EnosA.Mffls j
</
University of California Berkeley
(Enos 3U
YOUR NATIONAL PARKS. Illustrated.
THE STORY OF SCOTCH. Illustrated.
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN WONDERLAND.
Illustrated.
THE STORY OF A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE.
Illustrated.
IN BEAVER WORLD. Illustrated.
THE SPELL OF THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.
WILD LIFE ON THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
THE STORY OF A
THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
THE STORY OF A
THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
BY
ENOS A. MILLS
ILLUSTRATED
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
fctoergibe j
COPYRIGHT, IQOQ AND 1914, BY BNOS A. MILLS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ILLUSTRATIONS
A VETERAN WESTERN YELLOW PINE
Frontispiece
SOME OF " OLD PINE'S " NEIGHBORS . 8
CLIFF DWELLINGS ON THE MESA VERDE 24
THE MESA VERDE 36
THE STORY OF A
THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
THE peculiar charm and fascination
that trees exert over many people I
had always felt from childhood, but
it was that great nature-lover, John
Muir, who first showed me how and
where to learn their language. Few
trees, however, ever held for me such
an attraction as did a gigantic and
3
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
venerable yellow pine which I dis-
covered one autumn day several years
ago while exploring the southern
Rockies. It grew within sight of the
Cliff-Dwellers' Mesa Verde, which
stands at the corner of four States,
and as I came upon it one evening
just as the sun was setting over that
mysterious tableland, its character
and heroic proportions made an im-
pression upon me that I shall never
forget, and which familiar acquaint-
ance only served to deepen while it yet
lived and before the axeman came.
Many a time I returned to build my
camp-fire by it and have a day or a
night in its solitary and noble com-
pany. I learned afterwards that it had
been given the name "Old Pine," and
it certainly had an impressiveness
4
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
quite compatible with the age and dig-
nity which go with a thousand years
of life.
When, one day, the sawmill-man at
Mancos wrote, "Come, we are about
to log your old pine," I started at
once, regretting that a thing which
seemed to me so human, as well as so
noble, must be killed.
I went with the axemen who were
to cut the old pine down. A grand
and impressive tree he was. Never
have I seen so much individuality, so
much character, in a tree. Although
lightning had given him a bald crown,
he was still a healthy giant, and was
waving evergreen banners more than
one hundred and fifteen feet above the
earth. His massive trunk, eight feet in
diameter at the level of my breast,
5
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
was covered with a thick, rough, gol-
den-brown bark which was broken
into irregular plates. Several of his
arms were bent and broken. Alto-
gether, he presented a timeworn but
heroic appearance.
It is almost a marvel that trees
should live to become the oldest of
living things. Fastened in one place,
their struggle is incessant and severe.
From the moment a baby tree is born
from the instant it casts its tiny
shadow upon the ground until
death, it is in danger from insects and
animals. It cannot move to avoid
danger. It cannot run away to escape
enemies. Fixed in one spot, almost
helpless, it must endure flood and
drought, fire and storm, insects and
earthquakes, or die.
6
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
Trees, like people, struggle for exist-
ence, and an aged tree, like an aged
person, has not only a striking appear-
ance, but an interesting biography. I
have read the autobiographies of
many century-old trees, and have
found their life-stories strange and
impressive. The yearly growth, or an-
nual ring of wood with which trees en-
velop themselves, is embossed with so
many of their experiences that this
annual ring of growth literally forms
an autobiographic diary of the tree's
life.
I wanted to read Old Pine's auto-
biography. A veteran pine that had
stood on the southern Rockies and
struggled and triumphed through the
changing seasons of hundreds of years
must contain a rare life-story. From
7
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
his stand between the Mesa and the
pine-plumed mountain, he had seen
the panorama of the seasons and many
a strange pageant; he had beheld what
scenes of animal and human strife,
what storms and convulsions of na-
ture! Many a wondrous secret he had
locked within his tree soul. Yet, al-
though he had not recorded what he
had seen, I knew that he had kept a
fairly accurate diary of his own per-
sonal experience. This I knew the saw
would reveal, and this I had deter-
mined to see.
Nature matures a million conifer
seeds for each one she chooses for
growth, so we can only speculate as to
the selection of the seed from which
sprung this storied pine. It may be
that the cone in which it matured was
8
SOME OF U OLD PINE\s" NEIGHBORS
(Western Yellow Pines)
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
crushed into the earth by the hoof of
a passing deer. It may have been hid-
den by a jay; or, as is more likely,
the tree may have grown from one of
the uneaten cones which a squirrel
had buried for winter food. Fremont
squirrels are the principal nurserymen
for all the Western pineries. Each au-
tumn they harvest a heavy percent-
age of the cone crop and bury it for
winter. The seeds in the uneaten
cones germinate, and each year count-
less thousands of conifers grow from
the seeds planted by these squirrels.
