mountain pastures very much as do the spruces and firs. We have the big
canoe birch of the lower slopes, often a splendid tree that matches any
in the forest in height. On higher ranges it shrinks and even undergoes
certain structural changes that have given excuse for the naming of
new varieties. Hence, beginning with Betula papyrifera in the valleys
we have a shrinkage to cordifolia, minor, and glandulosa with its
sub-variety rotundifolia, this last a veritable creeping birch which
sticks its branches but a little above the tundra moss in places where
the spruce and fir trees are not much different in character and the
willow becomes most truly an underground shrub with no bit of twig
showing above the surface and only the little round leaves cropping
out, making a growth that is more like that of a moss than that of a
tree. To such straits do wind and cold reduce the trees that defy them.
* * * * *
Yet in spite of the botanical classification which sets up these
dwarfed trees as different varieties from those of the lower slopes,
one cannot help wondering if the differentiation is justified. Suppose
the seeds of a big paper birch from the lower valley were planted
among the creeping willows of the Alpine Garden on Mount Washington.
Would they not grow a dwarfed and semi-creeping Betula glandulosa or
rotundifolia? Would not the seeds of glandulosa, if blown down into the
lower valley and growing in the soil among the paper birches produce
Betula papyrifera? It always seems to me that there is less difference
between the creeping birches of the high plateaus of the Presidential
Range and the paper birches of the lower slopes than there is between
the grotesquely dwarfed firs and spruces of the Alpine Garden, and the
big ones that grow in Pinkham Notch and in the rich bottom lands of the
lower part of the Great Gulf.
The alders of these highest pastures are very dwarf, and because of the
puckered leaf margins have received the specific name of crispa, being
familiarly known as the mountain alder or green alder. Yet we have in
lower pastures the downy green alder, Alnus mollis, so much like its
higher-growing relative that even the authorities say it may be but
a variation. Here again one wonders if the difference is not that of
climate on the individual rather than one of species, and if the seeds
of Alnus mollis from the banks of the Ellis River if planted along the
head wall of the Tuckerman Ravine would not grow up to be Alnus crispa.
It seems as if there was a very good opportunity for experimentation
along some line between the Silver Cascades and the rough rocks at
the base of the summit cone of Washington. Down in the valleys the
juncos build their nests in low shrubbery or at least on the top of the
ground. Up on the side of the summit juncos build actually in holes
in the ground, and lay their eggs almost a month later than those
below. Here is a variation in habit, yet in each case the bird is Junco
hiemalis; perhaps when the scientists really get around to it we shall
have the cone builders classed as variety hole-iferus.
But however we may differ as to the naming of the plants and birds that
frequent them, all who have climbed that far confess to the beauty of
these highest pastures of the New England world. To wander in them of
a sunny summer day for even a short time is to begin to be fond of
them, an affection which increases with each subsequent visit. There
soon gets to be a homey feeling about them that lasts at least while
the sunshine endures. With the passing of the sun comes a difference.
The chill of the high spaces of the air comes down then and the winds
complain about the cliffs below and above and prophecy disaster to him
who remains too long. It is well then to scramble downward and leave
the highest pasture lands to the deer, if they choose to climb out of
the sheltering black growth below, or to such spirits of lonely space
as may come at nightfall. Far below are the man-made pastures that are
friendly even at nightfall, and it is good to seek these. The tonk of
the cow-bells will lead you in lengthening shadows out of the afterglow
on the heights down into the trodden paths and beyond to the pasture
bars.
XI
THE NORTHERN PEAKS
_Some Fascinations of the Gulfside Trail in Stormy Weather_
The summit of Mount Washington sits on so high buttresses of the lesser
spurs and cols of the Presidential Range that it is not always easy
to recognize its true height. From the south, east and west it is a
mountain sitting upon mountains, gaining in grandeur indeed thereby
but losing in individuality. To realize the mountain itself I like to
look at it from the summit of Madison, the northernmost of the northern
peaks. There you see the long, majestic upward sweep of the Chandler
Ridge, swelling to the rock-burst of the Nelson Crag, and beyond that,
higher yet and farther withdrawn, the very summit, immeasurably distant
and lofty, across the mighty depths of the Great Gulf.
