The Spell of the Rockies — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Spell of the Rockies
John Stuart Mill · en
Scores of aspens were felled in the grove where the notched ones were.
They were trimmed, cut into sections, and limbs, logs, and all taken
over the route of the one I had followed, and at last placed in a pile
beside the big house. This harvest gathering went on for a month. All
about was busy, earnest preparation for winter. The squirrels from the
tree-tops kept a rattling rain of cones on the leaf-strewn forest
floor, the cheery chipmunk foraged and frolicked among the withered
leaves and plants, while aspens with leaves of gold fell before the
ivory sickles of the beaver. Splendid glimpses, grand views, I had of
this strange harvest-home. How busy the beavers were! They were busy
in the grove on the steep mountainside; they tugged logs along the
runways; they hurried them across the water-basins, wrestled with them
in canals, and merrily piled them by the rude house in the water. And
I watched them through the changing hours; I saw their shadowy
activity in the starry, silent night; I saw them hopefully leave home
for the harvest groves in the serene twilight, and I watched them
working busily in the light of the noonday sun.
Most of the aspens were cut off between thirteen and fifteen inches
above the ground. A few stumps were less than five inches high, while
a number were four feet high. These high cuttings were probably made
from reclining trunks of lodged aspens which were afterward removed.
The average diameter of the aspens cut was four and one half inches at
the top of the stump. Numerous seedlings of an inch diameter were cut,
and the largest tree felled for this harvest measured fourteen inches
across the stump. This had been laid low only a few hours before I
found it, and a bushel of white chips and cuttings encircled the
lifeless stump like a wreath. In falling, the top had become entangled
in an alder thicket and lodged six feet from the ground. It remained
in this position for several days and was apparently abandoned; but
the last time I went to see it the alders which upheld it were being
cut away. Although the alders were thick upon the ground, only those
which had upheld the aspen had been cut. It may be that the beaver
which felled them looked and thought before they went ahead with the
cutting.
Why had this and several other large aspens been left uncut in a place
where all were convenient for harvest? All other neighboring aspens
were cut years ago. One explanation is that the beaver realized that
the tops of the aspens were entangled and interlocked in the limbs of
crowding spruces and would not fall if cut off at the bottom. This and
one other were the only large ones that were felled, and the tops of
these had been recently released by the overturning of some spruces
and the breaking of several branches on others. Other scattered large
aspens were left uncut, but all of these were clasped in the arms of
near-by spruces.