one bursts out into the grass country
and the open hills. Every feature of the loveliest of all forests is at
hand: the valley floor with its miniature trout-stream overhung with
fragrant azaleas; the brown carpet interwoven with azaleas and violets.
There is the cool decoration of many ferns.

[Illustration: _From a photograph by Tibbitts_

CATHEDRAL ISLE OF THE MUIR WOODS]

The straight-growing redwoods compel a change of habit in the trees
that would struggle toward a view of the sky. Mountain-oaks and madrona
are straight-trunked and clear of lower branches. There is rivalry of
the strong and protection for the weak.

The grove is, in truth, a complete expression in little of Nature's
forest plan. The characteristics of the greater redwood forests which
require weeks or months to compass and careful correlation to bring into
perspective, here are exhibited within the rambling of a day. The Muir
Woods is an entity. Its meadow borders, its dark ravines, its valley
floor, its slopes and hilltops, all show fullest luxuriance and perfect
proportion. The struggle of the greater trees to climb the hills is
exemplified as fully as in the great exhibits of the north, which spread
over many miles of hill slope; here one may see its range in half an
hour.

The coloring, too, is rich. The rusty foliage and bark, the brighter
green of the shrubs, the brown carpet, the opal light, stirs the spirit.
The powerful individuality of many of its trees is the source of
never-ending pleasure. There is a redwood upon the West Fork which has
no living base, but feeds, vampire-like, through another's veins; or,
if you prefer the figure of family dependence so strikingly exemplified
in these woods, has been rescued from destruction by a brother. The base
of this tree has been completely girdled by fire. Impossible to draw
subsistence from below, it stands up from a burned, naked, slender
foundation. But another tree fell against it twenty-five or thirty feet
above the ground, in some far past storm, and lost its top; this tree
pours its sap into the veins of the other to support its noble top. The
twin cripples have become a single healthy tree.

One of the most striking exhibits of the Muir Woods is its tangle of
California laurel. Even in its deepest recesses, the bays, as they are
commonly called, reach great size. They sprawl in all directions, bend
at sharp angles, make great loops to enter the soil and root again;
sometimes they