruces. They start harvesting the cones in early autumn, so as to harvest all needed food for winter before the dry, ripened cones open and empty their tiny seeds. Deftly they dart through the tree-tops almost as swiftly as a hummingbird and as utterly indifferent to the dangers of falling. With polished blades of ivory they clip off the clinging, fruited cones. Happy, hopeful, harvest-home sounds the cones make as they drop and bounce on the dry floor of the autumn woods.

Often a pair work together, one reaping the cones with his ivory cutters and the other carrying them home, each being a sheaf of grain of Nature's bundling.

When harvesting alone, Mr. Fremont is often annoyed by the chipmunks.

These little rascals will persist in stealing the fallen cones, despite glaring eyes, irate looks, and deadly threats from the angry harvester above. When finally he comes tearing down to carry his terrible ultimatums into effect, the frightened chipmunks make haste to be off, but usually some one is overtaken and knocked sprawling with an accompanying rapid fire of denunciation.

One day I watched a single harvester who was busily, happily working.

He cut off a number of cones before descending to gather them. These scattered widely like children playing hide-and-seek. One hid behind a log; another bounced into some brush and stuck two feet above the ground, while two others scampered far from the tree. The squirrel went to each in turn without the least hesitation or search and as though he had been to each spot a dozen times before.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HOME OF THE FReMONT SQUIRREL On the Little Cimarron]

A squirrel often displays oddities both in the place selected for storing the cones and the manner of their arrangement. Usually the cones are wisely h.o.a.rded both for curing and for preservation, by being stored a few in a place. This may be beneath a living tree or in an open s.p.a.ce, placed one layer deep in the loose forest litter scarcely below the general level of the surface. They are also stowed both in and upon old logs and stumps. Sometimes they are placed in little nests with a half-dozen or so cones each; often there are a dozen of these in a square yard. This scattering of the sap-filled cones, together with the bringing of each into contact with dry foreign substances, secures ventilation and a.s.sists the sappy cones to dry and cure; if closely piled, many of these moist cones would be lost through mould and decay.

The numbers of cones h.o.a.rded for winter by each squirrel varies with different winters and also with individuals. I have many times counted upwards of two hundred per squirrel. During years of scanty cone-crop the squirrels claim the entire crop. The outcry raised against the squirrel for preventing far extension, by consuming all the seeds, is I think in the same cla.s.s as the cry against the woodp.e.c.k.e.r; it appears a cry raised by those who see only the harm without the accompanying good. The fact is that many of the cones are never eaten; more are stored than are wanted; some are forgotten, while others are left by the death of the squirrel. Thus many are stored and left uneaten in places where they are likely to germinate and produce trees. John Muir too believes that the Douglas and Fremont squirrels are beneficial to forest-extension.

Commonly the cones are stored in the same place year after year. In dining, also, the squirrel uses a log, limb, or stump year after year.

Thus bushels of the slowly decaying scales and cobs acc.u.mulate in one place. It is not uncommon for these acc.u.mulations to cover a square rod to the depth of two feet.

I know of a few instances in which squirrels stowed cones in the edge of a brook beneath the water. One of these places being near my cabin, I kept track of it until the cones were used, which was in the spring.

In early autumn the cones were frozen in, and there they remained, unvisited I think, until the break-up of the ice in April. Then a squirrel appeared, to drag them from their cold storage. He carried each by to his regular dining-place. Clasping the cone vertically, base up, in his fore paws, he snipped off the scales and ate the seeds beneath in regular order, turning the cone as he proceeded as though it were an ear of corn and he were eating the kernels.

I have often waited to see a squirrel go for something to eat after a snowstorm. This he did in a matter-of-fact way. Without hunting or hesitation he went hopping across the snow to a spot immediately above his supplies, where he at once pawed his way down into the snow and came up with a cone.

In rambling the woods I have often heard these squirrels barking and "chickareeing" with wild hilarity, apparently from the pure joy of living. Then again they proclaimed my distant approach, or presence, with unnecessary vigor. The energetic protest they make against the trespa.s.ser in their woods, is often, if not always, taken by big game as a warning. Generally on hearing this the game will be all alert for some seconds, and occasionally will move off to a more commanding position. Sometimes birds will stop and listen when this tree-top sentinel shouts warnings which have often saved big game from being shot. Most hunters hate this squirrel.

