Only at considerable intervals were fierce
bonfires lighted, where heavy branches broken off by snow had
accumulated, or around some venerable giant whose head had been stricken
off by lightning.
I tethered Brownie on the edge of a little meadow beside a stream a good
safe way off, and then cautiously chose a camp for myself in a big
stout hollow trunk not likely to be crushed by the fall of burning
trees, and made a bed of ferns and boughs in it. The night, however, and
the strange wild fireworks were too beautiful and exciting to allow much
sleep. There was no danger of being chased and hemmed in; for in the
main forest belt of the Sierra, even when swift winds are blowing, fires
seldom or never sweep over the trees in broad all-embracing sheets as
they do in the dense Rocky Mountain woods and in those of the Cascade
Mountains of Oregon and Washington. Here they creep from tree to tree
with tranquil deliberation, allowing close observation, though caution
is required in venturing around the burning giants to avoid falling
limbs and knots and fragments from dead shattered tops. Though the day
was best for study, I sauntered about night after night, learning what I
could, and admiring the wonderful show vividly displayed in the lonely
darkness, the ground-fire advancing in long crooked lines gently grazing
and smoking on the close-pressed leaves, springing up in thousands of
little jets of pure flame on dry tassels and twigs, and tall spires and
flat sheets with jagged flapping edges dancing here and there on grass
tufts and bushes, big bonfires blazing in perfect storms of energy where
heavy branches mixed with small ones lay smashed together in hundred
cord piles, big red arches between spreading root-swells and trees
growing close together, huge fire-mantled trunks on the hill slopes
glowing like bars of hot iron, violet-colored fire running up the tall
trees, tracing the furrows of the bark in quick quivering rills, and
lighting magnificent torches on dry shattered tops, and ever and anon,
with a tremendous roar and burst of light, young trees clad in
low-descending feathery branches vanishing in one flame two or three
hundred feet high.
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