Both the Silver Firs live 250 years or more when the conditions about
them are at all favorable. Some venerable patriarch may often be seen,
heavily storm-marked, towering in severe majesty above the rising
generation, with a protecting grove of saplings pressing close around
his feet, each dressed with such loving care that not a leaf seems
wanting. Other companies are made up of trees near the prime of life,
exquisitely harmonized to one another in form and gesture, as if Nature
had culled them one by one with nice discrimination from all the rest of
the woods.
[Illustration: VIEW OF FOREST OF THE MAGNIFICENT SILVER FIR.]
It is from this tree, called Red Fir by the lumberman, that mountaineers
always cut boughs to sleep on when they are so fortunate as to be within
its limits. Two rows of the plushy branches overlapping along the
middle, and a crescent of smaller plumes mixed with ferns and flowers
for a pillow, form the very best bed imaginable. The essences of the
pressed leaves seem to fill every pore of one's body, the sounds of
falling water make a soothing hush, while the spaces between the grand
spires afford noble openings through which to gaze dreamily into the
starry sky.
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