We took a trip up to the top of the dome yesterday to study plants at treeline. But when you’re constructing meaning at a conceptual level, you need to establish a context. My group of town kids with little outdoors experience didn’t know what “treeline” was. So we started at the bottom and made a few stops along the way to the top. Our resident scientist took core samples from the spruce trees at the bottom, and then again at treeline.

Treeline

I walked the kids toward the bottom of the valley on a trail I knew before we headed up the hill. The trail went down into a black spruce bog and we walked far enough down to where everyone got the idea that it was only going to get wetter. Then we stopped and looked around at what grew there. Not much tall stuff, stunted black spruce and a few sad birch trees, mostly. We stood on squishy muskeg that felt cold when we poked our fingers down into it.

Slightly higher and along the way back to the bus, we stopped in a mixed stand of birch and spruce growing on higher and drier ground, and we took a core sample from a healthy white spruce tree.

Treeline

After climbing (in the bus) about 2500 feet, we reached treeline. We found some small black spruce, and we took a core sample from one of them. We can count the growth rings and compare their ages. The white spruce was about 30 feet tall.

The little black spruce up high wasn’t even half that tall. I’m curious to see what the age difference is. We’ll sand down the core sample to make it easier to count the rings.

We also took weather observations, looked around for animal sign, and made random notes, collecting things in baggies

There were berries, still, but only the cranberries were worth picking. If you like cranberries. We ate lunch at a huge rock outcrop near the top of the mountain in an alpine tundra meadow.

It was grand. Not rainy, and no snow yet.

The kids had a great time. They learned a lot about where we
live. And they figured out that life is tough for anything that wants to live that high on the hill. It was obvious to me that it was a hugely meaningful experience. One of the boys on the bus ride home said, “Mr. Noon, thanks for taking us on this trip.”

I’m glad we did it, too.