[Illustration: Clouds on the Northern Peaks, Mount Adams seen from
Mount Washington summit]
Here is the real mountain and the whole of it laid out for the eye from
the beginnings in the low valley of the Peabody River to the corrugated
pinnacle which is the crest. It takes the gulf to make us realize
the mountain, and great as the gulf is it is forgotten in the mighty
creature that rears its head into the clouds beyond it. From Madison
the mountain has more than individuality. It has personality. It is
as if some great god of Chaos had crushed an image of immensity out
of new-formed stone. To look long at this from the northernmost peak
is to realize its personality more and more. If some day, sitting on
the pinnacled jumble of broken rock which is Madison summit, I see the
mighty one shiver and wake and hear him speak, I shall be terrified,
without doubt, but not surprised.
When August comes to the Northern Peaks I like to come too, by way
of the Gulfside Trail which leaves the carriage road a little below
the summit of Washington and skirts the head wall of the Great Gulf.
Here in early August, just off the carriage road, I am sure to find
the mountain harebells nodding friendly to me in the breeze, their
wonderful violet-blue corollas flecking the bare slopes with a beauty
that is as dear as it is unassuming. It is easy to stride by these and
not see them, so much they seem but shadow flecks of the sky above,
yet once seen no one can go by without stopping for at least a time
to worship their brave loveliness. Flowers of intense individuality
are the harebells, with each group having, oftentimes, characteristics
peculiarly its own. It seems always to me that these of the high
summits of the Presidential Range are of a deeper, richer blue than any
others. This may be because of the atmosphere in which I see them. They
and the mountain goldenrod, the Spiræa latifolia and the little dwarf
rattlesnake-root with its nodding, yellowish, composite flowers, have
come in to take the places of the spring blooms that opened in these
high gardens with July. Down at the sea level the seasons have three
months each. Up here July is spring, August is summer, and the autumn
has flown from the hilltops before the last days of September have
passed.
* * * * *
Of the spring flowers that have lingered beyond the limits of their
season are the beautiful little mountain sandwort, whose clumps still
bloom white in favored spots, though most of the others hold seed pods
only, and the three-toothed cinquefoil with its blossoms so like those
of a small running blackberry that it is easy to mistake it for a stray
from the pastures far below. The mountain avens, too, has what seems
a belated crop of its yellow, buttercup-like blooms in a few places,
though over the most of its area brown seed heads only nod on the tall
blossom stalks. Such are the flowers of the Presidential Range high
plateaus in earliest August, and though the harebells are to me the
most beautiful and most striking, individually, the mountain goldenrod
outdoes all others in profusion of color, its golden sprays swarming
up from the Great Gulf to the trail about its head and garlanding the
rocks toward the summit with feathery bloom that lures the lowland
butterflies to climb trails of their own as far as it goes and to soar
over the very summit in search of more of it. As a background for these
flowers grows the mountain spear-grass, which is so much like the June
grass of our lowland fields, its feathery blooms making a soft purple
mist in many places. On the very summit of Washington this is abundant,
disputing the scant soil with the sandwort, the two the most Alpine
of all New England plants. Rapidly indeed do all these plant dwellers
in Alpine heights hasten through their love and labor of the summer
season, for with October comes the winter which will put them all to
sleep until the end of the following June.
The human sojourner in this region needs as well to hasten wisely with
an eye on the weather. My early August trip began at the Halfway House
and strolled on up the mountain in very pleasant morning sunshine. On
the col between Washington and Clay the sun had hazed and the cool sea
odor of the southeast wind bade me cut short my worship of harebells
and mountain goldenrod. Yet so clear was the air that every detail of
the bottom of the Gulf stood out to the eye, and Spaulding Lake, a
quarter mile below me and a mile distant, looked so near that it seemed
as if with a jump and perhaps two flops of even clumsy wings I might
light in it.
