Its delicate branches yield to
the mountains' gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the wildest
onsets of the gale,--strong not in resistance, but compliance, bowing,
snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month after month
in the darkness beneath the heavy mantle of winter.
When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the leaves,
weighing down the branches against the trunk. Then the axis bends yet
lower and lower, until the slender top touches the ground, thus forming
a fine ornamental arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and the whole
tree is at length buried, to sleep and rest in its beautiful grave as
though dead. Entire groves of young trees, from ten to forty feet high,
are thus buried every winter like slender grasses. But, like the violets
and daisies which the heaviest snows crush not, they are safe. It is as
though this were only Nature's method of putting her darlings to sleep
instead of leaving them exposed to the biting storms of winter.
Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow becomes
soft in the sunshine, and freezes at night, making the mass hard and
compact, like ice, so that during the months of April and May you can
ride a horse over the prostrate groves without catching sight of a
single leaf.
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