Approaching Shasta From The South, One Obtains Glimpses Of Its Snowy
Cone Here And There Through The Trees From The
Tops of hills and
ridges; but it is not until Strawberry Valley is reached, where there
is a grand out-
Opening of the forests, that Shasta is seen in all its
glory. From base to crown clearly revealed with its wealth of woods
and waters and fountain snow, rejoicing in the bright mountain sky,
and radiating beauty on all the subject landscape like a sun.
Standing in a fringing thicket of purple spiraea in the immediate
foreground is a smooth expanse of green meadow with its meandering
stream, one of the smaller affluents of the Sacramento; then a zone of
dark, close forest, its countless spires of pine and fir rising above
one another on the swelling base of the mountain in glorious array;
and, over all, the great white cone sweeping far into the thin, keen
sky - meadow, forest, and grand icy summit harmoniously blending and
making one sublime picture evenly balanced.
The main lines of the landscape are immensely bold and simple, and so
regular that it needs all its shaggy wealth of woods and chaparral and
its finely tinted ice and snow and brown jutting crags to keep it from
looking conventional. In general views of the mountain three distinct
zones may be readily defined. The first, which may be called the
Chaparral Zone, extends around the base in a magnificent sweep nearly
a hundred miles in length on its lower edge, and with a breadth of
about seven miles. It is a dense growth of chaparral from three to
six or eight feet high, composed chiefly of manzanita, cherry,
chincapin, and several species of ceanothus, called deerbrush by the
hunters, forming, when in full bloom, one of the most glorious
flowerbeds conceivable. The continuity of this flowery zone is
interrupted here and there, especially on the south side of the
mountain, by wide swaths of coniferous trees, chiefly the sugar and
yellow pines, Douglas spruce, silver fir, and incense cedar, many
specimens of which are two hundred feet high and five to seven feet in
diameter. Goldenrods, asters, gilias, lilies, and lupines, with many
other less conspicuous plants, occur in warm sheltered openings in
these lower woods, making charming gardens of wildness where bees and
butterflies are at home and many a shy bird and squirrel.
The next higher is the Fir Zone, made up almost exclusively of two
species of silver fir. It is from two to three miles wide, has an
average elevation above the sea of some six thousand feet on its lower
edge and eight thousand on its upper, and is the most regular and best
defined of the three.
The Alpine Zone has a rugged, straggling growth of storm-beaten dwarf
pines (Pinus albicaulis), which forms the upper edge of the
timberline. This species reaches an elevation of about nine thousand
feet, but at this height the tops of the trees rise only a few feet
into the thin frosty air, and are closely pressed and shorn by wind
and snow; yet they hold on bravely and put forth an abundance of
beautiful purple flowers and produce cones and seeds.
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