[Illustration: Looking Toward the Casino, Tahoe Tavern, Lake Tahoe]
[Illustration: A Trail Party About to Leave Tahoe Tavern]
[Illustration: On the Trail Returning from the Summit of Mt. Tallac]
At this elevation, 7000 to 8000 feet, the red fir begins to appear. It is an attractive and ever-pleasing tree, its dark red bark soon making it a familar friend.
How remarkably a woodsman can read what would be an unintelligible jumble of facts to a city man. Here on one trip we found a tree. Its top was smitten off and removed a distance of forty to fifty feet. Parts of the tree were scattered for a distance of two hundred yards. What caused it? The unobservant man would have passed it by, and the observant, though untrained and inexperienced, would have wondered without an answer. And yet a few minutes' observation, with the interpretation of Bob Watson, made it as clear as the adding of two to two. The lightning had struck the tree, and shot the top off as if lifted and carried away bodily, at the same time scattering the pieces in every direction. Then, it had seemed to jump from this tree to another, out of the side of which it had torn a large piece, as if, like a wild beast in angry fury, it had bitten out a giant mouthful of something it hated. It had then jumped--where? There was no sign. It simply disappeared.
Near by we found quite a nursery of graceful, dainty and attractive young firs; "Noah's ark trees," I always feel like calling them, for they remind one constantly of the trees found in the Noah's arks of childhood days, made by the Swiss during the long winter nights in their mountain chalets, where the trees are of a similar character to those of the Sierras.
Near to the point at which we turn to the left for Watson's Peak, and to the right for Watson's Lake, is a delicious, cool, clear spring, which I instinctively called, "the Spring of the Angels." When Bob asked the _why_ of the name, the answer quickly came: "It is up so high and is so pure and good." The elevation is about 8000 feet. We take to the left.
Here also is found the mountain pine, its fine, smooth, black bark contrasting markedly with that of the firs and pines further down. It is generally found not lower than this elevation around Lake Tahoe.