The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [400]
“Even from here you can see that there are plains that have good grass, and that would bring more animals to hunt. On this side are mostly scrub pines—that means sandy earth and poor grass, except for a few places. This side must be just enough closer to the ice to be colder, and less rich,” she explained.
“You may be right,” Jondalar said, thinking her evaluation was astute. “I don’t know what it’s like in summer; I’ve only been here in winter.”
Ayla had judged accurately. The soils of the northern plains of the valley of the great river were primarily loess over a limestone bedrock, and more fertile than the southern side. In addition, the mountain glaciers of the south crowded closer, making the winters more harsh and the summers cooler, barely warm enough to melt the accumulated snows and ground frost of winter back to the previous summer’s snow line—almost. Most of the glaciers were growing again, slowly, but enough to signal a shift from the current milieu, the slightly warmer interval, back to colder times, and one last glacial advance before the long melt that would leave ice only in polar regions.
The dormant state of the trees often left Ayla unsure of their variety, until she tasted a twig tip or bud or bit of inner bark. Where alder dominated near the river, and along the lower valleys of its tributaries, she knew they would be in peaty fen woods if it were summer; where it was mixed with willow and poplar would be the wettest parts, and the occasional ash, elm, or hornbeam, hardly more than woody brush, indicated drier ground. The rare dwarfed oak, struggling to survive in more protected niches, barely hinted at the massive oak forests that would one day cover a more temperate land. Trees were absent entirely from the sandy soils of the raised heath land, able to nourish only heather, whins, sparse grasses, mosses, and lichens.
Even in the frigid climate, some birds and animals thrived; cold-adapted animals of the steppes and mountains abounded, and hunting was easy. Only rarely did they use the supplies given to them by the Losadunai, which they wanted to save for the crossing anyway. Not until they reached the frozen wasteland would they need to rely entirely on the resources they carried.
Ayla saw an uncommon pygmy snow owl and pointed it out to Jondalar. He became adept at finding willow grouse, which tasted like the white-feathered ptarmigan that he had grown so fond of, particularly the way that Ayla cooked them. Its mixed coloration gave it better camouflage in a landscape not entirely covered by snow. Jondalar seemed to recall that there had been more snow the last time he had come that way.
The region was influenced by both the continental east and the maritime west, revealed by the unusual mixture of plants and animals that seldom lived near each other. The small furry creatures were an example that Ayla noticed, although during the freezing season, the mice, dormice, voles, susliks, and hamsters were seldom seen, except when she broke through a nest for the vegetable foods they had stored. Though she sometimes took the animals too, for Wolf or, particularly if she found giant hamsters, for themselves, the little animals more commonly gave sustenance to martens, foxes, and the small wildcats.
On the high plains and along river valleys, they often sighted woolly mammoths, usually in herds of related females, with an occasional male traveling along for company, though in the cold season groups of males often banded together. Rhinoceroses were invariably loners, except for females with one or two immature young. In the warmer seasons, bison, aurochs, and every variety of deer, from the giant megaceros to small shy roe deer, were numerous, but only reindeer stayed on in winter. Instead mouflon, chamois, and ibex had migrated down from their high summer habitat, and Jondalar had never seen so many musk-oxen.
It seemed to be a year when the musk-ox population was at a high point in its cycle. Next year they would probably crash down to minimum numbers, but in the meantime, Ayla and Jondalar found