WATER BORDERS 



pines, all but an occasional yellow variety, 

 desert the stream borders about the level 

 of the lowest lakes, and the birches and 

 tree-willows begin. The firs hold on al- 

 most to the mesa levels, there are no 

 foothills on this eastern slope, and who- 

 ever has firs misses nothing else. It goes 

 without saying that a tree that can afford 

 to take fifty years to its first fruiting will 

 repay acquaintance. It keeps, too, all that 

 half century, a virginal grace of outline, 

 but having once flowered, begins quietly 

 to put away the things of its youth. Year 

 by year the lower rounds of boughs are 

 shed, leaving no scar; year by year the 

 star-branched minarets approach the sky. 

 A fir-tree loves a water border, loves a long 

 wind in a draughty canon, loves to spend 

 itself secretly on the inner finishings of its 

 burnished, shapely cones. Broken open 

 220 



