Title: The Story of a Thousand-Year Pine
Author: Mills, Enos A.
Language: English
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    THE STORY OF A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE

    BY

    ENOS A. MILLS


    ILLUSTRATED


    BOSTON AND NEW YORK
    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
    The Riverside Press Cambridge


    COPYRIGHT, 1909 AND 1914, BY ENOS A. MILLS

    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



    ILLUSTRATIONS


    A VETERAN WESTERN YELLOW PINE       _Frontispiece_

    SOME OF “OLD PINE’S” NEIGHBORS                   8

    CLIFF DWELLINGS ON THE MESA VERDE               24

    THE MESA VERDE                                  36



THE STORY OF A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE



I


The peculiar charm and fascination that trees exert over many people I
had always felt from childhood, but it was that great nature-lover,
John Muir, who first showed me how and where to learn their language.
Few trees, however, ever held for me such an attraction as did a
gigantic and venerable yellow pine which I discovered one autumn day
several years ago while exploring the southern Rockies. It grew within
sight of the Cliff-Dwellers’ Mesa Verde, which stands at the corner of
four States, and as I came upon it one evening just as the sun was
setting over that mysterious tableland, its character and heroic
proportions made an impression upon me that I shall never forget, and
which familiar acquaintance only served to deepen while it yet lived
and before the axeman came. Many a time I returned to build my
camp-fire by it and have a day or a night in its solitary and noble
company. I learned afterwards that it had been given the name “Old
Pine,” and it certainly had an impressiveness quite compatible with
the age and dignity which go with a thousand years of life.

When, one day, the sawmill-man at Mancos wrote, “Come, we are about to
log your old pine,” I started at once, regretting that a thing which
seemed to me so human, as well as so noble, must be killed.

I went with the axemen who were to cut the old pine down. A grand and
impressive tree he was. Never have I seen so much individuality, so
much character, in a tree. Although lightning had given him a bald
crown, he was still a healthy giant, and was waving evergreen banners
more than one hundred and fifteen feet above the earth. His massive
trunk, eight feet in diameter at the level of my breast, was covered
with a thick, rough, golden-brown bark which was broken into irregular
plates. Several of his arms were bent and broken. Altogether, he
presented a timeworn but heroic appearance.

It is almost a marvel that trees should live to become the oldest of
living things. Fastened in one place, their struggle is incessant and
severe. From the moment a baby tree is born--from the instant it casts
its tiny shadow upon the ground--until death, it is in danger from
insects and animals. It cannot move to avoid danger. It cannot run
away to escape enemies. Fixed in one spot, almost helpless, it must
endure flood and drought, fire and storm, insects and earthquakes, or
die.

Trees, like people, struggle for existence, and an aged tree, like an
aged person, has not only a striking appearance, but an interesting
biography. I have read the autobiographies of many century-old trees,
and have found their life-stories strange and impressive. The yearly
growth, or annual ring of wood with which trees envelop themselves, is
embossed with so many of their experiences that this annual ring of
growth literally forms an autobiographic diary of the tree’s life.

I wanted to read Old Pine’s autobiography. A veteran pine that had
stood on the southern Rockies and struggled and triumphed through the
changing seasons of hundreds of years must contain a rare life-story.
From his stand between the Mesa and the pine-plumed mountain, he had
seen the panorama of the seasons and many a strange pageant; he had
beheld what scenes of animal and human strife, what storms and
convulsions of nature! Many a wondrous secret he had locked within his
tree soul. Yet, although he had not recorded what he had _seen_, I
knew that he had kept a fairly accurate diary of his own personal
experience. This I knew the saw would reveal, and this I had
determined to see.

Nature matures a million conifer seeds for each one she chooses for
growth, so we can only speculate as to the selection of the seed from
which sprung this storied pine. It may be that the cone in which it
matured was crushed into the earth by the hoof of a passing deer.
It may have been hidden by a jay; or, as is more likely, the tree may
have grown from one of the uneaten cones which a squirrel had buried
for winter food. Frémont squirrels are the principal nurserymen for
all the Western pineries. Each autumn they harvest a heavy percentage
of the cone crop and bury it for winter. The seeds in the uneaten
cones germinate, and each year countless thousands of conifers grow
from the seeds planted by these squirrels. It may be that the seed
from which Old Pine burst had been planted by an ancient ancestor of
the protesting Frémont squirrel whom we found that day in apparent
possession of the premises; or this seed may have been in a cone
which simply bounded or blew into a hole, where the seed found
sufficient mould and moisture to give it a start in life.