It may be that the seed from which
Old Pine burst had been planted by
an ancient ancestor of the protest-
ing Fremont squirrel whom we found
that day in apparent possession of the
premises; or this seed may have been
9
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
in a cone which simply bounded or
blew into a hole, where the seed found
sufficient mould and moisture to give
it a start in life.
n
II
Two loggers swung their axes : at the
first blow a Fremont squirrel came out
of a hole at the base of a dead limb
near the top of the tree and made an
aggressive claim of ownership, setting
up a vociferous protest against the
cutting. As his voice was unheeded,
he came scolding down the tree,
13
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
jumped off one of the lower limbs, and
took refuge in a young pine that stood
near by. From time to time he came
out on the top of the limb nearest to
us, and, with a wry face, fierce whis-
kers, and violent gestures, directed a
torrent of abuse at the axemen who
were delivering death-blows to Old
Pine.
The old pine's enormous weight
caused him to fall heavily, and he
came to earth with tremendous force
and struck on an elbow of one of his
stocky arms. The force of the fall not
only broke the trunk in two, but badly
shattered it. The damage to the log
was so general that the sawmill-man
said it would not pay to saw it into
lumber and that it could rot on the
spot.
14
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
I had come a long distance for the
express purpose of deciphering Old
Pine's diary as the scroll of his life
should be laid open in the sawmill.
The abandonment of the shattered
form compelled the adoption of an-
other way of getting at his story. Re-
ceiving permission to do as I pleased
with his remains, I at once began to
cut and split both the trunk and the
limbs, and to transcribe their strange
records. Day after day I worked. I
dug up the roots and thoroughly dis-
sected them, and with the aid of a
magnifier I studied the trunk, the
roots, and the limbs.
I carefully examined the ba>se of his
stump, and in it I found ten hundred
and forty-seven rings of growth! He
tad lived through a thousand and
15
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
forty-seven memorable years. As he
was cut down in 1903, his birth pro-
bably occurred in 856.
In looking over the rings of growth,
I found that a few of them were much
thicker than the others; and these
thick rings, or coats of wood, tell of
favorable seasons. There were also a
few extremely thin rings of growth. In
places two and even three of these
were together. These were the results
of unfavorable seasons, of drought
or cold. The rings of trees also show
healed wounds, and tell of burns, bites,
and bruises, of torn bark and broken
arms. Old Pine not only received in-
juries in his early years, but from time
to time throughout his life. The some-
what kinked condition of several of
the rings of growth, beginning with
16
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
the twentieth, shows that at the age
of twenty he sustained an injury
which resulted in a severe curvature of
the spine, and that for some years he
was somewhat stooped. I was unable
to make out from his diary whether
this injury was the result of a tree or
some object falling upon him and pin-
ning him down, or whether his back
had been overweighted and bent by
wet, clinging snow. As I could find no
scars or bruises, I think that snow
must have been the cause of the in-
jury. However, after a few years he
straightened up with youthful vitality
and seemed to outgrow and forget the
experience.
A century of tranquil life followed,
and during these years the rapid
growth tells of good seasons as well as
17
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
good soil. This rapid growth also
shows that there could not have been
any crowding neighbors to share the
sun and the soil. The tree had grown
evenly in all quarters, and the pith of
the tree was in the center. But had
one tree grown close, on that quarter
the old pine would have grown slower
than on the others and have been
thinner, and the pith would thus have
been away from the tree's center.
When the old pine was just com-
pleting his one hundred and thirty-
fifth ring of growth, he met with an ac-
cident which I can account for only by
assuming that a large tree that grew
several yards away blew over, and in
falling, stabbed him in the side with
two dead limbs. His bark was broken
and torn, but this healed in due time.
18
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
Short sections of the dead limbs broke
off, however, and were embedded in
the old pine. Twelve years' growth
covered them, and they remained
hidden from view until my splitting
revealed them. Two other wounds
started promptly to heal and, with one
exception, did so.
A year or two later some ants and
borers began excavating their deadly
winding ways in the old pine. They
probably started to work in one of the
places injured by the falling tree.
They must have had some advantage,
or else something must have happened
to the nuthatches and chickadees that
year, for, despite the vigilance of these
birds, both the borers and the ants suc-
ceeded in establishing colonies that
threatened injury and possibly death.
