f that uncharted sea
of peaks! That was my boyish ambition! that was what led me westward,
that was what lured me on and on! And my field of exploration was
limitless--one peak conquered, there was always another just beyond, a
little higher, a little harder, waiting to be climbed. The wilder the
region the greater was its fascination for me. No matter how
difficult, how slow my progress, it never became tedious--there was
always the unexpected, the mysterious, as a guarantee against monotony.

Timberline always interested me and those vast, naked plateaus above it
never ceased to move me to wonder--miles and miles of great, granite
desert, up-flung into space. The very tip-top of the world. I used to
marvel that so much of the earth was waste. It was an everlasting
enigma.

Timberline was not all grotesque trees with bleak winds forever
scourging them. In late summer, it was a veritable hanging garden.
Sweet blue and pink forget-me-nots hid in the moss of its bowlders,
Edelweiss starred its stony trails. King's crown, alpine primrose, and
many other flowers nodded a gracious welcome.

And just below it, what a riot of bloom there was! I had learned, oft
to my inconvenience, that the higher the altitude the greater the
precipitation. Around and just below timberline are many lakes, and
miles of marshy, boggy land. On those first winter excursions to the
heights I marveled at the deep snowdrifts banked in the heavy Englemann
forests just below timberline. Long after the last white patch had
melted or evaporated from the exposed slopes, these sheltered drifts
would lie undiminished and when summer really came, they gave birth to
scores of trickling rills. Vegetation sprang up in that moist,
needle-mulched soil as luxuriant as any in the tropics. From the time
the furry anemone lifted its lavender-blue petals above the dwindling
snow patch, until the apples formed on the wild rose bushes and the
kinnikinic berries turned red, it was a continuous nosegay. Indian
paintbrush, marigolds, blue and white columbines as big as my hand and
nearly as high as my head, fragile orchids, hiding their heads in the
dusky dells, thousands of varieties I never knew or learned. Some few
I recognized as glorified cousins of my Kansas acquaintances. The
denser towering spruce forests sheltered them, conserved the moisture,
and scattered their needles over their winter beds.

In spite of the Parson's experienced advice on