[Illustration: SOME OF “OLD PINE’S” NEIGHBORS (Western Yellow Pines)]



II


Two loggers swung their axes: at the first blow a Frémont squirrel
came out of a hole at the base of a dead limb near the top of the tree
and made an aggressive claim of ownership, setting up a vociferous
protest against the cutting. As his voice was unheeded, he came
scolding down the tree, jumped off one of the lower limbs, and took
refuge in a young pine that stood near by. From time to time he came
out on the top of the limb nearest to us, and, with a wry face, fierce
whiskers, and violent gestures, directed a torrent of abuse at the
axemen who were delivering death-blows to Old Pine.

The old pine’s enormous weight caused him to fall heavily, and he came
to earth with tremendous force and struck on an elbow of one of his
stocky arms. The force of the fall not only broke the trunk in two,
but badly shattered it. The damage to the log was so general that the
sawmill-man said it would not pay to saw it into lumber and that it
could rot on the spot.

I had come a long distance for the express purpose of deciphering Old
Pine’s diary as the scroll of his life should be laid open in the
sawmill. The abandonment of the shattered form compelled the adoption
of another way of getting at his story. Receiving permission to do as
I pleased with his remains, I at once began to cut and split both the
trunk and the limbs, and to transcribe their strange records. Day
after day I worked. I dug up the roots and thoroughly dissected them,
and with the aid of a magnifier I studied the trunk, the roots, and
the limbs.

I carefully examined the base of his stump, and in it I found ten
hundred and forty-seven rings of growth! He had lived through a
thousand and forty-seven memorable years. As he was cut down in 1903,
his birth probably occurred in 856.

In looking over the rings of growth, I found that a few of them were
much thicker than the others; and these thick rings, or coats of wood,
tell of favorable seasons. There were also a few extremely thin rings
of growth. In places two and even three of these were together. These
were the results of unfavorable seasons,--of drought or cold. The
rings of trees also show healed wounds, and tell of burns, bites, and
bruises, of torn bark and broken arms. Old Pine not only received
injuries in his early years, but from time to time throughout his
life. The somewhat kinked condition of several of the rings of growth,
beginning with the twentieth, shows that at the age of twenty he
sustained an injury which resulted in a severe curvature of the spine,
and that for some years he was somewhat stooped. I was unable to make
out from his diary whether this injury was the result of a tree or
some object falling upon him and pinning him down, or whether his back
had been overweighted and bent by wet, clinging snow. As I could find
no scars or bruises, I think that snow must have been the cause of the
injury. However, after a few years he straightened up with youthful
vitality and seemed to outgrow and forget the experience.

A century of tranquil life followed, and during these years the rapid
growth tells of good seasons as well as good soil. This rapid growth
also shows that there could not have been any crowding neighbors to
share the sun and the soil. The tree had grown evenly in all quarters,
and the pith of the tree was in the center. But had one tree grown
close, on that quarter the old pine would have grown slower than on
the others and have been thinner, and the pith would thus have been
away from the tree’s center.

When the old pine was just completing his one hundred and thirty-fifth
ring of growth, he met with an accident which I can account for only
by assuming that a large tree that grew several yards away blew over,
and in falling, stabbed him in the side with two dead limbs. His bark
was broken and torn, but this healed in due time. Short sections of
the dead limbs broke off, however, and were embedded in the old pine.
Twelve years’ growth covered them, and they remained hidden from view
until my splitting revealed them. Two other wounds started promptly to
heal and, with one exception, did so.

A year or two later some ants and borers began excavating their deadly
winding ways in the old pine. They probably started to work in one of
the places injured by the falling tree. They must have had some
advantage, or else something must have happened to the nuthatches and
chickadees that year, for, despite the vigilance of these birds, both
the borers and the ants succeeded in establishing colonies that
threatened injury and possibly death.

Fortunately relief came. One day the chief surgeon of all the
Southwestern pineries came along. This surgeon was the Texas
woodpecker. He probably did not long explore the ridges and little
furrows of the bark before he discovered the wound or heard these
hidden insects working. After a brief examination, holding his ear to
the bark for a moment to get the location of the tree’s deadly foe
beneath, he was ready to act. He made two successful operations. Not
only did these require him to cut deeply into the old pine and take
out the borers, but he may also have had to come back from time to
time to dress the wounds by devouring the ant-colonies which may have
persisted in taking possession of them. The wounds finally healed,
and only the splitting of the affected parts revealed these records,
all filled with pitch and preserved for nearly nine hundred years.

