Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1875 — Summer in the Sierras. [ARTICLE]

Summer in the Sierras.

Mr. John Muir, the California State Geologist, in an interesting letter from Mono Lake to the San Francisco Bulletin, gives the following picture of summer scenes in the solitudes of the Sierras: “ Throughout ail this glorious region there is nothing that so constantly interests and challenges the admiration of the traveler as the belts of the forest through which he passes in regular order. From’ some bare, commanding hilltop we are favored with grand outlooks over miles of dark green woods,.not planted in widefielded masses, but drawn out in lace-like patterns, in curves and straight lines, that cross and recross in endless variety of arrangement, with its ridges and domes of bald gray granite between them, the area of the naked rocks greatly surpassing that of the forests. Here and there a fleck of green meadow comes into view, or the sparkle of a stream, or mirrow-like gleam of a lakelet. Hooker tells us that all the cedars of Lebanon are growing upon moraine soil; so also in general terms are all the forests of the Sierra. If after the recession of the ancient glaciers our forests had been compelled to wait for soil to be rusted and crumbled from them by the slow action of the atmosphere, they would not at this date have scarce a shadow of their present grandeur. Here and there a tree would be found clinging to rifts in the glacial pavement and a few groves would find sufficient soil in shallow and lake basins filled with sand, but these luxuriant forest belts, forming the crowning glory of the mountains, would have no existence. As it was, the glaciers furrowed the solid rocks, turning and mixing the detritus and leaving it in just that condition most favorable for the food of forests, and in conjunction with climate bringing about their present magnificence as a necessary result. “ Few travelers will take the time to trace out the order of distribution or the history of the various forests, but no one will weary in admiring special trees. Finns lambertiana (sugar pine) is the acknowledged king of pines, and mafly a volume might be filled with the history of its development from the brown, whirlingwinged seed nut to its ripe and god-like old age; the quantity and range of its individuality, its gesture in storms, or while sleeping in summer light, the quality of its sugar and nuts and glossy fragrant wood. “ There stands a specimen 250 feet high, eight feet in diameter, with a smooth, purplish trunk, exquisitely tapered, and with graceful, spreading, down-curving branches forty feet long, terminated by cone tassels adjusted with reference to size, distribution and color, as if made for beauty only. Could such a pine be carried from its woods to wave and sing and toss its giant arms in some central city park, all would flock to see it as a wonder of the world.

“It is almost universally conceded by those who are so happy as to have eaten the sugar that it is the most delicious of known sweets, far surpassing the best maple sugar. It exudes from wounds made either by fire or the ax in the heartwood, forming white, crispy, candy-like kernels from the size of peas to hazel-nuts, and contains just enough of a spicy, balsamic flavor to render it pleasingly and becomingly piney. “ The largest full-grown cones measure about seventeen or eighteen inches in length, though one in my possession measures two feet. A single cone yields nuts enough to make a good square meal for an Indian. They climb the more accessible of the trees and beat off the cones while they are yet green, then roast them slightly, thus opening the scales and exposing the nuts; but owing to the difficulties in the way of climbing the trees and reaching out to the end of the long branches this nut forms but a small portion of their food. “ Happy is the man with the will and the time to climb a silver fir in full flower and fruit. How. admirable the forest work of nature is seen to be as one ascends from branch to branch, all arranged in regular collars around the trunk, one above the other like the leaves of lilies, and with each branch and branchlet about as strictly pinnate as the most exact and symmetrical fern friend! There is also the added beauty of the sterile or stamiuate conelets, growing straight downward from the under sides of the branches in lavish profusion, and coloring the whole tree in delightful purple. On the topmost, branches are found the fertile cones six inches long, three in diameter, covered with fine grayish brown, standing bolt upright like small caskets, and all dripping with delicious crystal balsam. The seeds are furnished with rose-purple wings with which to fly to their appointed growing places in the groves, and are filled with an exceedingly pungent aromatic oil. The Douglass squirrel feeds largely on these seeds, -which may account for the flashing-lightning energy with which he is pervaded. Lnder favorable conditions the silver fir attains to venerable old age, seldom dying before approaching or exceeding 250 years.”