The mountain

It was cold, my feet kept slipping on the mixture of mud and snow. All around me were trees. There's the lodgepole pine that inhabits mid-low elevations. It has small, very dense cones that are meant to only open up durring a fire. This species comes in quickly after significant environmental devestation. The quaking aspen is there as well. This tree is decidious, it is an incredible survivor. In the autumn all of their leaves turn at the same time, because they share the same roots. Up to 10 trees or more will be connected, each clones of each other. This rapid growth allows it to quickly return to fire-devastated areas. It's bark has clorophyl, giving it a pale green glow in the sunlight. These trees seem to be something out of a science ficiton movie.

I grasp onto the bark of a angleman spruce, the most majestic of all the trees here. It shoots up into the sky, higher than all the others. It has a scaley bark, which falls away at the touch revealing a very red shade of it's secondary xylem. It is one of the climax species, along with the sub-albine fir, that dominates this area. However, there is a far rarer tree just above.

I struggle a little to reach it over the moss and lichen-covered rocks that date to 2+ billion years, just enough snow on them to keep me from fully being secure in my footing. Soon I can see it just ahead. It grows from a craggy rock. There are many of them here, they've overtaken this area. The limber pine is a different sort of tree. It cannot compete with the far more agile ones below. However, it has one trick that the others lack. It can survive in the worst types of soil here. The center tree stems directly from a rock, waving lightly at the trees below in the wind.

I stand next to it and look down, on this lonely summit the world is quite beautiful.