 Chapter 14 of Wildlife on the Rockies Wildlife on the Rockies by Enis A. Mills Mountain Parks and Campfires The Rockies of Colorado cross the state from north to south in two ranges that are roughly parallel and from 30 to 100 miles apart. There are a number of secondary ranges in the state that are just as marked, as high, and as interesting as the main ranges and that are in every way comparable with them except in area. The bases of most of these ranges are from 10 to 60 miles across. The lowlands from which these mountains rise are from 5 to 6000 feet above sea level and the mountain summits are from 11,000 to 13,000 feet above the tides. In the entire mountain area of the state there are more than 50 peaks that are upward of 14,000 feet in height. Some of these mountains are rounded, undulating, or tabletopped, but for the most part the higher slopes and culminating summits are broken and angular. The Rocky Mountain area in Colorado presents a delightful diversity of parks, peaks, forests, lakes, streams, canyons, slopes, crags, and glades. On all the higher summits are records of the Ice Age. In many places, glaciated rocks still retain the polish given them by the Ice King. Such rocks, as well as gigantic moraines in an excellent state of preservation, extend from altitudes of 12 or 13,000 feet down to 8,000, and in places as low as 7,000 feet. Some of the moraines are but enormous embankments a few hundred feet high and a mile or so in length. Many of these are so raw, bold, and bare, they look as if they had been completed or uncovered within the last year. Most of these moraines, however, especially those below Timberline, are well forested. No one knows just how old they are, but geologically speaking they are new, and in all probability were made during the last great Ice Epic, or since that time. Among the impressive records of the ages that are carried by these mountains, those made by the Ice King probably stand first in appealing strangely and strongly to the imagination. All the Rocky Mountain lakes are glacier lakes. There are more than a thousand of these. The basins of the majority of them were excavated by ice from solid rock. Only a few of them have more than forty acres of area, and with the exception of a very small number, they are situated well up on the shoulders of the mountains and between the altitudes of 11,000 and 12,000 feet. The lower and middle slopes of the Rockies are without lakes. The lower third of the mountains, that is the foothills section, is only tree dotted. But in the middle portion, that part which lies between the altitudes of 8,000 and 11,000 feet, is covered by a heavy forest in which lodgepole pine, Engelman spruce, and Douglas spruce predominate. Fire has made ruinous inroads into the primeval forest which grew here. A large portion of the summit slopes of the mountains is made up of almost barren rock in old moraines, glaciated slopes, or broken crags, granite, predominating. These rocks are well tinted with lichen, but they present a barren appearance. In places above the altitude of 11,000 feet, the mountains are covered with a profuse array of alpine vegetation. This is especially true of the wet meadows or soil covered sections that are continually watered by melting snows. In the neighborhood of a snowdrift at an altitude of 12,000 feet, I one day gathered in a small area 142 varieties of plants. Areas of eternal snows, though numerous, are small and with few exceptions above 12,000 feet. Here and there above Timberline are many small areas of Morland, which both in appearance and in vegetation seem to belong to the tundras of Siberia. While these mountains carry nearly 100 varieties of trees and shrubs, the more abundant kinds of tree number less than a score. These are scattered over the mountains between the altitudes of 6,000 and 12,000 feet, while charming and enlivening the entire mountain section are more than a thousand varieties of wildflowers. Birdlife is abundant on the Rockies. No state east of the Mississippi can show as great a variety as Colorado. Many species of birds well known in the east are found there, though generally they are in some ways slightly modified. Most Rocky Mountain birds sound their notes a trifle more loudly than their eastern relatives. Some of them are a little larger and many of them have their color slightly intensified. Many of the larger animals thrive on the slopes of the Rockies. Deer are frequently seen. Bobcats, mountain lions, and foxes leave many records. In September bears find the choke cherry bushes and, standing on their hind legs, feed eagerly on the cherries, leaves, and good-sized sections of the twigs. The groundhog apparently manages to live well, for he seems always fat. There is that wise little fellow the coyote. He probably knows more than he is given credit for knowing, and I am glad to say for him that I believe he does man more good than harm. He is a great destroyer of metamise. He digs out gophers. Sometimes his mill is made upon rabbits or grasshoppers, and I have seen him feeding upon wild plums. There are hundreds of ruins of the beaver's engineering works, countless dams and fillings he has made. On the upper St. Vrain he still maintains his picturesque, rustic home. Most of the present beaver homes are in