(Showing also the cones as borne on the twigs and an early stage of the overgrowing process)
I have a ten-foot plank from the heart of a large tree which shows twenty-eight imbedded cones. The biography of this tree, which its scroll of annual rings pictured in the abstract, is of interest. The imbedded cones grew upon the sapling before it was thirty years old and when it was less than twenty-five feet high. They appeared upon the slender trunk before it was an inch in diameter. Twenty-six annual wood-rings formed around them and covered them from sight as completely as the seeds the cone-scales clasped and concealed. The year of this completed covering, as the annual rings showed, was 1790. Then the tree was sixty-six years of age; it came into existence in 1724, and apparently, from the forest-history of the place, in the pathway of a fire. This lodge-pole lived on through one hundred and eighty-two years. In the spring of 1906 a woodsman cut it down. A few weeks later two-inch planks were sliced from the log of this tree in a sawmill. The fourth cut split the pith of the tree, and the startled sawyer beheld a number of imbedded cones stuck along and around the pith, the heart of this aged pine. These cones and the numerous seeds which they contained were approximately one hundred and fifty years old. I planted two dozen of the seeds, and three of these were fertile and sprouted.
Old trees may carry hundreds or even thousands of seed-filled cones. Once I counted 14,137 of these on the arms of one veteran lodge-pole. If we allow but twenty seeds to the cone, this tree alone held a good seed-reserve. Commonly a forest fire does not consume the tree it kills. With a lodge-pole it usually burns off the twigs and the foliage, leaving many of the cones unconsumed. The cones are excellent fire-resisters, and their seeds usually escape injury, even though the cones be charred. The heat, however, melts the resinous sealing-wax that holds the cone-scales closed. I have known the heat of a forest fire to be so intense as to break the seals on cones that were more than one hundred feet beyond the side line of the fire.
In most cases the seedlings spring up on a burned-over area the year following the fire. Often they stand as thickly as grain in the field. Under favorable conditions as many as one hundred and fifty thousand will appear upon an acre, and a stand of fifty thousand to the acre is not uncommon. Starting in a close, even growth, they usually suppress for years all other species of trees and most other plants. Their growth is mostly upward—about the only direction possible for expansion—with moderate rapidity. In a few years they are tall but exceedingly slender, and they become poles in from twenty-five to fifty years. The trappers named this tree lodge-pole because of its common use by the Indians for lodge, or tepee, poles.
In overcrowded stands, especially those in which groups or individual trees have slight advantages over their neighbors, a heavy percentage of the growth may die annually for the want of nutrition. If equal opportunities prevail in a crowded tract, all will grow slowly until some have an advantage; these will then grow more rapidly, and shade and suppress neighboring competitors.
The lodge-pole does good work in developing places that are inhospitable to other and longer-lived trees, but it gives way after preparing for the coming and the triumph of other species. By the time lodge-poles are sixty years of age their self-thinning has made openings in their crowded ranks. In these openings the shade-enduring seedlings of other species make a start. Years go by, and these seedlings become great trees that overtop the circle of lodge-poles around them. From this time forward the lodge-pole is suppressed, and ultimately its fire-acquired territory is completely surrendered to other species. It holds fire-gained areas from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty years. It is often supplanted by Douglas or Engelmann spruce. Let fire sweep these, and back comes the lodge-pole pine.
Though it distances all competitors in taking possession of fire-cleared territory, it is less successful than its fellows in entering a territory already occupied by other trees or by grass, because its seedlings cannot endure shade, and its seeds will not germinate or take root except they be brought directly into contact with clean mineral soil. The lodge-pole, therefore, needs the assistance of fire both to acquire and to hold territory. Increase the number of forest fires, and the lodge-pole extends its holdings; if we could stop fires altogether, the lodge-pole would become almost extinct.
The lodge-pole has an astonishing altitudinal as well as latitudinal range. Scattered pretty well over the mountain region of the western United States, thence northward along the coast over much of the head-waters of the Yukon in Alaska, it occupies an enormous area. Over this it adapts itself with marked success to a variety of soil, moisture, and climatic conditions, and covers ragged tracts from warm sea-beaches to dry, cold mountain slopes eleven thousand feet above the sea. In many places it surrenders the traditional pole form of its race and wins success by becoming thick-barked, stocky, and limb-covered from top to bottom.
Mountain Parks
Mountain Parks
The grassy park openings within the mountain forests are among the great charms of the outdoor world. These are as varied in their forms as clouds, delightfully irregular of outline. Their ragged-edged border of forest, with its grassy bays and peninsulas of trees, is a delight. Numbers are bordered by a lake or a crag, and many are crossed by brooks and decorated with scattered trees and tree-clumps. Others extend across swelling moraines. All are formed on Nature's free and flowing lines, have the charms of the irregular, and are model parks which many landscape gardeners have tried in vain to imitate. They vary in size from a mere grass-plot to a wide prairie within the forest.
