Part 5

Looking for mountain goats, we scan the walls around the sweep of Siyeh Bend, catching a glimpse of the trail that crosses the scree to hidden Piegan Pass.

Beargrass heads lean out above the road like old men conferring on the view. The purple trumpets of penstemon crowd the rocks, and spots of Indian paintbrush lead like a blood-trail to the higher slopes.

Intoxicated now, feeling the fresh full force of the wind from Logan Pass, we race on. We hardly notice the struggle of the forest in Reynolds Creek far below, how it thins and loses strength in its own hard climb. We sweep past it on the broad magnificence of this pass.

Level but a moment, the road dips to a shelf on the headwall above Logan Creek and swings over the great sculptured cliff of the Garden Wall. For several kilometers this masterpiece of a road glides down a constant grade, squeezed between rock face and space, twisting into tight drainages—a road for storm lovers, wet with spray and snow-seep, its quick turns concealing sudden winds.

Mighty, snow-robed Heaven’s Peak appears, taking our attention from the Pass-group mountains and the hanging valley that spills Birdwoman Falls. Northward is the great array of peaks encircling distant Flattop, jumbles of mountains and glaciers. How are we to notice the forest far below?

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.

Getting up from my prone position, my belly damp from the prairie earth, I startle a whitetail jackrabbit; bounding high, it zigzags off. The commotion disturbs a distant badger, which faces about from its diggings to confront danger in whatever form it might take. It swings its snout to scent the air. Somewhat uncertainly, it returns to the business of hunting, then hesitates, swings about once more and waits, myopic, patient.

Satisfied at last, the spurt of the now distant rabbit lost in its brain, the creature snorts a defiance at the mystery and resumes its morning gopher hunt.

Overhead a marsh hawk skims past, its flight erratic as a butterfly’s. Far away a magpie rattles at the passing hawk and takes flight, briefly flashing black and white.

■ It is easy to see only pieces in the natural puzzle—a badger throwing dirt, horned larks dipping into wind, black ants dragging the rosette of a dead spider—and be satisfied with the scattered scenes. But at last, to make it meaningful, we must complete the picture. There is that special joy in discovering larger schemes: green plants utilizing sunlight; a rabbit building its days at the plants’ expense; the falcon tearing the rabbit meat for its young; magpies picking at the fallen falcon; and then, in the end, all returning to the earth.

Here on the prairie, as in every plant-and-animal association, the ancient drama repeats itself over and over; the distant tundra is a drastically different stage with different actors, but the cycle is the same. Life depends upon the interaction of all its many forms. Unseen bacteria are as necessary to the land as green grass; the meadow vole and the coyote are as much a part of the prairie as the grasses.

The secret of life rests in the wonder of photosynthesis. Only green plants can manufacture food from the earth’s raw minerals. This is the vital first step upon which the great pyramid of animal and plant life is built. Using energy from the sun, green plants combine water and carbon dioxide to synthesize sugar, and give off oxygen as a by-product. The caterpillar takes its energy from the plant tissue, converting to protein the sugar and minerals in its body. The caterpillar is then food for a spider or other predator. A yellow warbler may take the spider and in turn be ambushed by the prairie falcon. Thus the energy produced by the plant travels through the food chain. When the prairie falcon dies, scavengers—including insects and other invertebrates, birds, and mammals—redistribute its wealth among themselves; the rest is decomposed by bacteria. Thus, eventually, the nutrients on which the plants depend return to the soil.

When we look at any living organism, whether it is plant, herbivore, carnivore, parasite, scavenger, or decomposer, we are soon made aware of its associations with other living things, each puzzle piece leading us to another and another. We begin to see a picture whole—the fox, meadow mouse, grasshopper, bunchgrass, and sparrow hawk—all interlocked.

Geologically speaking, grasslands are a recent development. As the Rocky Mountains were being uplifted, the prevailing warm, moist climate began to change. The rising mountain mass intercepted moisture-laden winds that blew in from the Pacific, creating a rain shadow that lengthened eastward as the mountains rose higher. A continental climate, characterized by severe winters and dry, wildfire summers gradually took shape, extinguishing the great forests that had grown across the continent’s interior. Herbaceous plants, which had been evolving amid the forests, inherited the land.

Unlike trees, grasses die back to the ground each winter, hoarding their life-germ beneath the protecting soil. Growing not from the tip but from the joints, grasses regenerate quickly after fire or grazing. Suspension of the normal metabolic processes enable the grasses to go dormant and thus survive periods of severe heat and drought.

Although the great prairie sea washes up against Glacier’s eastern boundary, with estuaries probing into the mountain valleys on the drier, south-facing slopes, the grassland community comprises less than 5 percent of the land area of Glacier National Park. This includes the puddles of prairie west of the Divide that interrupt the dense coniferous forests along the North Fork of the Flathead River.

From the pasqueflowers that bloom in early May to the asters and goldenrod of September, these summer-long gardens of grasses and flowers lean with the wind. Here are timothy, oatgrass and the bunchgrasses—rough fescue, bluebunch fescue, and bluebunch wheatgrass. Among the grasses bloom bitterroot, blue camas, lupine, gaillardia, balsamroot, cinquefoil, sticky geranium, and wild rose.

continued on p. 68