TREES AT TIMBERLINE 71 



tree that had grown up to the leeward of it. Then 

 another tree had risen in the shelter of this one, 

 and still others in order and in line eastward, until 

 the long hedge was grown. The straight line of 

 the hedge from west to east showed that the high 

 winds were always from the same quarter, and the 

 topography of the place had compelled them to 

 rush along the straight line which they had fol- 

 lowed. The front of this hedge was the diameter 

 of the boulder, and the farther end, about two 

 hundred feet away, was about a foot higher. Each 

 summer thousands of shoots and twigs grew out 

 on the top and sides, but each succeeding winter 

 the winds trimmed them off. Long afterward, 

 in pursuit of a woodchuck one day, a grizzly dug 

 out a few tons of earth and stones by the side of 

 this boulder. Frost and water undermined, until 

 gravity caused the boulder to roll over. The 

 hedgerow was quickly sandblasted to pieces, and 

 in a few years all that remained was a number of 

 stubby trunks, half round, with the flattened, 

 stormward side fantastically ground and engraved 

 by the wind and sand. 



I have followed the timberline for hundreds of 

 miles, in the Sierras, the Cascades, and the Rocky 

 Mountains. One evening I camped on the rim 

 of Wild Basin in what is now the Rocky Mountain 

 National Park. Out of the opposite side of the 

 Basin, Long's Peak swept ruggedly far up into the 

 sky. I was on the eastern slope of the Continental 



