DOWN AVALANCHE CREEK, AND OUT 329 



They are too small to convert into lumber, and too hard 

 to chop into cordwood. They are too big for fishing 

 rods, and too small for masts. After a time, a jack pine 

 stem becomes practically indestructible. To burn one 

 off the face of Nature requires more good kindling than 

 the burnee would make, if sawn and split. A jack pine 

 stem is so tough that you cannot break a section of the 

 tip as large as a walking stick. 



If you try to break off a tip, to use for some good 

 and lawful purpose, it will lure you on to strive until 

 you are exhausted, and then when you say something 

 bad and let it go, it will fly back and hit you in the eye. 



When the wind begins to blow hard, dead jack pines 

 that are standing are more dangerous than grizzly bears. 

 Then the boldest hunter will quit the trail, and break 

 for open ground. Even when the wind is not blowing, 

 it is dangerous to walk through jack pines that are dead 

 standing, for they have a sneaking way of silently letting 

 go at the roots, and falling across anything or anybody 

 that can be hurt. A dead jack pine is a woody degen- 

 erate, neither beautiful nor useful, and forever menacing 

 the peace of the world until some well-directed fire re- 

 duces it to its lowest terms. 



The lower reaches of Avalanche Valley are to-day 

 suffering from a fearful attack of jack pines. Once the 

 mountains on both slopes were covered with that mis- 

 begotten tree; but about ten years ago they were swept 

 by fire. The trees were killed, but not burned. They 

 fell down-hill, so that travel on the mountain-side is 

 everywhere a practical impossibility. In the bottom of 