"Park" is the name given to most of these openings, be they large or small. There are many of these scattered through the Rocky Mountains. North, South, and Middle Parks of Colorado are among the largest. These larger ones are simply meadows on a magnificent scale. Each is an extensive prairie of irregular outline surrounded by high forest-draped mountains with snowy peaks,—an inter-mountain plain broken by grassy hills and forested ridges. Here a mountain peninsula thrusts out into the lowland, and there a grassy bay extends a few miles back into the forested mountains. Samuel Bowles, in the "Springfield Republican," gave the following description of Middle Park while it was still primeval: "Above us the mountain peaks go up sharp with snow and rock, and shut in our view; but below and beyond through wide and thick forests lies Middle Park, a varied picture of plain and hill, with snowy peaks beyond and around.... It offers as much of varied and sublime beauty in mountain scenery as any so comparatively easy a trip within our experience possibly can.... A short ride brought us into miles of clear prairie, with grass one to two feet high, and hearty streams struggling to be first into the Pacific Ocean. This was the Middle Park, and we had a long twenty-five miles ride northerly through it that day. It was not monotonous by any means. Frequent ranges of hills break the prairie; the latter changes from rich bottom lands with heavy grass, to light, cold gravelly uplands, thin with bunch grass and sage brush; sluggish streams and quick streams alternate; belts of hardy pines and tender-looking aspens (cottonwood) lie along the crests or sides of the hills; farther away are higher hills fully wooded, and still beyond the range that bounds the Park and circles it with eternal snows."
During one of his early exploring expeditions, John C. Frémont visited North Park and wrote of it as follows: "The valley narrowed as we ascended and presently degenerated into a gorge, through which the river passed as through a gate—a beautiful circular valley of thirty miles in diameter, walled in all around with snowy mountains, rich with water and with grass, fringed with pine on the mountain sides below the snow line and a paradise to all grazing animals. We continued our way among the waters of the park over the foothills of the bordering mountains."
Hayden Valley in the Yellowstone National Park is another large grassy opening in a mountain forest. This valley apparently was once a vast arm of Yellowstone Lake.
Estes Park, in Colorado, is one of the most attractive as well as the best known of the mountain parks. Although much smaller than Middle or South Park, it is much larger than hundreds of the other beautiful mountain parks. The Estes Park region embraces about one hundred square miles, though only one third of this is open. The approximate altitude of the ragged lowland park is a trifle less than eight thousand feet. This is entirely surrounded by high mountains which uphold a number of rocky, snowy peaks. In 1875 Dr. F. V. Hayden, father of the Yellowstone Park, wrote of this region: "Within the district treated we will scarcely be able to find a region so favorably distinguished as that presented by Estes Park. Not only has nature amply supplied this valley with features of rare beauty and surroundings of admirable grandeur, but it has thus distributed them that the eye of an artist may rest with perfect satisfaction on the complete picture presented." Erosion and glacial action have given this region its form, while fire made the beautiful opening or park within a forest.
The majority of parks or meadow gardens which decorate the forests of the Rocky Mountains probably owe their existence to fire. Trees and grass are endlessly contending for the possession of the earth. In this incessant silent struggle a sweeping fire is generally of advantage to the grass. Trees suffer more from fire than does grass. It is probable that repeated fires enable the grass to hold the plains and prairies against the encroachments of the trees. Each forest fire commonly gives the grass possession of a part of the area formerly dominated by the forest. Usually both grass and trees are prompt to seize any fire-cleared area. The grass may be first to come, or some space may be wet or in some other way unfavorable to tree seed but encouraging to grass seed.
While forest fires bring many of these parks, others are glacier meadows, lake-basins which time has filled with sediment and sodded with grass. Many are due to the presence of water, either outspreading surface water or an excess of underground water just beneath the surface,—to streams visible or invisible. A few result from boggy places which result from impaired drainage caused by landslips or fallen trees. Thousands were made by beaver dams,—are old beaver ponds that filled with sediment and then grassed over.
Most parks that owe their origin to forest fires have charcoal beneath the surface. A little digging commonly reveals charred logs or roots. Occasionally, too, a blackened tree-snag stands suggestively in these treeless gardens. In the competition for this territory, in which grass, spruces, aspens, and kinnikinick compete, grass was successful. Just what conditions may have been favorable to grass cannot be told, though probably one point was the abundance of moisture. Possibly the fire destroyed all near-by seed trees, or trees not destroyed may not have borne seed until the year following the fire. Anyway, grass often seizes and covers fire-cleared areas so thickly and so continuously with sod that tree seeds find no opening, and grass thus holds possession for decades, and, in favorable places, possibly for a century.
Trees grow up around these areas and in due time the grassy park is surrounded by a forest. The trees along the edge of this park extend long limbs out into it. These limbs shade and kill the grass beneath. Tree seeds sprout where the grass is killed, and these seedlings in turn produce trees with long limbs reaching into the park. These shade and smother more grass and thus advance the forest another limb's length. Slowly but surely the park is diminished.
