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The Land of Little Rain-Part12_Mary Hunter Austin(1868-1934)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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in such unpromising surroundings there is a choice of locations.

There is never going to be any communism of mountain herbage, their



affinities are too sure. Full in the tunnels of snow water on

gravelly, open spaces in the shadow of a drift, one looks to find



buttercups, frozen knee-deep by night, and owning no desire but to

ripen their fruit above the icy bath. Soppy little plants of the



portulaca and small, fine ferns shiver under the drip of falls and

in dribbling crevices. The bleaker the situation, so it is near a



stream border, the better the cassiope loves it. Yet I

have not found it on the polished glacier slips, but where the



country rock cleaves and splinters in the high windy headlands that

the wild sheep frequents, hordes and hordes of the white bells



swing over matted, mossy foliage. On Oppapago, which is also

called Sheep Mountain, one finds not far from the beds of cassiope



the ice-worn, stony hollows where the big-horns cradle their young.

These are above the wolf's quest and the eagle's wont, and though



the heather beds are softer, they are neither so dry nor so warm,

and here only the stars go by. No other animal of any pretensions



makes a habitat of the alpine regions. Now and then one gets a

hint of some small, brown creature, rat or mouse kind, that slips



secretly among the rocks; no others adapt themselves to desertness

of aridity or altitude so readily as these ground inhabiting,



graminivorous species. If there is an open stream the trout go up

the lake as far as the water breeds food for them, but the ousel



goes farthest, for pure love of it.

Since no lake can be at the highest point, it is possible to



find plant life higher than the water borders; grasses perhaps the

highest, gilias, royal blue trusses of polymonium, rosy plats of



Sierra primroses. What one has to get used to in flowers at high

altitudes is the bleaching of the sun. Hardly do they hold their



virgin color for a day, and this early fading before their function

is performed gives them a pitiful appearance not according



with their hardihood. The color scheme runs along the high ridges

from blue to rosy purple, carmine and coral red; along the water



borders it is chiefly white and yellow where the mimulus makes a

vivid note, running into red when the two schemes meet and mix



about the borders of the meadows, at the upper limit of the

columbine.



Here is the fashion in which a mountain stream gets down from

the perennial pastures of the snow to its proper level and identity



as an irrigating ditch. It slips stilly by the glacier scoured rim

of an ice bordered pool, drops over sheer, broken ledges to another



pool, gathers itself, plunges headlong on a rocky ripple slope,

finds a lake again, reinforced, roars downward to a pothole, foams



and bridles, glides a tranquil reach in some still meadow, tumbles

into a sharp groove between hill flanks, curdles under the stream



tangles, and so arrives at the open country and steadier going.

Meadows, little strips of alpinefreshness, begin before the



timberline is reached. Here one treads on 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




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