the john muir exhibit - writings - steep_trails - chapter 14
Chapter 14
Nevada's Timber Belt
19
The pine woods on the tops of the Nevada mountains are already shining
and blooming in winter snow, making a most blessedly refreshing
appearance to the weary traveler down on the gray plains. During the
fiery days of summer the whole of this vast region seems so perfectly
possessed by the sun that the very memories of pine trees and snow are
in danger of being burned away, leaving one but little more than dust
and metal. But since these first winter blessings have come, the
wealth and beauty of the landscapes have come fairly into view, and
one is rendered capable of looking and seeing.
The grand nut harvest is over, as far as the Indians are concerned,
though perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the whole crop
has been gathered. But the squirrels and birds are still busily
engaged, and by the time that Nature's ends are accomplished, every
nut will doubtless have been put to use.
All of the nine Nevada conifers mentioned in my last letter are also
found in California, excepting only the Rocky Mountain spruce, which I
have not observed westward of the Snake Range. So greatly, however,
have they been made to vary by differences of soil and climate, that
most of them appear as distinct species. Without seeming in any way
dwarfed or repressed in habit, they nowhere develop to anything like
California dimensions. A height of fifty feet and diameter of twelve
or fourteen inches would probably be found to be above the average
size of those cut for lumber. On the margin of the Carson and
Humboldt Sink the larger sage bushes are called "heavy timber"; and to
the settlers here any tree seems large enough for saw-logs.
Mills have been built in the most accessible canyons of the higher
ranges, and sufficient lumber of an inferior kind is made to supply
most of the local demand. The principal lumber trees of Nevada are
the white pine (Pinus flexilis), foxtail pine, and Douglas spruce, or
"red pine," as it is called here. Of these the first named is most
generally distributed, being found on all the higher ranges throughout
the State. In botanical characters it is nearly allied to the
Weymouth, or white, pine of the Eastern States, and to the sugar and
mountain pines of the Sierra. In open situations it branches near the
ground and tosses out long down-curving limbs all around, often
gaining in this way a very strikingly picturesque habit. It is seldom
found lower than nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, but
from this height it pushes upward over the roughest ledges to the
extreme limit of tree growth -- about eleven thousand feet.
On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and Golden Gate ranges we find a still
hardier and more picturesque species, called the foxtail pine, from
its long dense leaf-tassels. About a foot or eighteen inches of the
ends of the branches are densely packed with stiff outstanding
needles, which radiate all around like an electric fox- or squirrel-tail.
The needles are about an inch and a half long, slightly curved,
elastic, and glossily polished, so that the sunshine sifting through
them makes them burn with a fine silvery luster, while their number
and elastic temper tell delightfully in the singing winds.
This tree is pre-eminently picturesque, far surpassing not only its
companion species of the mountains in this respect, but also the most
noted of the lowland oaks and elms. Some stand firmly erect,
feathered with radiant tail tassels down to the ground, forming
slender, tapering towers of shining verdure; others with two or three
specialized branches pushed out at right angles to the trunk and
densely clad with the tasseled sprays, take the form of beautiful
ornamental crosses. Again, in the same woods you find trees that are
made up of several boles united near the ground, and spreading in easy
curves at the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the mountain,
with the elegant tassels hung in charming order between them the whole
making a perfect harp, ranged across the main wind-lines just where
they may be most effective in the grand storm harmonies. 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. Here
the Rocky Mountain spruce forms the bulk of the forest. The cones
were ripe; most of them had shed their winged seeds,
and the shell-like scales were conspicuously spread,
making rich masses of brown
from the tops of the fertile trees down halfway to the ground,
cone touching cone in lavish clusters. A single branch that might be
carried in the hand would be found to bear a hundred or more.
Some portions of the wood were almost impenetrable, but in general we
found no difficulty in mazing comfortably on over fallen logs and
under the spreading boughs, while here and there we came to an opening
sufficiently spacious for standpoints, where the trees around their
margins might be seen from top to bottom. The winter sunshine
streamed through the clustered spires, glinting and breaking into a
fine dust of spangles on the spiky leaves and beads of amber gum, and
bringing out the reds and grays and yellows of the lichened boles
which had been freshened by the late storm; while the tip of every
spire looking up through the shadows was dipped in deepest blue.
The ground was strewn with burs and needles and fallen trees; and,
down in the dells, on the north side of the dome, where strips of
aspen are imbedded in the spruces, every breeze sent the ripe leaves
flying, some lodging in the spruce boughs, making them bloom again,
while the fresh snow beneath looked like a fine painting.
Around the dome and well up toward the summit of the main peak, the
snow-shed was well marked with tracks of the mule deer and the pretty
stitching and embroidery of field mice, squirrels, and grouse; and on
the way back to camp I came across a strange track, somewhat like that
of a small bear, but more spreading at the toes. It proved to be that
of a wolverine. In my conversations with hunters, both Indians and
white men assure me that there are no bears in Nevada, notwithstanding
the abundance of pine-nuts, of which they are so fond, and the
accessibility of these basin ranges from their favorite haunts in the
Sierra Nevada and Wahsatch Mountains. The mule deer, antelope, wild
sheep, wolverine, and two species of wolves are all of the larger
animals that I have seen or heard of in the State.
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