Struggling trees may sometimes obtain a place in advance of the others or a start in the centre of the park, and thus hasten the death of the park and speed the triumph of the trees. A mere incident may shorten the life of a park. A grizzly bear that I followed one day, paused on a dry point in a park to dig out some mice. In reaching these he discovered a chipmunk burrow. By the time he had secured all these he had torn up several square yards of sod. In this fresh earth the surrounding trees sowed triumphant seeds, from which a cluster of spruces expanded and went out to meet the surrounding advancing forest. Fighting deer sometimes cut the sod and thus allow a few tree seeds to assert themselves. Wind may blow down a tall tree which lands in the edge of the park. Along its full length grows a line of invading forest. Occasionally the earth piled out by a gopher, or by a coyote in digging out a gopher, offers an opportunity that is seized by a tree seed. An ant-hill in a meadow may afford a footing for invading tree seeds. On one occasion a cliff tumbled and a huge rock-fragment bounded far into the sloping meadow. Trees sprang up in each place where the rock tore the sod and also around where it came to rest in the grass.
These breaks in the sod made by animals or other agencies do not always give triumph to the trees. Seedlings may eagerly start in these openings, but, being isolated, they are in greater danger, perhaps, than seedlings in the forest. Rabbits may nibble them, woodchucks devour, or insects overrun them. The surrounding grass may smother them and reclaim the temporarily lost opening.
But, though only one tree may grow, this in due time shades the grass, a circle of young trees rise around it, and these in turn carry forward the work of winning territory. At last the park is overgrown with trees!
Glacier meadows may be seen in all stages of evolution. The lake-basin gouged by a glacier goes through many changes before it is covered by a forest and forgotten. No sooner does ice vanish and a glacier lake appear than its filling-in is commenced. Landslips and snow-slides thrust boulders and cliff-fragments into it; running water is constantly depositing sand and sediment upon its bottom. Sedge and moss commence covering its surface as soon as its water becomes shallow. In due time it becomes a bog with a thick covering like a wet mattress, composed of the matted roots of sedge and grass. Over this, wind and water deposit earthy matter, but centuries may pass before the bog is filled in sufficiently to have a dry surface and produce grass and flowers and finally trees.
Once while strolling through a forested flat in central Colorado, I concluded from the topography of the country that it must formerly have been a glacier lake. I procured tools and sank a shaft into the earth between the spruces. At a depth of two feet was a gravelly soil-deposit, and beneath this a matting of willow roots and sedge roots and stalks. These rested in a kind of turf at water-level, beneath which were boulders, while under these was bed-rock. Numerous romantic changes time had made here.
Many of these meadows are as level as the surface of a lake. Commonly the surface is comparatively smooth, even though one edge may be higher than the other. I measured one meadow that was three thousand feet long by two hundred and fifty feet wide. Tree-ranks of the surrounding forest crowded to its very edge. On the north the country extended away only a foot or two higher than meadow-level. On the south a mountain rose steeply, and this surface of the meadow was four feet higher than the one opposite. The up-the-mountain end was about three feet higher than the end which had been the old outlet of the lake. The steep south shore had sent down more material than the level one on the north. In fact, water-level on the north shore, though concealed by grass, was almost precisely the same as when the waters of the lake shone from shore to shore. In one corner of the meadow was an aspen grove. From the mountain-side above, a landslide had come down. Rains had eroded this area to bed-rock and had torn out a gully that was several feet wide on the slope below. This washed material was spread out in a delta-like deposit on the surface of the meadow. Aspens took possession of this delta.
Glacier meadows are usually longer-lived than other mountain parks. In favorable places they sometimes endure for centuries. Commonly they are slowly replaced by the extending forest. The peaty, turfy growth which covers them is of fine matted roots, almost free of earthy or mineral matter, and often is a saturated mattress several feet in thickness. The water-level is usually at the surface, but during an extremely dry time it may sink several inches or even a few feet. If fires run during a dry period of this kind, the fire will burn to water-level. The ashes of this fire, together with the mineral matter which it concentrates, commonly form a soil-bed which promptly produces trees. Sometimes, however, grass returns. Thus, while fire brings forth many meadows in the forest, it sometimes is the end of one evolved from glacial action. A landslip often plunges a peninsula of soil out upon a glacial meadow. This is usually captured by trees in a year or two.
These parks make ideal camping-places,—wild, beautiful, and alluring in every season. I have enjoyed them when they were white with snow, mysterious with cloud and mist, romantic with moonlight, and knee-deep in the floral wealth of June. Often I have burst out upon a sunny meadow hidden away in the solitude of the forest. As it lies silent in the sunshine, butterflies with beautifully colored wings circle lightly above its brilliant masses of flowers. Here bears prowl, deer feed, and birds assemble in such numbers that the park appears to be their social centre. In these wild gardens the matchless solitaire is found. Often he sings from the top of a spruce and accompanies his song by darting off or upward on happy wings, returning and darting again, singing all the time as if enchanted.
