MOUNTAIN TREES 



ridges. The low, thick and twisted 

 trunks, ice covered half the year, 

 creep slowly for shelter close to the 

 rocky steeps, their gnarled and dwarfed 

 interlaced branches flung like banners 

 away from the wind. Some of these 

 depressed flat-topped heroes are found 

 to be 500 to 800 years old. 



With its exceedingly thin bark and its 

 pitch besmeared trunk, the Tamarack is 

 a tree especially susceptible to destruc- 

 tion by fire. Happily the few found 

 in our mountains of Southern Califor- 

 nia are by their isolation and location at 

 a high altitude, largely freed from this 

 danger. Many are yearly riven by bolts 

 of lightning, however, and the spiral 

 grooves where the electric fire has 

 plowed its way down the trunk, ripping 

 away the bark, are everywhere to be 

 seen. But the sultry weather that brings 

 the lightning also brings drenching 

 showers of rain to these high altitudes 

 and the few fires thus started are soon 

 extinguished. When fires do gain head- 

 is 



