While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I
discovered the path of a hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of
this species. Great and small had been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer
force, making a clean gap, like that made by a snow avalanche. But
hurricanes capable of doing this class of work are rare in the Sierra;
and when we have explored the forests from one extremity of the range to
the other, we are compelled to believe that they are the most beautiful
on the face of the earth, however we may regard the agents that have
made them so.
There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of
winds in the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind,
but in their varied water-like flow as manifested by the movements of
the trees, especially those of the conifers. By no other trees are they
rendered so extensively and impressively visible; not even by the lordly
tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gentlest breeze. The waving
of a forest of the giant Sequoias is indescribably impressive and
sublime; but the pines seem to me the best interpreters of winds.
Pages:
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527