Among the hundreds of these happy resting-grounds in which I have camped, one in the San Juan Mountains has left me the most memories. I came there one evening during a severe gale. The wind roared and thundered as impressively as breakers on a rock-bound shore. By midnight the storm ceased, and the tall trees stood as quietly as if content to rest after their vigorous exercise in the friendly wrestling-match with the wind. The spruces had become towering folded flags of fluffy black. After the gale the sky was luminous with crowding stars. I lingered in the centre of the opening to watch them. The heavens appeared to be made of many star-filled skies, one behind the other. The farthest one was very remote, while the closest seemed strangely near me, just above the tops of the trees.
Many times I have come out of the subdued light of the pathless forest to enjoy these sunny openings. Often I have stood within them watching the butterflies circling in the sun or a deer and her fawns feeding quietly across, and, as I looked, I have listened to the scolding of the squirrel and the mellow ringing of the woodpecker far away in the forest. Here I have watched the coming storm, have enjoyed its presence, and in its breaking have seen the brilliant bow rest its foundations in front of the trees just across the meadow. Sometimes the moon showed its soft bow in the edge of the advancing or the breaking storm.
One evening, before the moon looked into this fairy garden, I watched a dance of crowding fireflies. They were as thick as snowflakes, but all vanished when the moonlight turned the park into fairyland. Rare shadow etchings the tall, short-armed spruces made, as they lay in light along the eastern border of this moon-filled park. A blue tower of shadow stretched from a lone spruce in the open to the forest wall beyond. As the moon rose higher, one of the dead trees in the edge of the forest appeared to rise out of the darkness and stand to watch or to serve. Then another rose, and presently two appeared side by side and edged into the light. They might have been conversing. As the night advanced, the shadow of the spruces shortened as their shadow points moved round to the north. As the moon sank behind a mountain, the dead trees settled back into the darkness, and, just before light left the park, the two broken trees moved behind a shadow and vanished. They were scarcely out of sight when the weird cries of a fox sounded from the farther edge of the woods.
Those who believe in fairies will receive the most from Nature. The unfenced wilderness is full of wild folk, full of fairy gardens and homes. With these a careless prowler is rarely welcome. Wasps and bees early gave me sharp hints on blundering, hurried intrusion, and a mother grizzly with two cubs by her side also impressed me concerning this matter. Birds sometimes made me ashamed for breaking in upon them. I did no shooting, carried only a kodak, and was careful to avoid rushing from one place to another; but refined wilderness etiquette was yet to be learned. Usually I felt welcome in the most secluded place, but one day, having wandered out into the corner of the meadow, I felt that I was not only an uninvited guest, but a most unwelcome intruder.
The meadow was a deeply secluded one, such as the fairies would naturally reserve for themselves. Towering spruces shut it out from the world. A summer play was surely in progress when I blundered upon the scene. With my intrusion everything stopped abruptly. Each flower paused in the midst of its part, the music of the thrush broke off, the tall spruces scowled stiffly, and the slender, observant young trees stood unwillingly still. Plainly all were annoyed at my presence, and all were waiting impatiently for me to be gone. As I retreated into the woods, a breeze whispered and the spruces made stately movements. The flowers in the meadow resumed their dance, the aspen leaves their merry accompaniment, the young trees their graceful swaying and bowing, and the fairies and bees became as happy as before.
A camp-fire anywhere in the wilderness appeals strongly to the imagination. To me it was most captivating in a little mountain meadow. Even in a circle of friends it may shut out all else, and with it one may return through "yesterday's seven thousand years." But to be completely under its spell one must be alone with its changing flame. Although I have watched the camp-fire all alone in many scenes,—in the wilderness, at the shore of the sea, at timber-line, and on the desert in the shadow of the prehistoric cactus,—nowhere has my imagination been more deeply stirred than it was one night by my camp-fire in a little mountain meadow. Around were the silent ranks of trees. Here the world was new and the fire blazed in primeval scenes. Its strange dance of lights and shadows against the trees rebuilt for me the past. Once more I felt the hopes and dreads of savage life. Once more I knew the legends that were told when the first camp-fire burned.
Drought in Beaver World
Drought in Beaver World
Not until one year of drought did I realize how dependent the beaver is upon a constant water-supply that is both fresh and ample. A number of beaver colonies close to my cabin were badly afflicted by this dry period. I was already making special studies of beaver ways among the forty-odd beaver colonies that were within a few miles of my mountain home, and toward the close of this droughty summer I made frequent rounds among the beaver. By the middle of September I confined these attentions to five of the colonies that were most affected by low water. Two were close to each other, but upon separate brooks. The other three were upon one tumbling streamlet.
Autumn is the busiest time of the year in beaver world. Harvest is then gathered, the dam is repaired, sometimes the pond is partly dredged, and the house is made ready for winter,—all before the pond freezes over. But drought had so afflicted these colonies that in only one had any of the harvest been gathered. This one I called the Cascade Colony. It was the uppermost of the three that were dependent upon this one stream. Among the five colonies that I observed that autumn, this one had the most desperate and tragic experience.
Toward the close of September the colonists in each of the five colonies gave most of their attention to the condition of their dam. Every leak was stopped, and its water face was given a thick covering of mud, most of which was dredged from the bottom of the pond.
