Every lodgepole pine used to be the same tree, and on the high-country route used to check the build, 84 percent of the forest is lodgepole. Each one now draws as one of five builds chosen by its size: the original, a fuller one, a self-pruned one with an open patchy top, an old tree on a long clear trunk under a dome, and young poles. Each has a trunk you bump into, can be felled for timber and has its own shape in the far forest.
It shows most at a forest edge by a meadow and in the trees above a river: mixed heights, open crowns with bare trunks, and a few tall old trees over the line.
Still there: the trees stand in even spacing and rows, they are all one color, and no saplings or understory grow beneath them.