[Illustration: "Where the path swings round the east side of
Jefferson"]
Where the path swings round the east side of Jefferson I began to get
glimpses of the mountains far to southeastward, and as I stood above
Dingmaul Rock and looked straight down Jefferson Ravine I could see the
haze behind the southeast wind shutting off these as well as the sun.
The great hills no longer sat solidly on the earth beneath. Instead a
soft blue dust of turquoise gems flowed up from the valleys and lifted
them from their foundations till they floated gently zenithward through
an increasing sea of this same semi-opaque blue. Always the distant
mountains are ethereal. Tramp them as much as you may, get the scars
of their granite ledges on yourself, as you surely will if you climb
them, get to know their every crag and ravine if you can; and when it
is all done and you look at the mountain only a few miles away, it
takes itself gently from the realm of facts and becomes to your eye
but the filmy substance of a dream, a picture painted on the sky and
thence hung on the walls of memory forever. So these mountains to the
southeast of Jefferson--Meader, Baldface and Eastman first, Imp and
Moriah, the Carters and even Wildcat--lifted and swam in this blue
sea of dreams that the southeast wind brought up with it, quivered
and vanished into forgetfulness, and beyond where their summits had
disappeared I saw the long blue-gray levels of stratus clouds standing
out against the lesser gray of the storm bank and rising slowly and
evenly toward the zenith.
* * * * *
Slowly, with majestic sureness a storm was marching up from the
south. No unconsidered assault of the heights was this, no raid by
the white cavalry of thunderstorm, but a forward march of a great
army of investment, bent on complete conquest of the range. So slow
was its coming and so sure its promise that no mountain climber need
rush to safety. Each could proceed with the same dignity as the storm,
having ample time to beat a safe retreat. By noon no animal life was
visible on the high levels. The juncos have nests innumerable in tiny,
sheltered caverns under overhanging rocks. The mother birds were
snuggled deep in these on the brown-spotted eggs. Butterflies and
bumblebees had been busy all the morning in the goldenrod, and a host
of other insects, coleoptera, diptera, hymenoptera, honey seekers and
pollen eaters. Now all had vanished save here and there a bumblebee
that still clung, drunk with nectar, in the yellow tangle of bloom.
The wind that had been so gentle blew cold on these and swished eerily
through the sedges on the borders of the little pool over on the side
of Sam Adams, known as Storm Lake. Very different was this swish of
the wind in the sedges from its soft song in the mists of the mountain
spear-grass. Very different was the feel of it as it blew out of the
smooth gray arch of sky where had been those level lines of stratus
clouds. It had blown these to the zenith and over, and the following
mists had shut off the Carter Range entirely, and even as I watched
from the Peabody spring on the southwest slope of Sam Adams they
shut off the farther ridge of the Great Gulf and came over the close
tangled tops of the dwarf spruces with the swish of rain. Even then as
I tramped along the northerly slopes of Adams and John Quincy Adams I
could see the fields of Randolph laid out in checker-board pattern and
the lower slopes of the Crescent Range farther to the north, but as I
came down the final pitch to the stone hut on Madison a gust growled
ominously over the Parapet and a rush of rain shut the visible world
within a narrow circle of which I was glad to make the cosy shelter of
the hut the centre.
The Madison hut is built of stone, cemented together, and is tucked so
well into the hillside that one may step from the rocks in the rear to
the roof. Certainly its walls are storm proof, but for thirty hours the
wind did its best to tear the roof off it while the rain filled every
gully with a rushing torrent, and the caretaker and I did our best to
make merry within the safe shelter of the walls. The clouds that had
been so high came down with the rain and made the world an opaque mass
of solid white. It was not so much like a mist as like a cheese through
which the wind in some miraculous fashion blew at a tremendous rate.