There are brief periods in winter when these squirrels disappear for days at a time. The kind of weather does not appear to be a determining factor in this. During this disappearance they probably take a hibernating sleep; anyway, I have in a few cases seen them so soundly asleep that the fall and fracture of their tree did not awaken them. They sometimes live, temporarily at least, in holes in the ground, but the home is usually in a hollow limb or a cavern in a tree-trunk well toward the top of the tree. Commonly four young ones are brought forth at a birth. Cunning, happy midgets they are when first beginning their acquaintance with the wooded world, and taking sun baths on a high limb of their house tree.

Just how long they live no one appears to know. As pets they have been kept for ten years. A pair lived near my cabin for eight years, then disappeared. Whether they migrated or met a violent death, I never knew. There was another pair in the grove that I kept track of through eleven years. This grove was a wedge-shaped one of about ten acres that stood between two brooks. With but few exceptions, the trees were lodge-pole pine. My acquaintance with the pair began one day in early autumn. Both set up such a wild chatter as I approached the grove that I first thought that something was attacking them. Seated upon a log close to the tree which they occupied, I watched them for three or four hours. They in turn watched me. Failing to dislodge me by vehement denunciation, they quieted down and eyed me with intense curiosity. I sat perfectly still. Evidently they were greatly puzzled and unable to make out what I was and what of all things on earth it could be that I wanted. With beady eyes they stared at me from a number of positions in several trees. Occasionally in the midst of this silent, eager eying one would break out in a half-repressed and drawling bark that was unconsciously, nervously repeated at brief intervals.

The next day they silently allowed me to take a seat. After a brief stare they grew bold with curiosity and descended to the earth for a closer investigation. Pausing for a sharp look, both suddenly exploded with wild chatter and fled with a retchy barking to the tree-tops. In less than a month they took peanuts from my fingers. They were easily terrified by a loud noise or sudden movement. One day an acquaintance came to see me while I was in the grove with the squirrels. By way of heralding his approach, he flung a club which fell with a crash upon a brush pile alongside these most nervous fellows. They fled in terror, and it was two or three days before they would come near me again.

One year the grove cone-crop was a total failure. As a result, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont temporarily abandoned their old home and moved to new quarters on a mountainside about half a mile distant. The day they moved I was by the brook, watching a water-ouzel, when they chanced to cross on a fallen log near-by. In pa.s.sing, one paused to give a hasty, half-glad, half-frightened, chattery bark of recognition. They hastened across the gra.s.sy open beyond as though they felt themselves in danger when out of the woods.

They made a home in an old snag, using places that were, I think, formerly used by woodp.e.c.k.e.rs. The afternoon of their arrival they commenced to harvest cones, which were abundant on the spruce trees around them. I often wondered if they made a preliminary trip and located a food-supply before moving, or if they simply started forth and stopped at the first favorable place.

The following summer they returned to their old quarters in the grove.

The first time that I saw them they were sitting upon a log daintily making a breakfast of fresh mushrooms. They often ate the inner bark of pine twigs, and once I saw one of them eating wild raspberries. I never saw these, or any Fremont squirrel, robbing or trying to rob a bird's nest, and as I have never noticed a bird disturbed by their presence, I believe they are not guilty of this serious offense, as are most kinds of squirrels.

Through eleven years I occasionally fed them. Apparently full-grown at the time of our first meeting, they were active and agile to the last.

After eleven years they showed but few and minor signs of aging.

One was shot by a gun-carrying visitor. While I was dismissing the gunner, my attention was attracted by the wailing of her mate when he found her lifeless body. His grief was most pitiful; among wild birds and animals I have never seen anything so pathetic. Almost humanly he stared at his mate; he fondled her and tried to coax her back to life, at times almost pleading and wailing. When I carried her off for burial he sat moveless and dazed. The following day I searched the grove, whistling and calling, but I never saw him again.

The Estes Park Region

The Estes Park Region

The Estes Park region became famous for its scenery during the height of the Rocky Mountain gold-fever half a century ago. While Colorado was still a Territory, its scenes were visited by Helen Hunt, Anna d.i.c.kinson, and Isabella Bird, all of whom sang the praises of this great hanging wild garden.

