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. Down towards
the edge of the fir belt they stand erect, forming small, well-formed
trunks, and are associated with the taller two-leafed and mountain
pines and the beautiful Williamson spruce. Bryanthus, a beautiful
flowering heathwort, flourishes a few hundred feet above the
timberline, accompanied with kalmia and spiraea. Lichens enliven the
faces of the cliffs with their bright colors, and in some of the
warmer nooks of the rocks, up to a height of eleven thousand feet,
there are a few tufts of dwarf daisies, wallflowers, and penstemons;
but, notwithstanding these bloom freely, they make no appreciable show
at a distance, and the stretches of rough brown lava beyond the storm-beaten trees seem as bare of vegetation as the great snow fields and
glaciers of the summit.
Shasta is a fire-mountain, an old volcano gradually accumulated and
built up into the blue deep of the sky by successive eruptions of
ashes and molten lava which, shot high in the air and falling in
darkening showers, and flowing from chasms and craters, grew outward
and upward like the trunk of a knotty, bulging tree. Not in one grand
convulsion was Shasta given birth, nor in any one special period of
volcanic storm and stress, though mountains more than a thousand feet
in height have been cast up like molehills in a night - quick
contributions to the wealth of the landscapes, and most emphatic
statements, on the part of Nature, of the gigantic character of the
power that dwells beneath the dull, dead-looking surface of the earth.
But sections cut by the glaciers, displaying some of the internal
framework of Shasta, show that comparatively long periods of
quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which
the cooling lavas ceased to flow, and took their places as permanent
additions to the bulk of the growing mountain. Thus with alternate
haste and deliberation eruption succeeded eruption, until Mount Shasta
surpassed even its present sublime height.
Then followed a strange contrast. The glacial winter came on. The
sky that so often had been darkened with storms of cinders and ashes
and lighted by the glare of volcanic fires was filled with crystal
snow-flowers, which, loading the cooling mountain, gave birth to
glaciers that, uniting edge to edge, at length formed one grand
conical glacier - a down-crawling mantle of ice upon a fountain of
smouldering fire, crushing and grinding its brown, flinty lavas, and
thus degrading and remodeling the entire mountain from summit to base.
How much denudation and degradation has been effected we have no means
of determining, the porous, crumbling rocks being ill adapted for the
reception and preservation of glacial inscriptions.
The summit is now a mass of ruins, and all the finer striations have
been effaced from the flanks by post-glacial weathering, while the
irregularity of its lavas as regards susceptibility to erosion, and
the disturbance caused by inter- and post-glacial eruptions, have
obscured or obliterated those heavier characters of the glacial record
found so clearly inscribed upon the granite pages of the high Sierra
between latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes and 39 degrees. This much,
however, is plain: that the summit of the mountain was considerably
lowered, and the sides were deeply grooved and fluted while it was a
center of dispersal for the glaciers of the circumjacent region. And
when at length the glacial period began to draw near its close, the
ice mantle was gradually melted off around the base of the mountain,
and in receding and breaking up into its present fragmentary condition
the irregular heaps and rings of moraine matter were stored upon its
flanks on which the forests are growing. The glacial erosion of most
of the Shasta lavas gives rise to detritus composed of rough
subangular boulders of moderate size and porous gravel and sand, which
yields freely to the transporting power of running water. Several
centuries ago immense quantities of this lighter material were washed
down from the higher slopes by a flood of extraordinary magnitude,
caused probably by the sudden melting of the ice and snow during an
eruption, giving rise to the deposition of conspicuous delta-like beds
around the base. And it is upon these flood-beds of moraine soil,
thus suddenly and simultaneously laid down and joined edge to edge,
that the flowery chaparral is growing.
Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, Nature
accomplishes her beneficent designs - now a flood of fire, now a flood
of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an
outburst of organic life - forest and garden, with all their wealth of
fruit and flowers, the air stirred into one universal hum with
rejoicing insects, a milky way of wings and petals, girdling the
newborn mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating
against its sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees.
But with such grand displays as Nature is making here, how grand are
her reservations, bestowed only upon those who devotedly seek them!
Beneath the smooth and snowy surface the fountain fires are still
aglow, to blaze forth afresh at their appointed times. The glaciers,
looking so still and small at a distance, represented by the artist
with a patch of white paint laid on by a single stroke of his brush,
are still flowing onward, unhalting, with deep crystal currents,
sculpturing the mountain with stern, resistless energy. How many
caves and fountains that no eye has yet seen lie with all their fine
furniture deep down in the darkness, and how many shy wild creatures
are at home beneath the grateful lights and shadows of the woods,
rejoicing in their fullness of perfect life!
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