CHAPTER VII 



THE GLACIER MEADOWS 



FTER the lakes on the High Sierra come the 

 glacier meadows. They are smooth, level, 

 silky lawns, lying embedded in the upper forests, on 

 the floors of the valleys, and along the broad backs 

 of the main dividing ridges, at a height of about 

 8000 to 9500 feet above the sea. 



They are nearly as level as the lakes whose places 

 they have taken, and present a dry, even surface 

 free from rock-heaps, mossy bogginess, and the 

 frowsy roughness of rank, coarse-leaved, weedy, 

 and shrubby vegetation. The sod is close and fine, 

 and so complete that you cannot see the ground; and 

 at the same time so brightly enameled with flowers 

 and butterflies that it may well be called a garden- 

 meadow, or meadow-garden ; for the plushy sod is 

 in many places so crowded with gentians, daisies, 

 ivesias, and various species of orthocarpus that the 

 grass is scarcely noticeable, while in others the 

 flowers are only pricked in here and there singly, or 

 in small ornamental rosettes. 



The most influential of the grasses composing 

 the sod is a delicate calamagrostis with fine filiform 

 leaves, and loose, airy panicles that seem to float 

 above the flowery lawn like a purple mist. But, 