high, secluded places, some of them at an altitude of eleven thousand feet. In mid-summer near most beaver homes one finds columbines, fringed blue gensions, orchids, and lupines blooming, while many of the ponds are green and yellow with pond lilies. During years of rambling I have visited and enjoyed all the celebrated parks of the Rockies, but one which shall be nameless is to me the loveliest of them all. The first view of it never fails to arouse the dullest traveler. From the entrance one looks down upon an irregular depression several miles in length, a small undulating and beautiful mountain valley, framed in peaks with purple forested sides and bristling snowy grandeur. This valley is delightfully open and has a picturesque sprinkling of pines over it, together with a few well-placed cliffs and crags. Its swift, clear, and winding brooks are fringed with birch and willow. A river crosses it with many a slow and splendid fold of silver. Not only is the park enchanting from the distance, but every one of its lakes and meadows, forests, and wild gardens has a charm and a grandeur of its own. There are lakes of many kinds, one named for the painter, now dead, who many times sketched and dreamed on its shores, is a beautiful ellipse, and its entire edge carries a purple shadow matting of the crowding forest. Its placid surface reflects peak and snow, cloud and sky, and mingling with these are the green and gold of Pond Lily Glory. Another lake is stowed away in an utterly wild place. It is in a rent between three granite peaks, three thousand feet of precipice bristle above it. Its shores are strewn with wreckage from the cliffs and crags above, and this is here and there cemented together with winter's drifted snow. Miniature icebergs float upon its surface. Around it are mossy spaces, beds of sedge, and scattered alpine flowers, which soften a little the fierce aspect of this impressive scene. On the western margin of the park is a third lake. This lake and its surroundings are of the highest alpine order. Snowline and treeline are just above it. Several broken and snowy peaks look down into it, and splendid spruces spire about its shores. Down to it from the heights and snows above comes water leaping in white glory. It is the center of a scene of wild grandeur that stirs in one strange depths of elemental feeling and wonderment. Up between the domes of one of the mountains is Gym Lake. It is only a little crystal pool set in ruddy granite with a few evergreens adorning its rocky shore. So far as I know it is the smallest area of water in the world that bears the name of Lake, and it is also one of the rarest gyms of the lakelit world. The tree distribution is most pleasing, and the groves and forests are a delight. Aged western yellow pines are sprinkled over the open areas of the park. They have genuine character, marked individuality. Stocky and strong-limbed, their golden brown bark broken into deep fissures and plateaus scarred with storm and fire. They make one think and dream more than any other tree on the Rockies. By the brooks, the clean and childlike aspens mingle with the willow and the alder, or the handsome silver spruce. Some slopes are spread with the green fleece of masked young lodgepole pines, and here and there are groves of Douglas spruce, far from their better home where rolls the Oregon. The splendid and spirey Engelman spruces climb the stern slopes eleven thousand feet above the ocean, where the weird timberline with its dwarfed and distorted trees shows the incessant line of battle between the woods and the weather. Every season, nearly one thousand varieties of beautiful wildflowers come to perfume the air and open their bannered bosoms to the sun. Many of these are of brightest color. They crowd the streams, wave on the hills, shine in the woodland vistas, and color the snow-edge. Daisy's, orchids, tiger lilies, fringe gensions, wild red roses, mariposes, rocky mountain columbines, hair-bells, and forget-me-nots adorn every space and nook. While only a few birds stay in the park the year round, there are scores of summer visitors who come here to bring up the babies and to enliven the air with song. Eagles soar the blue, and ptarmigan, pipettes, and sparrows live on the alpine moorlands. Thrushes fill the forest aisles with melody, and by the brooks the ever-joyful water-oozle mingles its music with the song of ever-hurring, ever-flowing waters. Among the many common birds are owls, meadowlarks, robins, wrens, magpies, bluebirds, chickadees, nut-hatches, and several members of the useful woodpecker family, together with the white-throated sparrow and the willowthrush. Speckled and rainbow trout dart in the streams. Mountain sheep climb and pose on the crags. Bear, deer, and mountain lions are still occasionally seen prowling the woods or hurrying across the meadows. The wise coyote is also seen darting under cover and is frequently heard during the night. Here among the evergreens is found that small and audacious bit of intensely interesting and animated life, the Douglas squirrel, and also one of the dearest of all small animals, the Mary chipmunk. Along the brooks are a few small beaver colonies, a straggling remnant of a once-numerous population. It is to be hoped that this picturesque and useful