Following this, an even tenor marked his life for nearly three
centuries. This quiet existence came to an end in the summer of 1301,
when a stroke of lightning tore a limb out of his round top and badly
shattered a shoulder. He had barely recovered from this injury when a
violent wind tore off several of his arms. During the summer of 1348
he lost two of his largest arms. These were sound, and more than a
foot in diameter at the points of breakage. As these were broken by a
down-pressing weight or force, we may attribute the breaks to
accumulations of snow.

The oldest, largest portion of a tree is the short section immediately
above the ground, and, as this lower section is the most exposed to
accidents or to injuries from enemies, it generally bears evidence of
having suffered the most. Within its scroll are usually found the most
extensive and interesting autobiographical impressions.

It is doubtful if there is any portion of the earth upon which there
are so many deadly struggles as upon the earth around the trunk of a
tree. Upon this small arena there are battles fierce and wild; here
nature is “red in tooth and claw.” When a tree is small and tender,
countless insects come to feed upon it. Birds come to it to devour
these insects. Around the tree are daily almost merciless fights for
existence. These death-struggles occur not only in the daytime, but in
the night. Mice, rats, and rabbits destroy millions of young trees.
These bold animals often flay baby trees in the daylight, and while at
their deadly feast many a time have they been surprised by hawks, and
then they are at a banquet where they themselves are eaten. The owl,
the faithful night-watchman of trees, often swoops down at night, and
as a result some little tree is splashed with the blood of the very
animal that came to feed upon it.

The lower section of Old Pine’s trunk contained records which I found
interesting. One of these in particular aroused my imagination. I was
sawing off a section of this lower portion when the saw, with a
_buzz-z-z-z_, suddenly jumped. The object struck was harder than the
saw. I wondered what it could be, and, cutting the wood carefully
away, laid bare a flint arrowhead. Close to this one I found another,
and then with care I counted the rings of growth to find out the year
that these had wounded Old Pine. The outer ring which these arrowheads
had pierced was the six hundred and thirtieth, so that the year of
this occurrence was 1486.

Had an Indian bent his bow and shot at a bear that had stood at bay
backed up against this tree? Or was there around this tree a battle
among Indian tribes? Is it possible that at this place some
Cliff-Dweller scouts encountered their advancing foe from the north
and opened hostilities? It may be that around Old Pine was fought
the battle that is said to have decided the fate of that mysterious
race, the Cliff-Dwellers. The imagination insists on speculating with
these two arrowheads, though they form a fascinating clue that leads
us to no definite conclusion. But the fact remains that Old Pine was
wounded by two Indian arrowheads some time during his six hundred and
thirtieth summer.

[Illustration: CLIFF DWELLINGS ON THE MESA VERDE]

The year that Columbus discovered America, Old Pine was a handsome
giant with a round head held more than one hundred feet above the
earth. He was six hundred and thirty-six years old, and with the
coming of the Spanish adventurers his lower trunk was given new events
to record. The year 1540 was a particularly memorable one for him.
This year brought the first horses and bearded men into the drama
which was played around him. This year, for the first time, he felt
the edge of steel and the tortures of fire. The old chronicles say
that the Spanish explorers found the cliff-houses in the year 1540. I
believe that during this year a Spanish exploring party may have
camped beneath Old Pine and built a fire against his instep, and that
some of the explorers hacked him with an axe. The old pine had
distinct records of axe and fire markings during the year 1540. It was
not common for the Indians of the West to burn or mutilate trees, and
it was common for the Spaniards to do so, and as these hackings in the
tree seemed to have been made with some edged tool sharper than any
possessed by the Indians, it at least seems probable that they were
made by the Spaniards. At any rate, from the year 1540 until the day
of his death, Old Pine carried these scars on his instep.

As the average yearly growth of the old pine was about the same as in
trees similarly situated at the present time, I suppose that climatic
conditions in his early days must have been similar to the climatic
conditions of to-day. His records indicate periods of even tenor of
climate, a year of extremely poor conditions, occasionally a year
crowned with a bountiful wood harvest. From 1540 to 1762 I found
little of special interest. In 1762, however, the season was not
regular. After the ring was well started, something, perhaps a cold
wave, for a time checked his growth, and as a result the wood for that
one year resembled two years’ growth; yet the difference between this
double or false ring and a regular one was easily detected. Old Pine’s
“hard times” experience seems to have been during the years 1804 and
1805. I think it probable that those were years of drought. During
1804 the layer of wood was the thinnest in his life, and for 1805 the
only wood I could find was a layer which only partly covered the trunk
of the tree, and this was exceedingly thin.