19
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
Fortunately relief came. One day
the chief surgeon of all the Southwest-
ern pineries came along. This surgeon
was the Texas woodpecker. He prob-
ably did not long explore the ridges
and little furrows of the bark before he
discovered the wound or heard these
hidden insects working. After a brief
examination, holding his ear to the bark
for a moment to get the location of the
tree's deadly foe beneath, he was
ready to act. He made two successful
operations. Not only did these require
him to cut deeply into the old pine
and take out the borers, but he may
also have had to come back from time
to time to dress the wounds by de-
vouring the ant-colonies which may
have persisted in taking possession of
them. The wounds finally healed, and
20
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
only the splitting of the affected parts
revealed these records, all filled with
pitch and preserved for nearly nine
hundred years.
Following this, an even tenor
marked his life for nearly three cen-
turies. This quiet existence came to
an end in the summer of 1301, when a
stroke of lightning tore a limb out of
his round top and badly shattered a
shoulder. He had barely recovered
from this injury when a violent wind
tore off several of his arms. During
the summer of 1348 he lost two of his
largest arms. These were sound, and
more than a foot in diameter at the
points of breakage. As these were
broken by a down-pressing weight or
force, we may attribute the breaks to
accumulations of snow.
21
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
The oldest, largest portion of a tree
is the short section immediately above
the ground, and, as this lower section
is the most exposed to accidents or
to injuries from enemies, it generally
bears evidence of having suffered the
most. Within its scroll are usually
found the most extensive and inter-
esting autobiographical impressions.
It is doubtful if there is any portion
of the earth upon which there are so
many deadly struggles as upon the
earth around the trunk of a tree.
Upon this small arena there are bat-
tles fierce and wild; here nature is
"red in tooth and claw." When a tree
is small and tender, countless insects
come to feed upon it. Birds come to it
to devour these insects. Around the
tree are daily almost merciless fights
22
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
for existence. These death-struggles
occur not only in the daytime, but in
the night. Mice, rats, and rabbits de-
stroy millions of young trees. These
bold animals often flay baby trees in
the daylight, and while at their deadly
feast many a time have they been sur-
prised by hawks, and then they are at
a banquet where they themselves are
eaten. The owl, the faithful night-
watchman of trees, often swoops down
at night, and as a result some little
tree is splashed with the blood of the
very animal that came to feed upon it.
The lower section of Old Pine's
trunk contained records which I found
interesting. One of these in particular
aroused my imagination. I was sawing
off a section of this lower portion when
the saw, with a buzz-z-z-z, suddenly
23
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
jumped. The object struck was harder
than the saw. I wondered what it
could be, and, cutting the wood care-
fully away, laid bare a flint arrowhead.
Close to this one I found another, and
then with care I counted the rings of
growth to find out the year that these
had wounded Old Pine. The outer
ring which these arrowheads had
pierced was the six hundred and thir-
tieth, so that the year of this occur<
rence was 1486.
Had an Indian bent his bow and
shot at a bear that had stood at bay
backed up against this tree? Or was
there around this tree a battle among
Indian tribes? Is it possible that at
this place some Cliff-Dweller scouts
encountered their advancing foe from
the north and opened hostilities? It
24
w
Q
W
H
H
I
O
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
may be that around Old Pine was
fought the battle that is said to have
decided the fate of that mysterious
race, the Cliff-Dwellers. The imagina-
tion insists on speculating with these
two arrowheads, though they form a
fascinating clue that leads us to no
definite conclusion. But the fact re-
mains that Old Pine was wounded by
two Indian arrowheads some time
during his six hundred and thirtieth
summer.
The year that Columbus discovered
America, Old Pine was a handsome
giant with a round head held more
than one hundred feet above the earth.
He was six hundred and thirty-six
years old, and with the coming of the
Spanish adventurers his lower trunk
was given new events to record. The
25
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
year 1540 was a particularly memora-
ble one for him. This year brought the
first horses and bearded men into the
drama which was played around him.
This year, for the first time, he felt the
edge of steel and the tortures of fire.
The old chronicles say that the Span-
ish explorers found the cliff-houses in
the year 1540. I believe that during
this year a Spanish exploring party
may have camped beneath Old Pine
and built a fire against his instep, and
that some of the explorers hacked him
with an axe. The old pine had distinct
records of axe and fire markings during
the year 1540. It was not common for
the Indians of the West to burn or
mutilate trees, and it was common for
the Spaniards to do so, and as these
hackings in the tree seemed to have
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
been made with some edged tool
sharper than any possessed by the In-
dians, it at least seems probable that
they were made by the Spaniards.
At any rate, from the year 1540
until the day of his death, Old Pine
carried these scars on his instep.