race will be allowed to extend its domain. The park has also a glacier, a small but genuine chip of the old block, the Ice King. The glacier is well worth visiting, especially late in summer, when the winter mantle is gone from its crevices, leaving revealed its blue-green ice and its many grottoes. It is every inch a glacier. There are other small glaciers above the park, but these glacial remnants, though interesting, are not as imposing as the glacial records, the old works which were deposited by the Ice King. The many kinds of moraines here display his formal occupation and activities. There are glaciated walls, polished surfaces, eroded basins, and numerous lateral moraines. One of the moraines is probably the largest and certainly one of the most interesting in the Rockies. It occupies about ten square miles on the eastern slope of the mountain. Above Timberline, this and other moraines seem surprisingly fresh and new, as though they have been formed only a few years, but below Treeline they are forested, and the accumulation of humus upon them shows that they have long been bearers of trees. The rugged peak looks down over all this wild garden and is a perpetual challenge to those who go up to the sky on the mountains. It is a grand old granite peak. There are not many mountains that require more effort from the climber, and few indeed can reward him with such a far-spreading and magnificent view. One of the most interesting and impressive localities in the Rockies lies around Mount Wetterhorn, Mount Coxcom, and Uncompogry Peak. Here I have found the birds confiding, and most wild animals so tame that it was a joy to be with them. But this was years ago, and now most of the wild animals are wilder and the birds have found that man will not bear acquaintance. Most of this region was recently embraced in the Uncompogry National Park. It has much for the scientist and nature lover. The mountain climber will find peaks to conquer and canyons to explore. The geologist will find many valuable stone manuscripts. The forester who interviews the trees will have from their tongues a story worth while, and here too are some of nature's best pictures for those who revel only in the lovely and the wild. It is a strikingly picturesque by-world where there are many illuminated and splendid fragments of nature's story. He who visits this section will first be attracted by an array of rock formations, and, wonder where he will, grotesque and beautiful shapes in stone will frequently attract and interest his attention. The rock formation is made up of mixtures of very unequally tempered rock metal, which weathers in strange, weird and impressive shapes. Much of this statuary is gigantic and uncouth, but some of it is beautiful. There are minarets, monoliths, domes, spires, and shapeless fragments. In places there are seemingly restive forms not entirely free from earth. Most of these figures are found upon the crests of the mountains, and many of the mountain ridges with their numerous spikes and gigantic monoliths, some of which are tilted perilously from the perpendicular, give one a feeling of awe. Some of the monoliths appear like broken, knotty tree trunks. Others stand straight and suggest the Egyptian obelisks. They hold rude, natural higher glyphics in relief. One mountain, which is known as Turret Top, is crowned with what from a distance seems to be a gigantic picket fence. This fence is formed by a row of monolithic stones. One of the most remarkable things connected with this strange locality is that its impressive landscapes may be overturned or blotted out, or new scenes may be brought forth in a day. The mountains do not stand a storm well. A hard rain will dissolve ridges, lay bare new strata, undermine and overturn cliffs. It seems almost a land of enchantment where old landmarks may disappear in a single storm, or an impressive landscape come forth in a night. Here the god of erosion works incessantly and rapidly, dissecting the earth and the rocks. During a single storm a hilltop may dissolve, a mountainside be fluted with sides, a grove be overturned and swept away by an avalanche, or a lake be buried forever. This rapid erosion of slopes and summits causes many changes and much upbuilding upon their bases. Gulches are filled, water courses invaded, rivers bent far to one side, and groves slowly buried alive. One night while I was in camp on the slope of Mt. Coxcomb a prolonged drought was broken by a very heavy rain. Within an hour after the rain started a large crag near the top of the peak fell and came crashing and rumbling down the slope. During the next two hours I counted the rumbling crash of forty others. I know not how many small avalanches may have slipped during this time that I did not hear. The next day I went about looking at the new landscapes and the strata laid bare by erosion and landslide. And up near the top of this peak I found a large, glaciated lava boulder. A lava boulder that has been shaped by the ice and has for a time found a resting place in a sedentary formation. Then been uplifted to near a mountaintop has a wonder story of its own. One day I came across a member of the United States Geological Survey who had lost his way. At my campfire that evening I asked him to hug facts and tell me a