[Illustration: Cataract of clouds pouring over the Northern Peaks into
the Great Gulf, seen from the summit of Mount Washington]
From mid-afternoon of one day until mid-forenoon of the next there was
no change in this white opacity which blocked the very door and hid
objects completely though only a few feet away, and through it the wind
roared in varying cadences and the drumming rain fell steadily. Then
came occasional tiny rifts in this white cheese in which the world was
smothered. It lifted a little from the mountain side beneath and left
fluffy streamers of mist trailing down. By noon it had shown the summit
of John Quincy once, then shut down as if it were a lid operated by a
stiff spring. Late in the afternoon, thirty hours after the murk had
immured us in the hut, the wind had lulled, swung to the west, and was
shredding the clouds to tatters, through which I climbed to the peak of
Madison.
* * * * *
Again the great gods of chaos were crushing an image of immensity
out of new formed stone. Out of the void of cloud I saw it come,
piece by piece, the artificers adding to and withdrawing from their
structure as the result pleased or displeased them. Once they swept the
mountain away entirely leaving only the formless gray of chaos, then
as if with a sudden access of skill and inspiration swept the whole
grandly into being, and the low sun shot his rays through the débris
of their previous failures and gilded the final structure. Through the
long miles below me came the voice of the Great Gulf. Down its sheer
declivities ten thousand streams were splashing to reach the swollen
flood in the channels of the west branch of the Peabody. Each lisped
its consonant or its vowel, and as they met and mingled in syllables
and sped on the river took them and built them into words and phrases,
an oration whose sonorous uproar came from the deep diaphragm of the
mighty space out of which, for all I know, the mountains themselves
were born. Down its distant, narrow ravine I could see the Chandler
River leap from its source high on the Nelson Crag, to its junction
with the west branch, a continuous line of white cataract, roaring full
from brink to brink. Few little rivers of any mountains fall so swiftly
through so deep and straight a ravine and few indeed have a mountain
top three miles away that gives an unobstructed view of their flood
fury from source to mouth.
A little aftermath of the storm, blown back on the ever freshening
north wind, sent me down the cone again to further refuge in the hut,
and it was not until the next morning that I could retrace my steps
over the gulfside trail to Washington. Again I started with a clear
sky, but by the time I had made the miles to the east side of Jefferson
the high summits were altars whereon the little gods of storms were at
work. They caught the saturated air that rose from all ravines, laid it
across the upper slopes and, hammering it with the brisk north wind,
beat white puffs of mist out of it with every stroke. These streamed
from the peaks and were caught and tangled on them and in one another
till all distances vanished and I walked in a narrowing world where
mist creatures played and danced lightly to the tinkle of water that
still fell from all heights. More and more little clouds the little
gods hammered out on the slopes and ever fresher blew the north wind
that swirled them together after it had beaten them out. The vanishing
distance took with it the peaks above and the Gulf below, and the world
that had been so great became very small indeed, a half circle of
rocks but a few rods in circumference bisected by a trail and the whole
packed in cotton wool.
In the lower parts of the trail between Jefferson and Clay this packing
was thinnest. Probably at yet lower levels it was clear and these
were clouds that floated above. But this thinness was not sufficient
to give the traveller any landmark. His only hold on the earth was
that tiny circle of rock that ever changed yet was ever the same as
he went on, and the trail itself. As this rose along the west slope
of Clay and swung along the levels toward the head wall of the Gulf
the packing became more dense, and I walked in Chaos itself, thankful
that the trail is here so well marked that one does not need to see
from monument to monument, but may follow the way foot by foot without
fear of wandering. A little lift came in this density just at the head
wall of the Gulf. To the south just for a moment loomed ghostly blobs
of deeper gray that I knew were the water tanks of the railroad, not
a stone's toss away. To the north was the ravine. On this spot I had
stood two mornings before and marvelled at the seeming nearness of the
little lake a mile away. The rim of the head wall showed ghostly gray,
but there was no Gulf. All the world, above, below and beyond, was but
a mass of cotton wool so solidly packed that it seemed as if I might
walk out onto that space where the Gulf should be and not fall through
it.
