The Pines 



heavy. By September they are close to 2 feet in length and 3 

 or 4 inches in diameter, pale green, flushing to purple on the side 

 exposed to the sun. High above the earth these cones hang like 

 dangling tassels, none too large for the giant arm that holds them 

 forth. Now the scales spread, and the cone's diameter is 

 doubled. The seeds fall, and are frugally hoarded by squirrels, 

 bears and Indians, for their food value is no secret to any 

 creature that has tasted them. The empty cones hang on the 

 trees until the new crop is ready to harvest, and hard on its heels 

 are the half-grown yearlings, sealed tight to encounter the untried 

 winter weather. 



The wood of the sugar pine is the apotheosis of pine lumber. 

 Soft, golden, satiny, fragrant — inviting the woodworker through 

 every one of his senses to handle it. Crystals of sugar accumu- 

 late at the end of a stick when it is burning — the bleeding of the 

 heart wood, which gives the trees its name. White masses, crisp 

 and candy-like, gather at axe wounds. It tastes like maple sugar, 

 but one is soon surfeited in eating it. 



Up the mountain side, where these trees grow to greatest 

 size, the shingle maker climbs and pitches his tent in spring. 

 He fells the biggest tree he can find, never caring whose it is, 

 saws out a few blocks of shingle length (often only one), above 

 the stump, and splits it into shingles. Why should he discard 

 the rest of that great trunk and fell another, leaving the first to 

 rot and to invite forest fires.? There might be a knot in the next 

 section, and who is he that he should worry himself over knotty 

 lumber.? So he does not stay his axe and saw all through the 

 season, and has bundles of shingles to sell in the valley, all made 

 from straight-grained sugar pine from the butts of logs. For 

 every bundle he has to sell he has destroyed thousands of feet of 

 lumber. He and thieving mill owners are companions in crime, 

 and should be in the state prison together. For each has been 

 preying upon the public forest lands for years. 



The sugar pine is various in form, spreading its slender arms 

 like feathery drooping plumes. Like the crown of a palm tree, 

 but far broader than the royalest of palms, it rises above a feath- 

 ering of shorter branches, and above all neighbour trees. Or with 

 more room, the tapering spire of a fir tree is imitated. The 

 average tree tapers to the top, and is feathered half way down 

 with short horizontal branches. 



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