THE visitor will not forget the aspens in the Rocky
Mountain National Park. Their white trunks and branches and their
luxuriant bright green foliage are never out of sight. A trail through
an aspen thicket is a path of delight.
Because of the unusual aspen growths, the region is
the favored home of beavers, who make the tender bark their principal
food. Beaver dams block countless streams and beaver houses emerge from
the still ponds above. In some retired spots the engineering feats of
generations of beaver families may be traced in all their considerable
range.
Nowhere is the picturesqueness of timber line more
quickly and more easily seen. A horse after early breakfast, a steep
mountain trail, an hour of unique enjoyment, and one may be back for
late luncheon.
Eleven thousand feet up, the winter struggles between
trees and icy gales are grotesquely exhibited.
The first sight of luxuriant Engelmann spruces
creeping closely upon the ground instead of rising a hundred and fifty
feet straight and true as masts is not soon forgotten. Many stems strong
enough to partly defy the winters' gales grow bent in half circles.
Others, starting straight in shelter of some large rock, bend at right
angles where they emerge above it. Many succeed in lifting their trunks
but not in growing branches except in their lee, thus suggesting great
evergreen dust brushes.
|