Not until we have passed the Loop and are moving past the blackened snags of a recent burn do we realize the stature of this forest. The long road down will take us into a valley much deeper than any on the eastern side. Near Avalanche Creek are trees we have seen nowhere else in the park—giant western redcedars, western hemlocks with their nodding tops, monstrous black cottonwoods with bark so deeply furrowed that it looks hewn by hatchet. We take a long ride down the valley, past the low pyramid of Mt. Stanton, final peak in the Livingston Range. Near the outlet end of Lake McDonald, birch and aspen again appear in numbers, and the road enters a crowded stand of lodgepole pine. Our memories cluttered with mountains, waterfalls, and snowfields, we do not quite realize the significance of this 80-kilometer journey. We have crossed the boundaries of several different plant-and-animal communities, spanning a range of climate that would be encountered on a 5,000-kilometer north-south journey at sea level. At first glance the various trees, wildflowers, and animals seem randomly distributed, scattered about like the distant mountains. But mountainous terrain represents an organized high-rise approach to life. From the lowest, most protected valley to the highest wind-and-ice-cut summit, the life-forms align themselves, each according to its own climatic tolerance. Here too can be seen the great cycles of nature: fire and regrowth, the building of soil and its erosion, the incessant duel of the eaters and the eaten. In the following sections we will spend some time in these various communities, from prairie to tundra. Groves and Grasslands: The Prairie Sea There is something about spring on the prairie that gets me up before dawn. I like to watch the seasons change their guard over the landscape, from the wintry cold of pre-dawn dark to the spring-scented morning air to the hot summer-foretaste of the noon May sun. Hoarfrost surrounds these patches of pasqueflowers, blue goblets on downy stems. On this windless night, frost has formed everywhere, reclaiming for a time its vast winter range, sparkling over the green handiworks of spring. But the god of the growing grasslands is the sun, and it now proclaims itself, stretching out to make the mountains shine. With its assault the frost collapses, becoming bright beads on grass tip and leaf joint by which a beetle might refresh itself. Spring is best perceived ant-level, at its ground beginnings, where the bright yellow-green tips of new grass shoots reclaim the winter-blighted land. I look closely at a drag line of spider silk; a necklace of dewdrops slides down, collects to a moment’s greatness, in which I briefly see a curved horizon, the morning sunburst, and myself, before it falls away.