And Then
There Is An Infinite Variety Of Arching Forms, Standing Free Or In
Groups, Leaning Away From Or Toward
Each other in curious
architectural structures, - innumerable tassels drooping under the
arches and radiating above them, the outside glowing in
The light,
masses of deep shade beneath, giving rise to effects marvelously
beautiful, - while on the roughest ledges of crumbling limestone are
lowly old giants, five or six feet in diameter, that have braved the
storms of more than a thousand years. But, whether old or young,
sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever found to
be irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, offering a richer and
more varied series of forms to the artist than any other species I
have yet seen.
One of the most interesting mountain excursions I have made in the
State was up through a thick spicy forest of these trees to the top of
the highest summit of the Troy Range, about ninety miles to the south
of Hamilton. The day was full of perfect Indian-summer sunshine, calm
and bracing. Jays and Clarke crows made a pleasant stir in the
foothill pines and junipers; grasshoppers danced in the hazy light,
and rattled on the wing in pure glee, reviving suddenly from the
torpor of a frosty October night to exuberant summer joy. The
squirrels were working industriously among the falling nuts; ripe
willows and aspens made gorgeous masses of color on the russet
hillsides and along the edges of the small streams that threaded the
higher ravines; and on the smooth sloping uplands, beneath the foxtail
pines and firs, the ground was covered with brown grasses, enriched
with sunflowers, columbines, and larkspurs and patches of linosyris,
mostly frost-nipped and gone to seed, yet making fine bits of yellow
and purple in the general brown.
At a height of about ninety-five hundred feet we passed through a
magnificent grove of aspens, about a hundred acres in extent, through
which the mellow sunshine sifted in ravishing splendor, showing every
leaf to be as beautiful in color as the wing of a butterfly, and
making them tell gloriously against the evergreens. These extensive
groves of aspen are a marked feature of the Nevada woods. Some of the
lower mountains are covered with them, giving rise to remarkably
beautiful masses of pale, translucent green in spring and summer,
yellow and orange in autumn, while in winter, after every leaf has
fallen, the white bark of the boles and branches seen in mass seems
like a cloud of mist that has settled close down on the mountain,
conforming to all its hollows and ridges like a mantle, yet roughened
on the surface with innumerable ascending spires.
Just above the aspens we entered a fine, close growth of foxtail pine,
the tallest and most evenly planted I had yet seen. It extended along
a waving ridge tending north and south and down both sides with but
little interruption for a distance of about five miles. The trees
were mostly straight in the bole, and their shade covered the ground
in the densest places, leaving only small openings to the sun. A few
of the tallest specimens measured over eighty feet, with a diameter of
eighteen inches; but many of the younger trees, growing in tufts, were
nearly fifty feet high, with a diameter of only five or six inches,
while their slender shafts were hidden from top to bottom by a close,
fringy growth of tasseled branchlets. A few white pines and balsam
firs occur here and there, mostly around the edges of sunny openings,
where they enrich the air with their rosiny fragrance, and bring out
the peculiar beauties of the predominating foxtails by contrast.
Birds find grateful homes here - grouse, chickadees, and linnets, of
which we saw large flocks that had a delightfully enlivening effect.
But the woodpeckers are remarkably rare. Thus far I have noticed only
one species, the golden-winged; and but few of the streams are large
enough or long enough to attract the blessed ousel, so common in the
Sierra.
On Wheeler's Peak, the dominating summit of the Snake Mountains, I
found all the conifers I had seen on the other ranges of the State,
excepting the foxtail pine, which I have not observed further east
than the White Pine range, but in its stead the beautiful Rocky
Mountain spruce. First, as in the other ranges, we find the juniper
and nut pine; then, higher, the white pine and balsam fir; then the
Douglas spruce and this new Rocky Mountain spruce, which is common
eastward from here, though this range is, as far as I have observed,
its western limit. It is one of the largest and most important of
Nevada conifers, attaining a height of from sixty to eighty feet and a
diameter of nearly two feet, while now and then an exceptional
specimen may be found in shady dells a hundred feet high or more.
The foliage is bright yellowish and bluish green, according to
exposure and age, growing all around the branchlets, though inclined
to turn upward from the undersides, like that of the plushy firs of
California, making remarkably handsome fernlike plumes. While yet
only mere saplings five or six inches thick at the ground, they
measure fifty or sixty feet in height and are beautifully clothed with
broad, level, fronded plumes down to the base, preserving a strict
arrowy outline, though a few of the larger branches shoot out in free
exuberance, relieving the spire from any unpicturesque stiffness of
aspect, while the conical summit is crowded with thousands of rich
brown cones to complete its beauty.
We made the ascent of the peak just after the first storm had whitened
its summit and brightened the atmosphere. The foot-slopes are like
those of the Troy range, only more evenly clad with grasses. After
tracing a long, rugged ridge of exceedingly hard quartzite, said to be
veined here and there with gold, we came to the North Dome, a noble
summit rising about a thousand feet above the timberline, its slopes
heavily tree-clad all around, but most perfectly on the north.
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