92 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



high, covered toward the end with pink blossoms about 

 the size of a wild rose, but clustered much like the 

 hollyhock, and resembling that blossom in appearance. 

 It has the same decorative value when picked and 

 brought into the house, but it adds a certain shy wild- 

 ness of its own. We never found this plant, very 

 evidently a mallow of some sort, except near these two 

 lakes, but not growing, however, in actual wet. It was 

 not listed in my annoying book of Rocky Mountain 

 wild flowers there were no mallows listed there. Later 

 it was identified as the Sidalcea neo-mexicana, and there 

 is also a cream or white variety, the Candida. This mal- 

 vaceous plant would prove a rare and choice addition to 

 any garden, but I have found only one or two Eastern 

 houses listing anything like it. 



When you pass above timber line in the Rockies, 

 especially as far north as Glacier Park, you enter a sub- 

 Arctic world rather than an Alpine. Timber line in 

 the Alps is at 6,400 feet, and the summits are covered 

 with eternal snow. Timber line, even in Glacier 

 Park, is often more than 7,000 feet (in Colorado it is 

 more than 11,000), and though there are numerous 

 permanent snowfields as well as glaciers above the last 

 twisted trees, the bulk of the great shale heaps and jag- 

 ged rock towers, which are the peaks of the range, are 

 free of snow for at least two months. In those two 

 months the brave little blossoms of these Arctic heights 

 concentrate their beauty and fragrance. You are 



