Word: firs
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...Mount Shasta in northern California, 5,000 pilgrims shivered on the rocky, fir-covered slopes. Before the sun's rays warmed the night, a solitary woman, crouching on a sheepskin, began to beat a drum. Sounds of flutes and songs filled the air, and tears streamed down the faces of three women wrapped in Indian blankets. They passionately believed the solemn intonation of Participant Shirley Stanfield: "Expect to be changed forever...
Farther from the epicenter, in hummocky fields of loose volcanic ash and fine pumice pebbles, willows, red alder and an occasional Douglas fir have taken root near small ponds. At the waters' edge, Pacific tree frogs and salamanders now flourish. Large bodies of water like Spirit Lake, which was filled with organic debris and robbed of its oxygen by accompanying bacteria during the eruption, have made even more rapid recoveries. Algae, zooplankton and freshwater crustaceans have all recolonized the lake, prompting authorities from the state department of game to push for the restocking of such game fish as rainbow...
...score went to a Sioux reservation in South Dakota to do painting, tiling and light carpentry at a Y.M.C.A. center; a dozen arrived in Juarez, Mexico, to help build a "serviglesia," a church to serve the poor; another twelve headed for Appalachia's "Valley of Despair" to plant fir trees and work on construction and furniture-building projects. Says Vanderbilt Senior Ethel Johnson, 21, who stayed in Nashville with another team sowing gardens, making curtains and teaching English in a community of Cambodian refugees: "Students are vastly underestimated. They have a real desire to get out there and do something...
...nature's most impressive pageants, monarch butterflies fly from as far away as Canada to spend the winter in tiny patches of fir forest nestled in the mountains of central Mexico.* Though the butterfly migration has been going on since at least the end of the Pleistocene epoch, 10,000 years ago, the isolated roosts were discovered by zoologists only in 1975. Alarmed by the disappearance of forests around the sites, the Mexican government and private conservation groups have joined forces to protect them. Says University of Florida Zoologist Lincoln Brower: "We're dealing with one of the most fragile...
Come next March the monarchs will stir, begin mating and in a great whirlwind of color set out for the U.S. Six months later, a new generation will fly south, headed for the tiny patches of fir forest that conservationists and Mexican officials hope will be a butterfly refuge for another epoch...