From time to time in the old pine’s record, I came across what seemed
to be indications of an earthquake shock; but late in 1811 or early
in 1812, I think there is no doubt that he experienced a violent
shock, for he made extensive records of it. This earthquake occurred
after the sap had ceased to flow in 1811, and before it began to flow
in the spring of 1812. In places the wood was checked and shattered.
At one point, some distance from the ground, there was a bad
horizontal break. Two big roots were broken in two, and that quarter
of the tree which faced the cliffs had suffered from a rock
bombardment. I suppose the violence of the quake displaced many rocks,
and some of these, as they came bounding down the mountain-side,
collided with Old Pine. One, of about five pounds’ weight, struck him
so violently in the side that it remained embedded there. After some
years the wound was healed over, but this fragment remained in the
tree until I released it.

During 1859 some one made an axe-mark on the old pine that may have
been intended for a trail-blaze, and during the same year another fire
badly burned and scarred his ankle. I wonder if some prospectors came
this way in 1859 and made camp by him.

Another record of man’s visits to the tree was made in the summer of
1881, when I think a hunting or outing party may have camped near here
and amused themselves by shooting at a mark on Old Pine’s ankle.
Several modern rifle-bullets were found embedded in the wood around or
just beneath a blaze which was made on the tree the same year in
which the bullets had entered it. As both these marks were made during
the year 1881, it is at least possible that this year the old pine was
used as the background for a target during a shooting contest.

While I was working over the old pine, a Frémont squirrel who lived
near by used every day to stop in his busy harvesting of pine-cones to
look on and scold me. As I watched him placing his cones in a hole in
the ground under the pine-needles, I often wondered if one of his
buried cones would remain there uneaten, to germinate and expand ever
green into the air, and become a noble giant to live as long and as
useful a life as Old Pine. I found myself trying to picture the
scenes in which this tree would stand when the birds came singing back
from the Southland in the springtime of the year 3000.



III


After I had finished my work of splitting, studying, and deciphering
the fragments of the old pine, I went to the sawmill and arranged for
the men to come over that evening after I had departed, and burn every
piece and vestige of the venerable old tree. I told them I should be
gone by dark on a trip to the summit of Mesa Verde, where I was to
visit a gnarled old cedar. Then I went back and piled into a pyramid
every fragment of root and trunk and broken branch. Seating myself
upon this pyramid, I spent some time that afternoon gazing through the
autumn sun-glow at the hazy Mesa Verde, while my mind rebuilt and
shifted the scenes of the long, long drama in which Old Pine had
played his part and of which he had given us but a few fragmentary
records. I lingered there dreaming until twilight. I thought of the
cycles during which he had stood patient in his appointed place, and
my imagination busied itself with the countless experiences that had
been recorded, and the scenes and pageants he had witnessed but of
which he had made no record. I wondered if he had enjoyed the changing
of seasons. I knew that he had often boomed or hymned in the storm or
the breeze. Many a monumental robe of snow-flowers had he worn. More
than a thousand times he had beheld the earth burst into bloom amid
happy songs of mating birds; hundreds of times in summer he had worn
countless crystal rain-jewels in the sunlight of the breaking storm,
while the brilliant rainbow came and vanished on the near-by
mountain-side. Ten thousand times he had stood silent in the lonely
light of the white and mystic moon.

[Illustration: THE MESA VERDE]

Twilight was fading into darkness when I arose and started on my
night journey for the summit of Mesa Verde. When I arrived at the top
of the Mesa, I looked back and saw a pyramid of golden flame standing
out in the darkness.


       *       *       *       *       *


    By Enos A. Mills

    YOUR NATIONAL PARKS. Illustrated.

    THE STORY OF SCOTCH. Illustrated.

    THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN WONDERLAND. Illustrated.

    THE STORY OF A THOUSAND-YEAR PINE. Illustrated.

    IN BEAVER WORLD. Illustrated.

    THE SPELL OF THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.

    WILD LIFE ON THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.

    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
    BOSTON AND NEW YORK





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