possible story of the glaciated lava boulder. The following is his account. The shaping of that boulder must have antedated by ages the shaping of the sphinx and its story, if acceptably told, would seem more like fancy than fact. If the boulder were to relate briefly its experiences it might say, I helped burn forests and strange cities as I came red hot from a volcano's throat and I was scarcely cool when disintegration brought flowers to cover my dead form. By and by a long, long winter came and toward the close of it I was sheared off, ground, pushed, rolled and rounded beneath the ice. Why are you grinding me up? I asked the glacier. To make food for the trees and flowers during the earth's next temperate epic it answered. One day a river swept me out of its delta and I rolled to the bottom of the sea. Here I lay, for I know not how long, with sand and boulders piling upon me. Here heat, weight and water fixed me in a stratum of materials that had accumulated below and above me. My stratum was displaced before it was thoroughly solidified and I felt myself slowly raised until I could look out over the surface of the sea. The waves at once began to wear me and they jumped up and tore at me until I was lifted above their reach. At last when I was many thousand feet above the waves I came to a standstill. Then my mountaintop was much higher than at present. For a long time I looked down upon a tropical world. I am now wondering if the ice king will come for me again. The Engelman spruce forest here is an exceptionally fine one and the geologist and I discussed it and trees in general. Some of the Indian tribes of the Rockies have traditions of a big fire about four centuries ago. There is some evidence of a general fire over the Rockies about the time that the Indians tradition places it. But in this forest there were no indications that there had ever been a fire. Trees were in all stages of growth and decay. Humus was deep. Here I found a stump of a Douglas spruce that was eleven feet high and about nine feet in diameter. It was so decayed that I could not decipher the rings of growth. This tree probably required at least a thousand years to reach maturity and many years must have elapsed for its wood to come to the present state of decay. Over this stump was spread the limbs of a live tree that was four hundred years of age. Trees have tongues and in this forest I interviewed many patriarchs, had stories from saplings, examined the moldy, musty records of many a family tree and dug up some buried history. The geologist wanted in story form a synopsis of what the records said and what the trees told me, so I gave him this account. We climbed in here some time after the retreat of the Last Ice King and found Aspen and Lodgepole pine in possession. These trees fought us for several generations, but we finally drove them out. For ages the Engelman's Bruce family has had undisputed possession of this slope. We stand amid three generations of moldering ancestors and beneath these is the sacred mold of older generations still. One spring when most of the present grown-up trees were very young, the robins as they flew north were heard talking of strange men who were exploring the West Indies. A few years later came the big fire over the Rockies which for months choked the sky with smoke. Fire did not get into our gulch, but from birds and bears which crowded into it we learned that straggling trees and a few groves on the Rockies were all that had escaped with their lives. Since we had been spared we all sent out our seed for tree colonies as rapidly as we could, and in so doing we received much help from the birds, the squirrels and the bears so that it was not long before we again had our plumes waving everywhere over the Rockies. About a hundred and sixty years ago an earthquake shook many of us down and wounded thousands of others with the rock bombardment from the cliffs. The drought a century ago was hard on us and many perished for water. Not long after the drought we began to see the trappers but they never did us any harm. Most of them were as careful of our temples as were the Indians. While the trappers still roamed there came a very snowy winter and snow slides mowed us down by the thousands. Many of us were long buried beneath the snow. The old trees became dreadfully alarmed and they feared that the Ice King was returning. For weeks they talked of nothing else, but in the spring when the mountainsides began to warm and pill off in earth avalanches we had a real danger to discuss. Shortly after the snowy winter the gold-seekers came with their fire-havoc. For fifty years we have done our best to hold our ground but beyond our galt relentless fire and flashing still together with the floods with which outraged nature seeks to revenge herself have slain the grand majority and much even of the precious dust of our ancestors has been washed away. With the exception of the night I had with the geologist my days and nights in this locality were spent entirely alone. The blaze of the campfire, moonlight, the music and movement of the winds, light and shade and the eloquence of silence all impressed me more deeply here than anywhere else I have ever been. Every day there was a beautiful play of light and shade and this was especially