CHAPTER IV 



TREES AT TIMBERLINE 



A LL day I followed the dwarfed, battered, 

 /-\ uppermost edge of the forest through the 

 **- "^ heights of the Rockies. My barometer 

 steadily said that we were two miles higher than 

 the sea. From a stand of dead timber I cut eleven 

 small trees and carried them in one load to my 

 camp-fire. They were so gnarled and ancient- 

 looking that they aroused my curiosity, and with a 

 magnifier I counted the annual rings in each. The 

 youngest was 146 years of age, and the oldest 258! 

 The total age of these eleven trees was 2,191 

 years! These and other trees had blazed in my 

 fire and fallen to ashes long before I fell to sleep 

 beneath the low and crowded stars. 



With rare exceptions the trees at timberline are 

 undersized and of imperfect form. A forest only 

 eight feet high is not uncommon. One winter a 

 tough staff that I used was almost an entire tree 

 which had been nearly 400 years in growing. A 

 tree that I carried home in my pocket the micro- 

 scope showed to be more than three score and ten 

 years old! Annual rings in many of these timber- 

 line trees are scarcely 1-100 of an inch in diameter, 



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