Here, too, we find
the best of the garden-meadows full of lilies. A dry spot a little
way back from the margin of a silver fir lily-garden makes a glorious
camp-ground, especially where the slope is toward the east with a view
of the distant peaks along the summit of the Range. The tall lilies are
brought forward most impressively like visitors by the light of your
camp-fire and the nearest of the trees with their whorled branches tower
above you like larger lilies and the sky seen through the garden-opening
seems one vast meadow of white lily stars.
The Two-Leaved Pine
The Two-Leaved Pine (Pinus contorta, var. Murrayana), above the Silver
Fir zone, forms the bulk of the alpine forests up to a height of from
8000 to 9500 feet above the sea, growing in beautiful order on moraines
scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared with the
giants of the lower regions this is a small tree, seldom exceeding a
height of eighty or ninety feet. The largest I ever measured was ninety
feet high and a little over six feet in diameter. The average height of
mature trees throughout the entire belt is probably not far from fifty
or sixty feet with a diameter of two feet. It is a well-proportioned,
rather handsome tree with grayish-brown bark and crooked, much-divided
branches which cover the greater part of the trunk, but not so densely
as to prevent it being seen.
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