The beaver is intimately associated with water. He is not a landsman, and only necessity will cause him to go far from the water. The water in a main beaver pond is usually three or more feet deep, a depth needed all the year around. Where nature has provided a place of this kind that is close to his food-supply, the beaver uses it; he will not trouble to build a dam and form a pond of deep water unless this is necessary. But deep water he must have; to him it is a daily necessity in getting a living, moving about the easiest way, and protecting his life.
Early in October the first colony below the Cascade had to leave the old home because of the scarcity of water. There were seven or eight of them, and all went down-stream and joined another colony. From what I know of the two colonies I judge that this was probably a case of the old folks being forced to take refuge with their fortunate children. Apparently they were welcome.
A few days later the lowest of the three colonies on the Cascade streamlet was also abandoned. Two days before leaving home the beaver had commenced to harvest aspen for winter food. A few aspens were standing partly cut; a number untrimmed were lying where they fell; several had been dragged into the pond. But suddenly the beaver deserted the place.
The fifteen or sixteen in this colony went down-stream and took possession of an old and abandoned house and pond. They hastily repaired the dam and the house, and they had only just begun to gather supplies for the winter when the pond froze over. In the bottom of the pond, below the ice, there may have been an abundance of the tuberous growths of the pond-lily or a supply of intruding willow roots; both of these the beaver often dig out even while the pond is frozen over. These beaver in this old pond may have pieced out their scanty food-supply with these roots and endured until springtime; but I fear that at best they had a close squeak.
One brook went dry and the beaver folk on it moved up-stream. They left the dam well repaired, a new house, and a pile of green aspen cuttings in the pond. They were ready for winter when the water-failure forced them to find a new home. They scooped out a small basin by a spring in the top of a moraine, used the material for a dam, and into the pond thus formed dragged a few aspens and willows. A winter den was dug in the bank.
The colonists at the other low-water place abandoned their home and moved three miles down-stream. The tracks in the mud, a few bits of fur, told too well a story of a tragedy during this enforced journey. While traveling along the almost dry bed of the stream and at a point where the water was too shallow to allow them to dive and escape, two, and probably three, of their number were captured by coyotes. The survivors found a deep hole in a large channel, and here they hurriedly accumulated a scanty supply of green aspen. As winter came on, they dug a burrow in the bank. This had a passageway which opened into the water about two feet below the surface and close to their food-supply.
The Cascade colonists held on for the winter. Their pond was deep, and their careful repair of the dam had enabled them to retain water to the very top of it. However, beaver cannot long endure water that is stagnant. This is especially true in winter-time. A beaver house is almost without ventilation, but its entrance ways are full of water; the fresh water of the pond appears to absorb impurities from the air of the house. Apparently stagnant water will not do this. Then, too, a stagnant pond freezes much more rapidly than the waters of a pond that are constantly stirred and aerated by the inflow of fresh water. The Cascade colonists entered the winter with an abundant food-supply that was stored close to the house. The pond was full of water, but it was becoming stagnant. The drought continued and no snow fell. This was another disadvantage to the colony. If a pond is thickly blanketed with snow, it does not freeze so deeply nor so rapidly as when its surface is bare. By the middle of October the pond was solidly frozen. Drought and continued cold weather came and stayed. Christmas week not a drop of water was flowing from the pond and apparently none was flowing into it. The ice was clear, and, the day I called, there appeared to be digging going on in the pond beneath the ice; close to the dam the water was so roily that I could not see into it.
On the first of February I sounded the ice in a number of places. It seemed to be frozen solidly to the bottom. This pond was circular in outline, and the house stood near the centre in about three feet of water. I climbed up on the house and stood there for some time. Commonly in the winter an inhabited beaver house gives a scent to the small amount of air that escapes from the top, and this tells of the presence of the living beaver inside. But I was unable to detect the slightest beaver scent in the air. Apparently the water in the pond was frozen from top to bottom; probably all the beaver had perished, unless they had managed to dig out, as they sometimes do, by tunneling beneath the dam into the brook-channel below. Many old beaver ponds have a subway in the mud of the bottom. One opening is close to the entrance of the house; the other at a point on shore a few feet or several yards beyond the edge of the pond. This offers a means of escape from the pond in case it is frozen to the bottom or if it be drained. A careful search failed to reveal any tunnel, new or old, through which these beaver might have escaped.
I determined to know their fate and went to my cabin for an axe and a shovel. A hole was cut in the ice midway between the beaver house and the food-pile,—a pile of green aspen cuttings about twelve feet away from the house. The pond was solidly frozen to the bottom, and the beaver had all been caught. The entrances to their house were full of ice. One beaver was found at the food-pile, where he apparently had been gnawing off a bark-covered stick. One was dead between the food-pile and the house. The others were dead by the entrance of an incomplete tunnel beneath the dam, which they apparently had been digging as a means of escape when death overtook them. One had died while gnawing at the ice-filled entrance of the house. Inside of the house were the bodies of two very old beaver and four young ones, frozen solid.
