The white-barked pine grew on the slope of Kearsarge highest up of all the pines, so high that nothing grew above it but brown tufts of grass and the rosy¹ Sierra primroses² that shelter under the edges of broken boulders³. The white-barked pines are squat⁴ and short, trunks creeping along the rocks, and foliage⁵ all matted in a close green thatch⁶ by the winter's weight. Snow lies on the slope of Kearsarge eight months in the year, deep and smooth over the pines and the jagged rocks; other months there are great storms of rain, and always a strong wind roaring through the Pass, so that, try as it might, no tree could stand erect⁷ on those heights. The white-barked pine stretched its body along the ground, and though it was four hundred years old, it was no thicker than a man's leg, and its young branches of seventy-five or a hundred years were still so supple⁸ that one could tie knots in them. It grew near the trail, which here crossed through a gap in the crest⁹ of the range and straggled on down the other side of the mountain.  
Along this trail went many strange things in their season. Early in the year, before the snow had melted at all on the high places, went a great lumbering¹⁰ bear that had a lair¹¹ above Big Meadows, going down to the calf-pens and pig-sties of the town at the foot of Kearsarge. He ranged back and forth¹² on these little excursions of fifteen or twenty miles in the hungry season of the year, and sometimes there were hunters on his trail with dogs and guns, but nothing ever came of it. When the trail began to run a rivulet¹³ from the drip of melting snow banks, the forest ranger¹⁴ went up the Pass, singing as he went and beating his arms to keep himself warm. Afterwards when the snow water was all drained off, he came back and mended the trail. All through the summer there would be parties of miners and hunters with long strings¹⁵ of pack mules¹⁷, going over Kearsarge to camp in Big Meadows or on the fork of King's River. Sometimes there were parties of Indians with women and children, making very merry with berries, fish, and deer meat. Nearly always, whatever went over the mountain came back again, and the white pine noticed that the same people came again another season. In four hundred years one has space for observation and reflection. Gradually the pine tree grew into the conviction that the other side of the mountain must be much finer than this.
 
"Else why," said he, "should so many people go there every year?"
 
It was very fine, you may be sure, on the white pine's side, but the tree had known it all for so many years, it no longer pleased him. From where he grew he looked down between the ridges¹⁸ on a great winding²⁰ cañon full of singing trees, with blue lakes like eyes winking²¹ between them. He could watch in the open places the white feet of the water on its way to the valley, and from the falls long rainbows of spray blown out as if they were blowing kisses to the white-barked pine. Below all this lay the valley, hollow like a cup, full of fawn-colored and violet mist, and the farms and orchards²² lay like dregs at the bottom of the cup. Beyond the valley rose other noble ranges with cloud shadows playing all along their slopes.
 
"It is very tiresome

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