The flashlight beam probed ahead along the trail. The exposed roots were given unnatural shading and they seemed to thicken and squirm as I approached. On either side the tree trunks appeared to step backward from the dim glow of the light. I felt lost in this night, thinking of the great darkness in all the timbered ridges that ran westward from the Divide. In this vast cathedral of crowded tree and peak, night was stood on end, the stars shrunken to a circle overhead, as if seen from the bottom of a well. Mouselike, shivering, insignificant in this wilderness, I scurried back to find a fire and fill my empty senses with its heat and snap and light, holding off the fright of night and thinking of tomorrow’s sun. Scrub-Forest The crowning beauty of Glacier—the high, cirqueheld meadows that scent the wind with wildflower and waterfall—belongs to the zone of scrub-forest. At Logan Pass you are introduced to the highlands. Here an exquisite upland basin holds the Hanging Gardens, a wildflower-clothed gradient laced with stair-step bogs and lines of wind-bent subalpine fir. In the dawn sun, before the first engine noise, it shines unbroken, dewbright and sagging like a spider web secured to the circle of surrounding peaks. This is the region the hiker remembers best. The tall mountains wear this zone close to the cliffs, and the trails encounter it near the passes or follow it for long, level stretches, as along the Garden Wall. I remember Preston Park and Fifty Mountain, the fire-touched bench of Granite Park and the first sight of Sperry chalet, built on a brow of rock at the upper reach of trees. But most of all I remember the terrible waterfall that becomes Bowman Creek, the plunge of nearly a kilometer that drains the magnificent upland bench called Hole-in-the-Wall. Hole-in-the-Wall September. The season is growing late, the meadow-rue dying and the leaves of the wild strawberry failing at last. Everywhere the red contagion of autumn surrounds the vital green. The lower valleys have lost the whistle of ground squirrels. They sun themselves no longer these late, mild days. Ripe, sluggish, and hawk-vulnerable, they sensed the need of hibernation. It has been eight years since I last visited Hole-in-the-Wall, but I retain its dimensions and hear its dozen waterfalls at will. Once you have seen this basin you have a measure by which to judge the high country and a thirst for the meadows at tree-line. In Glacier, treelimit ranges between 1,850 and 2,300 meters, depending on local conditions. The upper limit of tree growth—rarely an even, horizontal line—is generally an indistinct band running erratically across a mountain’s face: a tension zone reflecting variations in wind and sun exposure, degree of slope, snowpack accumulations, and the presence of adequate soil and water.