The death of these little people, one and all, in their home under the ice, may have come from suffocation, from cold, from starvation, or from a combination of all these; I do not know. But my observations made it clear that the drought was at the bottom of it all.
In the Winter Snows
In the Winter Snows
For years I wondered how big game managed to live through the hard winters. How did they obtain food while the snows lay deep? Two winters of snowshoeing through the Rocky Mountains as Snow Observer often brought me in contact with wild game. These wanderings, together with numerous winter camping-excursions through the woods in other scenes, gave me many a glimpse of the winter manners and customs of big wild folk.
One autumn a heavy snow-storm caught me in the mountains of Colorado without snowshoes. In getting out of this I found it easier to wade down a shallow unfrozen stream than to wallow through deep snow. Presently I came upon a herd of deer who were also avoiding the deep snow by using a water-way. They were traveling along in the river and occasionally paused to feed off the banks. Out all floundered into the snow to let me pass. They reëntered the water before I was out of sight.
A few days later I returned on snowshoes to see how they were faring. Deep snow had not seriously concerned them. They were in a snow-less place near the river. During the storm an accumulation of sludgy, floating snow had formed a temporary dam in the stream, which raised the water and flooded a near-by flat. Presently the dam went out, and the water ran off; but the water carried with it some of the snow, and it had dissolved much of the remainder. In this cleared place the deer were feeding and loitering.
Wild life easily stands an ordinary storm and usually manages to survive even a deep, long-lying snow. The ability of big game to endure storms must in part be due to their acquaintance with every opportunity afforded by the restricted district in which they live. Big wild folk do not range afar nor at random, nor do they drift about like gypsies. Most animals range in a small locality,—spend their lives in a comparatively small territory. They are familiar with a small district and thus are able to use it at all times to the best advantage. They know where to find the earliest grass; where flies are least troublesome; the route over which to retreat in case of attack; and where is the best shelter from the storm.
With the coming of a snow-storm big game commonly move to the most sheltered spot in their district. This may or may not be close to a food-supply. A usual place of refuge is in a cover or sheltered spot on a sunny southern slope,—a place, too, in which the snow will first melt. Immediately after a storm there may often be found a motley collection of local wild folk in a place of this kind. Bunched, the big game hope and wait. Unless the snow is extremely deep they become restless and begin to scatter after two or three days.
There are a number of places in each locality which may offer temporary, or even permanent, relief to snow-hampered game. These are open streams, flood-cleared flats, open spots around springs, wind-cleared places, and openings, large and small, made by snow-slides. During long-lying deep snows the big game generally use every local spot or opening of vantage.
In many regions a fall of snow is followed by days of fair weather. During these days most of the snow melts; often the earth is almost free of one snow before another fall comes. In places of this kind the game have periods of ease. But in vast territories the snow comes, deepens, and lies deep over the earth for weeks. To endure long-lying deep snows requires special habits or methods. The yarding habit, more or less intensely developed, is common with sheep, elk, deer, and moose of all snowy lands.
The careful yarding habit of the moose is an excellent method of triumphing over deep snow. In early winter, or with the deepening snow, a moose family proceed to a locality where food is abundant; here they restrict themselves to a small stamping-ground,—one of a stone's throw or a few hundred feet radius. Constant tramping and feeding in this limited area compacts the snow in spaces and in all the trails so that the animals walk on top of it. Each additional snow is in turn trampled to sustaining compactness.
At first the low-growing herbage is eaten; but when this is buried, and the animals are raised up by added snow, they feed upon shrubs; then on the willow or the birch tops, and sometimes on limbs well up in the trees, which the platform of deeply accumulated snow enables them to reach. Commonly moose stay all winter in one yard. Sometimes the giving-out of the food-supply may drive them forth. Then they try to reach another yard. But deep snow or wolves may overcome one or all on the way.
During one snowshoe trip through western Colorado I visited seven deer-yards. One of these had been attacked by wolves but probably without result. Apparently five of the others had not as yet been visited by deadly enemies. The seventh and most interesting yard was situated in a deep gorge amid rugged mountains. It was long and narrow, and in it the deer had fed upon withered grass, plant stalks, and willow twigs. All around the undrifted snow lay deep. The limbless bases of the spruces were set deep in snow, and their lower limbs were pulled down and tangled in it. These trees had the appearance of having been pushed part way up through the snow. In places the cliffs showed their bare brown sides. Entire spruce groves had been tilted to sharp angles by the slipping and dragging snow weight on steep places; among them were tall spruces that appeared like great feathered arrows that had been shot into snowy steeps. The leafless aspens attractively displayed their white and greenish-white skin on limbs that were held just above the snow.
With a curve, the yard shaped itself to the buried stream. It lay between forested and moderately steep mountains that rose high. In this primeval winter scene the deer had faced the slow-going snow in the primitive way. At the upper end of the yard all the snow was trampled to compactness, and over this animals could walk without sinking in. Firm, too, were the surfaces of the much looped and oft trodden trails. The trail nearest to the stream passed beneath a number of beautiful snow-piled arches. These arches were formed of outreaching and interlacing arms of parallel growths of willow and birch clusters. The stream gurgled beneath its storm window of rough ice.
