The resinous wood and the White Mountains' cool ... is 367 feet tall. The tallest bristlecone pine is but 60 feet tall, and most of its kind are much shorter. Clearly, bigger is not better ...

The oldest trees are ancient slabs of wood with only a single living branch, and the trunks of long-dead trees lie undecayed on the ground. Life for an ancient bristlecone pine is a long ...