There is little need for the goat to leave its steep sanctuaries; it can subsist on lichens and mosses if browse is not available. It depends on the inaccessibility of the cliffs for its security. Accidents, avalanches, and rockfall are greater enemies than predators. Golden eagles sometimes attempt to knock newborn kids from ledges and a young goat quickly retreats under its nanny when an eagle soars by. With the protection of sharp spike horns and a terrifying terrain, adult goats seldom fall victim to cougar or grizzly. It will be a long time before the snow releases this land and wapiti, bighorn, grizzly, and cougar wander back into these high basins. In this winter minimum of life, the spring songs of rosy finches, water pipits and white-crowned sparrows seem an impossible extravagance. ■ I am drawn to the spring tundra—to the vigor and tenacity of its sparse life—where survival itself seems ceremony enough. But it is a strange world, where a man is out of perspective. Here the plant cover is carpet-high, and distance, for the lack of trees, tricks the eye. Here the wind, snow, and sun quickly burn skin, and the intense light, reflected from snowbanks, stabs at the eyes. Almost instantly, a sandwich is sucked dry of its moisture. The desiccating wind probes the ears until it seems at last to pierce your brain. Except for fearful mountain walls the only shadow is your own. Animals seem somehow remote and unknowable, as if seen through glass. A day on the tundra and you feel the want of a company of trees. Yet once exposed, you acquire a craving for the look of tundra. Nowhere else is there such an impatience for spring—the flowers rush into bloom; the male water pipit soars, its skylark song crystal sharp in the thin air. The nesting birds are restless, for sun-days and warm days are few, precious, and quickly spent. Insects and spiders abound—flying about the peaks or crawling among the rocks. Summer brings bands of bighorn rams up from the valley to explore the highest meadows. Though not so sure-footed as the goats, they too have hoofs adapted to climbing steep faces, and they walk the slopes not far below the goats. Marmots, which whistle sharply when threatened, spend their days sunbathing and grazing; they must fill out their now loose-hanging fur coats with life-sustaining fat for the coming winter. Alpine animals are blessed with mobility and can choose their weathers, retreating to burrow, den, or rock-harbor to escape the worst fury of storms. But what about the plants, rooted forever in one spot, assaulted by an untempered sun and a drying wind, and facing the almost daily threat of freeze and storm?