effective on the summits. The ever-changing light upon the serrated mountain crevice kept constantly altering their tone and outline. Black and white they stood in midday glare but a new grandeur was born when these tattered crags appeared above storm clouds. Fleeting glimpses of the crests threw a surging storm around strange feelings and one is at bay as though having just awakened amid the vast and vague on another planet. But when the long white evening light streams from the west between the middle of the sea and the black buttressed crags where the alpine glow, one's feelings are too deep for words. The wind sometimes flowed like a torrent across the ridges surging and ripping between the minarets then bearing down like an avalanche upon the purple-silvan ocean where it tossed the trees with boom, roar and wild commotion. I usually camped where it showed the most enthusiasm. Here I often enjoyed the songs or the fierce activities of the wind. The absence and the presence of wind ever stirred me strongly. Weird and strange are the feelings that flow as the wind sweep and sound through the trees. The storm king has a bugle at his lips and a deep elemental hymn is sung while the blast surges wild through the pines. Mother nature is quietly singing, singing soft and low while the wind blows. Mother nature is quietly singing, singing soft and low while the breezes pause and play in the pines. From the past one has been ever coming, with the future destined ever to go. Wind with centuries of worshipful silence one waits for the winds in the pines. Ever the good old world grows better both with songs and with silence in the pines. Here the energy and eloquence of silence was at its best while pervading presence called silence has its happy home within the forest. Silence sounds rhythmic to all and attunes all minds to the strange message, the rhapsody of the universe. Silence is almost as kind to mortals as its sweet sister, sleep. A primeval spruce forest crowds all the mountain slopes of the uncompogre region from an altitude of 8,000 feet to Timberline. So dense is this forest that only straggling bits of sunfire ever fall to the ground. Beneath these spirey, crowding trees one has only the twilight of the forest noon. This forest, when seen from nearby mountaintops, seems to be a great, ragged, purple robe hanging in folds from the snow fields, while down through it the white streams rush. A few crags pierce it, sun-filled grass-plots dot its expanse at intervals, and here and there it is rent with the vertical avalanche lane. Many a happy journey and delightful climb I have had at the mountains all alone by moonlight and in the uncompogre district I had many a moonlight ramble. I know what it is to be alone on high peaks with the moon and I have felt the spell that holds the lonely wanderer when on a still night he feels the wistful, tender touch of the summer air while the leaves whisper and listen in the moonlight and the moon-toned etchings of the pines fall upon the magic forest floor. One of the best moonlit times that I have had in this region was during my last visit to it. One October night I camped in a grass-plot in the depths of a spruce forest. The white moon rose grandly from behind the minareted mountain, hesitated for a moment among the tree-spires, then tranquilly floated up into space. It was a still night, there was silence in the treetops, the river nearby faintly murmured in repose. Everything was at rest, the grass-plot was full of romantic light and on its eastern margin was an edging of a spiery spruce. A dead and broken tree on the edge of the grass-plot looked like a weird prowler just out of the woods and seemed half inclined to come out into the light and speak to me. All was still. The moonlit mist clung fantastically to the mossy festoons of the fir trees. I was miles from the nearest human soul and as I stood in the enchanting scene amid the beautiful mellow light I seemed to have been wafted back into the legend-weaving age. The silence was softly evaded by zeffers whispering in the treetops and a few moonlit clouds that showed shadow-centre-boards came lazily drifting along the bases of the minarets as though they were looking for some place in particular although in no hurry to find it. Heavier cloud flotilla followed and these floated on the forest sea touching the treetops with the gentleness of a lover's hand. I lay down by my campfire to let my fancy frolic and fairest dreams come on. It was while camping once on the slope of Mt. Coxcom that I felt most strongly the spell of the campfire. I wish everyone could have a night by a campfire, by Mother Nature's old hearthstone. When one sits in the forest within the campfire's magic tent of light amid the silent, sculptured trees there go thrilling through one's blood all the trials and triumphs of our race the blazing wood, the ragged and changing flame the storms and calms, the mingling smoke and blaze the shadow figures that dance against the trees the scenes and figures in the fire. With these, though all are new and strange yet you feel at home once more in the woods. A campfire in the forest is the most enchanting place on life's highway by which to have a lodging for the night. End of Chapter 14 End of Wildlife on the Rockies by Enos A. Mills