The
winter snow is indeed such a ceiling, lasting half the year; while the
pressed, shorn surface is made yet smoother by violent winds, armed with
cutting sand-grains, that beat down any shoot that offers to rise much
above the general level, and carve the dead trunks and branches in
beautiful patterns.
During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing
arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for
centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers, such
as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and lie beneath the
larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment.
[Illustration: A DWARF PINE.]
The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed.
Here, for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of 10,700
feet, which seems as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it
is only three and a half inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is
hardly three feet above the ground. Cutting it half through and counting
the annual rings with the aid of a lens, we find its age to be no less
than 255 years. Here is another telling specimen about the same height,
426 years old, whose trunk is only six inches in diameter; and one of
its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter inside
the bark, is seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily balsam, and
so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots like a
whip-cord.
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