6 WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 



twenty feet long. Here and there a badly wind- 

 blown tree, with a thin spread of limbs on just 

 one side, looked like a flagpole waving a tattered 

 green banner. The windward side of the trunk 

 was bare. In other places there were clumps of 

 low-growing trees with their limbs entangled so 

 thickly that the sunlight and the wind could 

 scarcely break through. 



One tree clump was deeply set in snow. It 

 was as though a heavy white canvas had been 

 spread over with one side left open. This was 

 the place for me to spend the night. In similar, 

 though better-covered places, many a bear has 

 hibernated. In I pushed my sleeping bag. The 

 night was cool, my thermometer showing ten de- 

 grees above zero, but so snug was this shelter 

 that I slept on my sleeping bag and not in it. 

 My fire was not a large one, but was arranged 

 with backlogs which reflected a part of the heat 

 into my almost windproof shelter. 



These trees were 11,300 feet above sea level. 

 This is 5,000 feet, almost a mile, higher up the 

 mountain side than timberline in the Alps. 

 In the Alps there is more snow and more cold, 

 cloudy days. But the Rocky Mountains, having 

 many warm, sunny days, provide a tree-growing 

 climate and a place for plants and birds and ani- 

 mals to live a mile farther up into the sky than 

 they can in the Alps. 



