a carpet of dwarf willows, downy catkins of creditable size and the
greatest economy of foliage and stems. No other plant of high altitudes
knows its business so well. It hugs the ground, grows roots from stem
joints where no roots should be, grows a slender leaf or two and twice
as many erect full catkins that rarely, even in that short growing
season, fail of fruit. Dipping over banks in the inlets of the creeks,
the fortunate find the rosy apples of the miniature manzanita, barely,
but always quite sufficiently, borne above the spongy sod. It does not
do to be anything but humble in the alpine regions, but not fearful. I
have pawed about for hours in the chill sward of meadows where one might
properly expect to get one's death, and got no harm from it, except it
might be Oliver Twist's complaint. One comes soon after this to shrubby
willows, and where willows are trout may be confidently looked for in
most Sierra streams. There is no accounting for their distribution;
though provident anglers have assisted nature of late, one still comes
upon roaring brown waters where trout might very well be, but are not.

The highest limit of conifers--in the middle Sierras, the white bark
pine--is not along the water border. They come to it about the level of
the heather, but they have no such affinity for dampness as the tamarack
pines. Scarcely any bird-note breaks the stillness of the timber-line,
but chipmunks inhabit here, as may be guessed by the gnawed ruddy cones
of the pines, and lowering hours the woodchucks come down to the water.
On a little spit of land running into Windy Lake we found one summer the
evidence of a tragedy; a pair of sheep's horns not fully grown caught in
the crotch of a pine where the living sheep must have lodged them.
The trunk of the tree had quite closed over them, and the skull bones
crumbled away from the weathered horn cases. We hoped it was not too
far out of the running of night prowlers to have put a speedy end to the
long agony, but we could not be sure. I never liked the spit of Windy
Lake again.

It seems that all snow nourished plants count nothing so excellent in
their kind as to be forehanded with their bloom, working secretly to
that end under the high piled winters. The heathers begin by the lake
borders, while little sodden drifts still shelter under their branches.
I have seen the tiniest of them (Kalmia glauca) blooming, and with
well-formed fruit, a foot away from a snowbank