As the average yearly growth of the
old pine was about the same as in trees
similarly situated at the present time,
I suppose that climatic conditions in
his early days must have been similar
to the climatic conditions of to-day.
His records indicate periods of even
tenor of climate, a year of extremely
poor conditions, occasionally a year
crowned with a bountiful wood har-
vest. From 1540 to 1762 I found little
of special interest. In 1762, however,
the season was not regular. After the
27
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
ring was well started, something, per-
haps a cold wave, for a time checked
his growth, and as a result the wood
for that one year resembled two years'
growth; yet the difference between
this double or false ring and a regular
one was easily detected. Old Pine's
"hard times" experience seems to
have been during the years 1804
and 1805. I think it probable that
those were years of drought. Dur-
ing 1804 the layer of wood was the
thinnest in his life, and for 1805 the
only wood I could find was a layer
which only partly covered the trunk
of the tree, and this was exceedingly
thin.
From time to time in the old pine's
record, I came across what seemed to
be indications of an earthquake shock;
28
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
but late in 1811 or early in 1812, I
think there is no doubt that he experi-
enced a violent shock, for he made ex-
tensive records of it. This earthquake
occurred after the sap had ceased to
flow in 1811, and before it began to
flow in the spring of 1812. In places
the wood was checked and shattered.
At one point, some distance from the
ground, there was a bad horizontal
break. Two big roots were broken in
two, and that quarter of the tree which
faced the cliffs had suffered from a rock
bombardment. I suppose the violence
of the quake displaced many rocks,
and some of these, as they came
bounding down the mountain-side,
collided with Old Pine. One, of about
five pounds' weight, struck him so
violently in the side that it remained
29
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
embedded there. After some years
the wound was healed over, but this
fragment remained in the tree until I
released it.
During 1859 some one made an axe-
mark on the old pine that may have
been intended for a trail-blaze, and
during the same year another fire
badly burned and scarred his ankle.
I wonder if some prospectors came
this way in 1859 and made camp by
him.
Another record of man's visits to the
tree was made in the summer of 1881,
when I think a hunting or outing
party may have camped near here and
amused themselves by shooting at a
mark on Old Pine's ankle. Several
modern rifle-bullets were found em-
bedded in the wood around or just be-
30
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
neath a blaze which was made on the
tree the same year in which the bullets
had entered it. As both these marks
were made during the year 1881, it is
at least possible that this year the old
pine was used as the background for a
target during a shooting contest.
While I was working over the old
pine, a Fremont squirrel who lived
near by used every day to stop in his
busy harvesting of pine-cones to look
on and scold me n As I watched him
placing his cones in a hole in the
ground under the pine-needles, I often
wondered if one of his buried cones
would remain there uneaten, to ger-
minate and expand ever green into the
air, and become a noble giant to live as
long and as useful a life as Old Pine. I
found myself trying to picture the
31
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
scenes in which this tree would stand
when the birds came singing back
from the Southland in the springtime
of the year 3000.
ni
AFTER I had finished my work of
splitting, studying, and deciphering
the fragments of the old pine, I went
to the sawmill and arranged for the
men to come over that evening after I
had departed, and burn every piece
and vestige of the venerable old tree.
I told them I should be gone by dark
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
on a trip to the summit of Mesa Verde,
where I was to visit a gnarled old
cedar- Then I went back and piled
into a pyramid every fragment of
root and trunk and broken branch.
Seating myself upon this pyramid, I
spent some time that afternoon gaz-
ing through the autumn sun-glow at
the hazy Mesa Verde, while my mind
rebuilt and shifted the scenes of the
long, long drama in which Old Pine
had played his part and of which he
had given us but a few fragmentary
records. I lingered there dreaming un-
til twilight. I thought of the cycles
during which he had stood patient in
his appointed place, and my imagina-
tion busied itself with the countless
experiences that had been recorded,
and the scenes and pageants he had
>
4
i
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
witnessed but of which he had made
no record. I wondered if he had en-
joyed the changing of seasons. I
knew that he had often boomed or
hymned in the storm or the breeze.
Many a monumental robe of snow-
flowers had he worn. More than a
thousand times he had beheld the
earth burst into bloom amid happy
songs of mating birds; hundreds of
times in summer he had worn count-
less crystal rain- jewels in the sunlight
of the breaking storm, while the bril-
liant rainbow came and vanished on
the near-by mountain-side. Ten thou-
sand times he had stood silent in the
lonely light of the white and mystic
moon.
Twilight was fading into darkness
when I arose and started on my night
37
A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE
journey for the summit of Mesa Verde.
When I arrived at the top of the Mesa,
I looked back and saw a pyramid of
golden flame standing out in the
darkness.
TVNews
OpenLibrary