Ridge Pines
Ridge pines grow above the tall foothill pine, on the high slopes and ridges where trees begin to give out. They are too low and crooked for bracing, which comes from the foothill pine below (see Timber Trees), but their wood is soaked with pitch. The Ironspine Holds buy that pitch, and the resinous torch-wood split from it, from the Headwater farmers who climb for it.
Appearance
A ridge pine is a short, thick tree, from twice to four times a person’s height, its trunk twisted and leaning, its crown dense, flat-topped, and combed by the wind. Near the tree line it creeps, a sprawl of knotted limbs a stride high. The bark is grey-brown and scaly, the needles short, stiff, and very dark green, in pairs. Its small, hard cones sit tight on the branches for years. The wood is red-gold at the heart, heavy with resin, and full of knots; split, a heart-stick glistens with pitch and smells overpoweringly of turpentine. Old stumps and fallen trunks rot away around their resin-soaked hearts, leaving fatwood, which lasts on the mountain for generations.
Habitat and Range
It grows on thin, rocky soil on the high slopes of the Ironspine and above the highest valleys of the Headwater Marches, up to the edge of the bare ground below the crest of the Stormcrown. It stands alone or in open groves on ridges and spurs, and in sheltered hollows in thicker stands.
Behaviour and Temperament
It grows very slowly in cold and wind, and puts its strength into resin, which seals every wound and every broken limb. Lightning strikes it often on the ridges, and a struck ridge pine bleeds pitch and goes on living.
Life Cycle
A ridge pine can live for many centuries; one as thick as a person’s waist may be older than the nearest town. Its seed comes slowly from cones that stay shut until warm weather.
Uses and Dangers
Headwater families climb in summer to gather fatwood from old stumps and to tap and split the living trees on slopes their family has worked for generations. The heart-wood is split into torch-sticks that burn bright and long, and pitch is boiled out of chips in clay pots buried in the ground. The holds buy both with the grain and timber that go up from the valleys: pitch to seal casks and waterproof rope and cloth, to caulk the timber of the Deeps, and to grease the ways; torch-wood for the places where lamp oil is too dear or a flame must not go out. Dwarves will not burn it inside a working, where its smoke fouls the air.
It harms no one, though a pitch fire on a mountain runs fast.
Lore and Belief
Headwater folk say a ridge pine struck by lightning holds the storm, and burn its wood at a winter death to light the way. Dwarves call the ridge pine the mountain’s beard, and Headwater miners say it will not grow over the highest peaks because the Mountain-Father sleeps beneath them. Some families mark their gathering slopes with a blaze on one old tree and are believed to know every tree on them by name.
In avalanche years the ridge pines are where the searchers look first, and the hold’s children are told of the girl who sheltered a lost caravan under a pine’s snow-cave until the hold’s rescuers dug through.