Distant Cousins

While the corners of North America can often seem worlds apart in terms of climate and landscape, our continent is notable for having more similarities than differences between its distant ends.  White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus Virginianus) can be found both in Veracruz and central Quebec, various spruces and firs range from Alaska to the Appalachians, and even the rocks beneath us can remind the lonely traveler of a distant home.  Take a look at the scenes below:

Nope, that's not actually Canadian Shield!

While these might seem to have been taken in, say, Maine or Ontario, they were actually snapped (poorly, I know, I had yet to master the art of windshield photography) in central Utah.  The mountains of Utah and neighboring Colorado pull off Boreal artistry rather nicely despite being 1,000 miles south of the true Boreal forest.  Rather than Balsam Fir (Abies Balsamea) and White Spruce (Picea Glauca) we see spires of Subalpine Fir (Abies Lasiocarpa) and Engelmann Spruce (Picea Engelmannii), and the granites, schists, and gabbros of these relatively young mountains are old, but only recently exposed and not nearly as old as the ancient outcrops of the Canadian Shield rocks of the same names.

The western mountains, you see, are youngsters that rose less than 80 million years ago.  The life which thrives on their slopes, however, probably shares common ancestry with lower elevation life in similar climactic areas much further north.  During the last major glaciation, when the Boreal forests were much further south, these forests interacted with the northern versions at much closer proximity.  These days they are a bit more isolated, but serve as a unique southern extension of the northern forests well into central Mexico.  We are blessed and cursed, in a way, to have such a unique continent that features north-south mountain ranges and winters and summers both that can move uncontested far beyond where they can in other parts of the world.  The two worlds of alpine and true Boreal meet in the Canadian Rockies in a strikingly subtle mingling of separately evolved worlds.  Though I have never been to this grand meeting place of north and west, I can imagine that the sensations would be nothing short of incredible and perhaps even something reminiscent of a more unified continent that had to face much colder conditions as a tighter biological entity.  Again though, the differences are not too far apart from one another.  Take a look at a similar stretch of forest:

Taken off of Michigan 35 halfway between Menominee and Escanaba, MI.  

The casual viewer might not even notice a difference, even though the Utah and Michigan scenes are 1,300 miles apart.  With the exception of some aspens, none of the trees are of the same species between the two scenes, and the air in both places has rather different qualities to it.  Still, there is a little bit of Utah in Michigan and a little bit of Michigan in Utah, relations which have common roots in a more severe past.