TREES AT TIMBERLINE 67 



fire. Much-branched and stocky, its height was 

 twelve feet, and its diameter a foot above the 

 earth was four feet six inches. What these tim- 

 berline trees lack in symmetry and heroic size they 

 make up in hardiness and aggressiveness. 



Timberland in the far northland marks the lati- 

 tudinal limits, while the mountain timberline shows 

 the altitudinal limits of the forest-life zone. The 

 forest farthest north ends in a ragged, battered 

 edge against the Arctic prairies. The polar storms 

 that sweep across broken icefields and barren lands 

 meet with first resistance in the advanced, low- 

 crouching timberline of sturdy spruces. 



Timberline far up the sides of high mountains 

 is as strange and as abrupt a boundary as the 

 crooked and irregular shoreline of the sea. This 

 mountainside timberline is the forest's uppermost 

 edge. Above are the treeless distances and barren 

 heights of the Arctic-alpine zone. Below and 

 away from the ragged edge drapes and rolls the 

 dark and broken robe of forest. Like old ocean's 

 shifting and disputed boundary line, timberline 

 is a place where contending forces ever surge and 

 roar. 



Nowhere does this forest frontier — the ever- 

 contending line of battle between woods and 

 weather — appear more stormy or striking than 

 in the high mountains of the West. For miles this 

 timberline extends away in a front of dwarfed and 

 distorted trees — millions of them — ever fiercely 