* * * * *
Further on the trail was harder to find and the little diminution
in the density ceased. The little gods of storms were doing well at
their practice. No drop of rain fell, but where the north wind blew
this white mass of mist against me it condensed within the pores of
all garments and filled them with moisture. The last landmarks of the
trail vanished and the white clouds blew in and tangled my feet like
a flapping garment as I stepped upon the carriage road and turned
mechanically to the right, hardly able to distinguish by sight the
roadside from the rocks that wall it in. Even the great barns where
they stable the stage horses were invisible as I walked between them,
but I found the plank staircase which leads up to the stage office and
found that and a good fire and a jolly crowd inside. My trip over the
northern peaks had been one of such varied adventure that it was to be
preferred to one made under fair skies and on a windless day. Yet this
tramp in the clouds was to be had that day on the high summits alone.
At the base of these and even up to the head walls of the ravines
during a good part of the time the air had been clear. It was just the
little weather gods making medicine with the saturated air from the
ravines and the cold steel hammer of the north wind.
XII
THE LAKES OF THE CLOUDS
_The Alpine Beauty of These Highest New England Lakes_
At nightfall from the summit of Mount Washington the Lakes of the
Clouds look like two close-set, glassy eyes in the face of a giant, a
face that stares up at the sky far below and whose hooked nose is the
summit of Mount Monroe. As the light passes, the glassy stare fades
from these and they lie fathomless black orbs that gaze skyward a
little while, then close, and the giant, whose outstretched body is the
southern half of the Presidential Range, sleeps. In the full sunshine
of a pleasant forenoon one knows them for tiny, shallow lakes, and so
near do they look that it seems almost as if a good ball player might
cast a stone into them from the rim of the summit just behind the Tip
Top House. As a matter of fact, they are a little over two miles away
over declivities and ridges that lie above the tree line. For the most
part the trail to these lakes, whether one comes from Mount Washington
or along the Crawford bridle path, seems bare and desolate to the
overlooking glance. But when one gets down to it he finds it full of
beauty and interest. The southern part of the Presidential Range,
between Mount Washington and Mount Clinton, is a mighty ridge, out of
which topple the crests of Monroe, Franklin and Pleasant, a giant still
by day, but now a giant wave petrified.
Coming up the land from the south I had thought that the lifting of
Mount Washington through the plastic earth had caused the waves of
land to radiate from it in all directions, but to stand on the highest
summit is to see that this is not so. The force that made the mountains
to the south and the mountains to the north is the same, and the
Presidential Range is a result, also, and not a cause. It is but the
seventh wave of those which ride in from the northwest, and the force
which made them all came over the land from countless leagues beyond.
The Presidential Range lifts out of the hollow of the wave, which is
the Ammonoosuc Valley, in a long clean sweep southeastward, exactly
as a mighty wave does at sea. It pinnacles into the various peaks
and it drops suddenly, almost sheer in places, into the next hollow
beyond. This hollow beyond the northern peaks is the Great Gulf, beyond
the southern peaks is Oakes Gulf, and beyond Mount Washington itself
begins with Huntington and Tuckerman ravines. Something drove mighty
waves through the land from the west, sent them pinnacling five and
six thousand feet above the sea level, and froze them there. The main
wave is the solid rock mass thirteen miles long and in the neighborhood
of five thousand feet in height above the sea level. The crests are
the summit cones, jumbled piles of great mica-schist rocks, varying
in size from a cook-stove to a city block, all seeming to have been
tossed together in a disorderly heap and to have settled down into such
regularity as gravity at the moment allowed. The central cores of these
may be solid. Certainly the outer part is but a jumble of loose rocks
that sometimes topple and grind down over one another at a touch and
that give air and water access to unknown depths.
* * * * *