The park is a natural one,--a mingling of meadows, headlands, groves, winding streams deeply set in high mountains whose forested steeps and snowy, broken tops stand high and bold above its romantic loveliness.

It is a marvelous grouping of gentleness and grandeur; an eloquent, wordless hymn, that is sung in silent, poetic pictures; a sublime garden miles in extent and all arranged with infinite care.

Grace Greenwood once declared that the skyline of this region, when seen from out in the Great Plains, loomed up like the Alps from the plains of Lombardy.

Long's Peak, "King of the Rocky Mountains," dominates these scenes.

Around this peak, within a radius of fifteen miles, is a striking and composite grouping of the best features of the Rocky Mountain scenery.

Again and again I have explored every nook and height of this scenic mountain wilderness, enjoying its forests, lakes, and canons during every month of the year.

Frost and fire have had much to do with its lines and landscapes. Ice has wrought bold sculptures, while fire made the graceful open gardens, forest-framed and flower-filled in the sun. The region was occupied by the Ice King during the last glacial period. Many rounded peaks, U-shaped, polished gorges, enormous morainal embankments, upwards of fifty lakes and tarns--almost the entire present striking landscape--were shaped through the ages by the slow sculpturing of the ice. Forest fires have made marked changes, and many of the wide poetic places--the gra.s.sy parks--in the woods are largely due to severe and repeated burnings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LONG'S PEAK AND ESTES PARK]

This locality has been swept by fire again and again. Most of the forest is less than two hundred years of age. During the past two hundred years, beginning with 1707, there have been no less than seven forest fires, two of which appear to have swept over most of the region. There probably were other fires, the records of which have vanished. The dates of these scourges and in many cases the extent of their ravages were burned into the annual rings of a number of trees which escaped with their lives and lived on, carrying these fire-records down to us. These fires, together with the erosion which followed, had something to do with the topography and the scenery of this section. There are a few ugly scars from recent fires, but most of the burned areas were reforested with reasonable promptness. Some crags, however, may have lost for centuries their trees and vegetation. Other areas, though losing trees, gained in meadows. I am strongly inclined to ascribe much of the openness--the existence even--of Estes, Allen's, and Middle Parks to repeated fires, some of which probably were severe. Thus we may look down from the heights and enjoy the mingling beauty and grandeur of forest and meadow and still realize that fire, with all its destructiveness, may help to make the gardens of the earth.

A dozen species of trees form the forests of this section. These forests, delightfully inviting, cover the mountains below the alt.i.tude of eleven thousand feet. This rich robe, draping from the shoulders to the feet of the mountains, appears a dark purple from a distance. A great robe it hangs over every steep and slope, smooth, wrinkled, and torn; pierced with pinnacles and spires, gathered on terraces and headlands, uplifted on the swells, and torn by canons. Here and there this forest is beautified with a ragged-edged gra.s.s-plot, a lake, or a stream that flows, ever singing, on.

The trees which brave the heights and maintain the forest frontier among the storms, are the Engelmann spruce, sub-alpine fir, arctic willow, black birch, quaking aspen, and limber pine. For the most part, timber-line is a trifle above eleven thousand feet, but in a few places the trees climb up almost to twelve thousand. Most of the trees at timber-line are distorted and stunted by the hard conditions.

Snow covers and crushes them; cold chains their activity through the greater part of the year; the high winds drain their sap, persecute them with relentless sand-blasts, and break their limbs and roots.

Among glacier-records in the Rocky Mountains those on the slopes of Long's Peak are pre-eminent for magnitude and interest. On the western slope of this peak the ice stream descended into the upper end of Glacier Gorge, where it united with streams from Mt. Barrat and McHenry Peak. Here it flowed northward for two miles through the now wonderfully ice-carved Glacier Gorge. Beyond the gorge heavy ice rivers flooded down to this ice stream from Thatch-Top, Taylor, Otis, and Hallett Peaks. A mile beyond the gorge it was deflected to the east by the solid slopes of Flat-Top and Mt. Hallett. It descended to about the alt.i.tude of eight thousand feet. Along its lower course, the lateral moraine on the south side dammed up a number of small water channels that drained the northern slope of Battle Mountain.