I rounded the yard and at the lower end I found the carcasses of the entire herd of deer,—nine in all,—evidently recently killed by a mountain lion. He had eaten but little of their flesh. Wolves had not yet discovered this feast, but a number of Rocky Mountain jays were there. The dark spruces stood waiting! No air stirred. Bright sunlight and bluish pine shadows rested upon the glazed whiteness of the snow. The flock of cheerful chickadees feeding through the trees knew no tragedy.
The winter food of big game consists of dead grass, shrubs, twigs, buds and bark of trees, moss, and dry plants. At times grass dries or cures before the frost comes. When thus cured it retains much nutrition,—is, in fact, unraked hay. If blighted by frost it loses its flavor and most of its food value.
During summer both elk and deer range high on the mountains. With the coming of winter they descend to the foothill region, where the elk collect in large herds, living in yards in case of prolonged deep snow. Deer roam in small herds. Occasionally a herd of the older elk will for weeks live in the comparatively deep snow on northern slopes,—slopes where the snow crusts least. Here they browse off alder and even aspen bark.
The present congestion of elk in Jackson Hole represents an abnormal condition brought about by man. The winter feed on which they formerly lived is devoured by sheep or cattle during the summer; a part of their former winter range is mowed for hay; they are hampered by fences. As a result of these conditions many suffer and not a few starve.
Wolves are now afflicting both wild and tame herds in Jackson Hole. Apparently the wolves, which formerly were unknown here in winter, have been drawn thither by the food-supply which weak or dead elk afford.
The regular winter home of wild sheep is among the peaks above the limits of tree growth. Unlike elk and deer, the mountain sheep is found in the heights the year round. He may, both in winter and summer, make excursions into the lowlands, but during snowy times he clings to the heights. Here he usually finds a tableland or a ridge that has been freed of snow by the winds. In these snow-free places he can feed and loiter and sometimes look down on unfortunate snow-bound deer and elk.
The bunching habit of big game during periods of extreme cold or deep snow probably confers many benefits. It discourages the attacks of carnivorous enemies, and usually renders such attacks ineffective. Crowding also gives the greatest warmth with the least burning of fat fuel. The conservation of energy by storm-bound animals is of the utmost importance. Cold and snow make complicated endurance tests; the animals must with such handicaps withstand enemies and sometimes live for days with but little or nothing to eat.
Big game, on occasions, suffer bitterly through a combination of misfortunes. Something may prevent a herd reaching its best shelter, and it must then endure the storm in poor quarters; pursuit may scatter and leave each one stranded alone in a bad place; in such case each will suffer from lonesomeness, even though it endure the cold and defy enemies. Most animals, even those that are normally solitary, appear to want society during emergencies.
A deep snow is sometimes followed by a brief thaw, then by days of extreme cold. The snow crusts, making it almost impossible for big game to move, but encouragingly easy for wolves to travel and to attack. Of course, long periods separate these extremely deadly combinations. Probably the ordinary loss of big game from wolves and mountain lions is less than is imagined.
Some years ago an old Ute Indian told me that during a winter of his boyhood the snow for weeks lay "four ponies deep" over the Rocky Mountains, and that "most elk die, many ponies die, wolves die, and Indian nearly die too." A "Great Snow" of this kind is terrible for wild folk.
Snow and cold sometimes combine to do their worst. The snow covers everything deeply; then follows an unbroken period of extreme cold; the Ice King is again enthroned; the snow fiendishly refuses to melt, and lies for weeks; the endurance of most wild folk becomes exhausted, and birds, herds, and wolves perish. Similar calamities used occasionally to afflict our primitive ancestors.
Over the vast Northwest a feature of the climate is the winter-annihilating Chinook wind. This occasionally saves the people of the wilds when other relief is impossible. The snowy earth is quickly transformed by this warm, dry wind. In a few hours conditions become summer-like. Fortunately, the Chinook often follows a blizzard. Many a time at the eleventh hour it has dramatically saved the waiting, suffering birds and rescued the snow-buried and starving folk of the wilds.
The beaver and the bear are often benefited by the deep snows which afflict their wild neighbors. During the prolonged hibernating sleep, the bear does not eat, but he commonly needs a thick snowy blanket to keep him comfortable. The beaver has his winter stores on the bottom of the pond beneath the ice. These he reaches from his house by swimming beneath the ice from the house to the food-pile. If the ice is not covered by snow, it may, during a cold winter, freeze thickly, even to the bottom, and thus cause a starving time in the beaver colony.
Deep snow appears not to trouble the "stupidest animal in the woods," the porcupine. A deeper snow is for him a higher platform from which the bark on the tree may be devoured. Rabbits, too, appear to fare well during deep snow. This uplift allows them a long feast among the crowded, bud-fruited bush-tops at which they have so often looked in vain.
