The Plains of Passage - Jean M. Auel [424]
Though much more expansive, similar regions existed in the low elevations of the northern continents. Relict areas of temperate deciduous trees were maintained in certain protected areas and at the lower latitudes, with hardier needled evergreens appearing in the boreal regions to the north of them. Farther north, where they existed at all, trees were usually dwarfed and stunted. Because of the extensive glaciers, the counterparts of the high meadows that surrounded the perpetual ice of the mountains were the vast steppes and tundras, where only those plants that could complete their life cycles quickly survived.
Above the timberline many hardy plants adapted to the harshness of the environment. Ayla, leading her mare, noticed the changes with interest, and she wished she had more time to examine the differences. The mountains in the region where she had grown up were much farther south, and because of the warming influence of the inland sea, the vegetation was primarily of the cold temperate variety. The plants that existed in the higher elevations of the bitterly cold arid regions were fascinating to her.
Stately willows, which graced nearly every river, stream, or brook that sustained even a trace of moisture, grew as low shrubs, and tall sturdy birches and pines became prostrate woody growths that crawled along the ground. Blueberries and bilberries spread out as thick carpets, only four inches high. She wondered if, like the berries that grew near the northern glacier, they bore full-size but sweeter and wilder fruits. Though the bare skeletons of withered branches gave evidence of many plants, she didn’t always know what variety they were, or how familiar plants might be different, and she wondered how the high meadows would look in warmer seasons.
Traveling in the dead of winter, Ayla and Jondalar did not see the spring and summer beauty of the highlands. No wild roses or rhododendrons colored the landscape with blooms of pink; no crocuses or anemones, or beautiful blue gentians, or yellow narcissus were tempted to brave the harsh wind; and no primroses or violets would burst with polychrome splendor until the first warmth of spring. There were no bellflowers, rampions, worts, groundsels, daisies, lilies, saxifrages, pinks, monkshoods, or beautiful little edelweiss to ease the bitter cold monotony of the freezing fields of winter.
But another, more awesome sight filled their view. A dazzling fortress of gleaming ice lay athwart their path. It blazed in the sun like a magnificent, many-faceted diamond. Its sheer crystalline white glowed with luminous blue shadows that hid its flaws: the crevasses, tunnels, caves, and pockets that riddled the gigantic gem.
They had reached the glacier.
As the travelers neared the crest of the worn stump of the primordial mountain that bore the flat-topped crown of ice, they weren’t even sure if the narrow mountain stream beside them was still the same river that had been their companion for so long. The diminutive trail of ice was indistinguishable from the many frozen little waterways waiting for spring to release their cascading flows to race down the crystalline rocks of the high plateau.
The Great Mother River they had followed all the way from her broad delta where she had emptied into the inland sea, the great waterway that had guided their steps over so much of their arduous Journey, was gone. Even the ice-locked hint of a wild little stream would soon be left behind. The travelers would no longer have the comforting security of the river to show them the way. They would have to continue their Journey west by dead reckoning, with only the sun and stars to act as guides, and landmarks that Jondalar hoped he would remember.
Above the high meadow, the vegetation was more intermittent. Only algae, lichens, and mosses that were typical of rocks and scree could derive a struggling existence beyond the cushion plants and a few other