On the northern slope of the Peak a boulder field begins at the alt.i.tude of thirteen thousand feet and descends over a wide field, then over a terraced slope. Though probably not of great depth, it will average a mile wide and extends four miles down the slope. It contains an immense amount of material, enough to form a great mountain-peak. Probably the greatest array of glacial debris is the Mills Moraine on the east side of the Peak. This covers several thousand acres, consists of boulders, rock-fragments, and rock-flour, and in places is several hundred feet deep.

Where has all this wreckage come from? Some geologists have expressed the opinion that ages ago Long's Peak was two thousand or so feet higher. At the time of its great height, Long's Peak was united with the near surrounding peaks,--Meeker, Washington, and Storm,--and all stood together as one peak. The present shattered condition of these peaks, their crumbling nature, the mountain ma.s.ses of debris on the slopes below, all of which must have come from heights above, suggest this explanation. But to take it as it now is, to stand on this crumbling peak to-day and look down upon the lakes, moraines, polished gorges,--all the vast and varied glacial works and ruins,--is for the geological student startling and profoundly eloquent.

Above the alt.i.tude of thirteen thousand feet are many fields of "eternal snow," and a dozen miles to the south of Long's Peak is the Arapahoe Glacier; while northward are the Andrews, Sprague, and Hallett Glaciers within ten miles. Though all these are small, each exhibits in a striking manner the Ice Age in a nutsh.e.l.l. On the east side of Long's Peak, too, is a moving ice-field that might well be cla.s.sed as a glacier. By this ice begins the upper extent of the Mills Moraine, and in the gorge just below--one of the most utterly wild places on the earth--is Chasm Lake.

Most of the glacier lakes are in gorges or on terraces between the alt.i.tudes of eleven thousand and twelve thousand feet. Almost all have a slope or steep rising above them, down which the ice descended while gouging out their basins.

Grand Lake, one of the largest reservoirs constructed by the Ice King in the Rocky Mountains, is three miles in length and one in width, cut into bed-rock. This lake is less than nine thousand feet above the sea. It is in the eastern extremity of Middle Park, a few miles to the west of Long's Peak. Great peaks rising from it, a great moraine sweeping along its northerly and westerly sh.o.r.es, it peacefully shows the t.i.tanic beautifying landscape labors of the ice.

The glacial winter is over. The present snowfall over this section is about one half that of the Alps. Here snow-line is thirteen thousand feet above the sea, while in the Alps it is four thousand feet lower.

Down from the heights of all the high peaks pour many white streams ever singing the song of the sea.

In these mountains there are many deep gorges and canons. Most of these are short and ice-polished. The Thompson Canon is one of the longest and finest. Its twenty miles of walled length is full of scenic contrasts and picturesque varieties. The lovely mingles with the wild. In places its walls stand two thousand feet above the river and the daisies. The walls are many-formed, rugged, polished, perpendicular, terraced, and statuesque, and are adorned with panels of rusty veneer, with decorative lichen tracery or with vertical meadows of velvet moss. Blossoms fill many niches with poetry, while shrubbery, concealing in its clinging the cracks in the wall, forms many a charming festoon.

In some stretches the parallel walls go straight away, well separated; then they curve, or crowd so closely that there is barely room for the river and the road. At intervals the walls sweep outward in short, grand semicircles and inclose ideal wild gardens of pines, gra.s.s, flowers, and the winding river. The river is ever varying its speed, its surface, and its song. Here it is a boulder-framed mirror reflecting the aspens and the sky, there a stretch of foam-flow; now it rests in a wild pool pierced with sharp rocks, now it hurries on to plunge and roar over a terrace of rocks, then on, always on, toward the sea.

Speckled and rainbow trout dart in the streams. Mountain sheep climb and pose on the crags; bear, deer, and mountain lions are still occasionally seen prowling the woods or hurrying across the meadows.

The wise coyote is also occasionally seen darting under cover, and he is frequently heard during the night. Here among the evergreens is found that wee and audacious bit of intensely interesting and animated life, the Fremont squirrel, and also, one of the dearest of all small animals, the merry chipmunk. Within this territory are a number of beaver colonies, whose ways I have described in earlier chapters.