The chipmunk is not concerned with groundhog day. Last summer he filled his underground granaries with nuts and seeds, and subways connect his underground winter quarters with these stores. But heavy snows, with their excess of water, flood him out of winter quarters in spring earlier than he planned.
One March at the close of a wet snow-fall I went out into a near-by pine grove to see the squirrels. One descended from a high hole to the snow and without trouble located and bored down through the snow to his cone-deposit. With difficulty he climbed up through the heavy snow with a cone. He did not enjoy floundering through the clinging snow to the tree-trunk. But at last up he started with a snow-laden cone, in search of a dry seat on which to eat. After climbing a few feet he tumbled back into the unpleasant snow. In some manner the wet snow on the tree-trunk had caused his downfall. With temper peppery he gathered himself up, and for a moment glared at me as though about to blame me for his troubles. Then, muttering, he climbed up the tree. Sometimes the chipmunk, and the squirrel also, indulge in hibernating periods of sleep despite their ample stores of convenient food.
The ptarmigan is preëminently the bird of the snows; it is the Eskimo of the bird world. It resides in the land realm of the Farthest North and also throughout the West upon high mountain-tops. In the heights it lives above the limits of tree growth, close to snow-drifts that never melt, and in places above the altitude of twelve thousand feet. It is a permanent resident of the heights, and apparently only starvation will drive it to the lowlands. Its winter food consists of seeds of alpine plants and the buds of dwarf arctic willow. This willow is matted, dwarfed, and low-growing. When drifted over, the ptarmigan burrow into the snow and find shelter beneath its flattened growth. Here they are in reach of willow buds.
Buds are freely eaten by many kinds of birds; they are the staff of life of the ptarmigan and often of the grouse. They are sought by rabbits and go in with the browse eaten by big game. Buds of trees and shrubs are a kind of fruit, a concentrated food, much of the nature of nuts or tubers.
The cheerful water-ouzel, even during the winter, obtains much of its food from the bottom of brooks and lakes. The ouzel spends many winter nights in nooks and niches in the bank between the ice and the water. This is a strange place, though one comparatively safe and sheltered. In getting into the water beneath the ice, the ouzel commonly finds opportunity at the outlet or the inlet of the lake; sometimes through an opening maintained by spring water. There are usually many entrances into the waters of a frozen brook,—openings by cascades and the holes that commonly remain in the ice over swift waters. Excessive snow or extreme cold may close all entrances and thus exclude the ouzel from both food and water. Down the mountain or southward the ouzel then goes.
Woodpeckers and chickadees fare well despite any combination of extreme cold or deep snow. For the most part their food is the larvæ or the eggs that are deposited here and there in the tree by hundreds of kinds of insects and parasites which afflict trees. Nothing except a heavy sleet appears to make these food-deposits inaccessible.
Most birds spend the winter months in the South. But bad conditions may cause resident birds and animals to migrate, even in midwinter. Extremely unfavorable winters in British Columbia will cause many birds that regularly winter in that country to travel one or two thousand miles southward into the mountains of Colorado. Among the species which thus modify their habits are the red crossbill, the redpoll, the Lapland longspur, and the snowy owl.
After all, there are points in common between the animal life of the wild and the human life of civilization. Man and the wild animals alike find their chief occupation in getting food or in keeping out of danger. Change plays a large part in the life of each, and abnormal conditions affect them both. Let a great snow come in early winter, and both will have trouble, and both for a time may find the struggle for existence severe.
The primitive man slaughtered storm-bound animals, but civilized man rescues them. A deep snow offers a good opportunity for more intimate acquaintance with our wild neighbors. And snowy times, too, are good picture-taking periods. In snowy times, if our wild neighbors already respect us, tempting food and encouraging hunger will place big, shy, and awkward country fellows and nervous birds close to the camera and close to our hearts.
My Chipmunk Callers
My Chipmunk Callers
About a score of chipmunks have their homes in my yard. They are delightfully tame and will climb upon my head or shoulder, eat nuts from my hand, or go into my pockets after them. At times three or four make it lively for me. One day I stooped to give one some peanuts. While he was standing erect and taking them from my fingers, a strange dog appeared. At once all the chipmunks in the yard gave a chattering, scolding alarm-cry and retreated to their holes. The one I was feeding dashed up into my coat pocket. Standing up with fore paws on the edge of the pocket, and with head thrust out, he gave the dog a tempestuous scolding. This same chipmunk often played upon the back of Scotch, my collie. Occasionally he stood erect on Scotch to sputter out an alarm-cry and to look around when something aroused his suspicions.
Chipmunks are easily tamed and on short acquaintance will come to eat from one's hand. Often they come into my cabin for food or for paper to use for bedding. Occasionally one will sit erect upon my knee or shoulder, sometimes looking off intently into the yard; at other times apparently seeing nothing, but wrapped in meditation. More often, however, they are storing peanuts in their pouches or deliberately eating a kernel. Rarely is the presence of one agreeable to another, and when four or five happen to call at the same time, they sometimes forget their etiquette and I am the centre of a chipmunk scrimmage.