luxuriant, covering everything,--rocks, roots and the trunks of ancient
trees that had fallen one across another for unnumbered centuries. It
was like a miniature of the close-set tangle of downwood and growing
timber that one sees in the Puget Sound country. There for miles
one may make progress through the wood only by clambering along one
fallen trunk to the next, perhaps twenty feet in air. Here the fallen
trunks and growing trees were not one-tenth the size of the Pacific
coast giants, but the proportion and condition was the same. And so
up through this fairyland I scrambled and plunged, following a deer
path as best I might and longing for their sure-footed ability to leap
lightly over obstacles. I daresay my clattering plunges drove all
the deer off the mountain. At least I saw none, though their paths
intersected and their hoof-marks had dented them all recently. Stairs
Mountain is certainly the house of a thousand staircases. All through
my climb I found detached stairs scattered about, and the mountain
seems to be largely built of them, from a few feet to a few hundred
feet in height.
And after all I came out, not at the top of the highest front stair,
but at the top of that side stair that looks directly down on the old
lumber camp. A half mile or less southeast of me were the front stairs,
and I had to go down an internal flight and climb again before reaching
their top, passing again through forest primeval criss-crossed by deer
paths. The yellow-headed woodpecker had given me a pretty scramble, but
I think it was worth it.
[Illustration: "From the top tread of the Giant's Stairs one sees half
of the mountain world, the half to southward"]
From a distance I had thought Stairs Mountain to be fractured slate.
Instead it is moulded granite. The edge of the tread on the topmost
stair is of a stone that seems as hard and dense as any that comes out
of the Quincy quarries. Yet still clinging to it in places are remnants
of a crumbly granite that seems once to have been poured over it and
cooled there in a friable mass. You may kick this overlying granite to
pieces with your hob-nailed mountain shoe, and I fancy once it filled
the gap between the topmost tread and the summit of Mount Resolution,
just to the south, and has been frost riddled and water worn away
leaving the solid granite of the stairs behind.
* * * * *
From the topmost of the Giant's Stairs one sees but half the mountain
world,--the half to southward. All the north is cut off by the
spruce-covered round of the summit behind him. Eastward was the great
bulk of Iron Mountain, over which I had come, its round top so far
below me that I could see the whole of the perfect cone of Kearsarge
over it. Directly south was the half bald dome of Resolution, and
just over it the equilateral pyramid of Chocorua dented the sky.
Wonderfully blue and far away it looked, and to its right was stretched
the varied sky-line of the whole Sandwich Range. To the right again was
a mighty wilderness of mountains, cones and billows and ranges massed
in together in almost inextricable confusion, though out of this rose
certain peaks one could not fail to recognize,--Carrigain, stately
and a bit apart in dignified reserve, and the great blue wall of the
Franconia Range, diminished by distance but beautiful and impressive
still. Almost at my feet, down the Crawford Notch, crept a train along
the thin, straight line of the railroad. A puff of white steam shot
upward from the engine whistling for the Frankenstein trestle, but it
was long before the shrill sound rose to my ears. Nothing could so well
emphasize the immensity of the prospect before me. I realized that the
brakeman was walking through the observation car shouting, "Giant's
Stairs! Giant's Stairs now on your left!" and that the mighty cliff on
whose verge I was perched seemed no more than a letter on the printed
page to the onlooking crowd.
The way home lies down the west side of the mountain, the steep but
good Davis trail to and along the bottom of the lower stair, thence
to the west side of the ridge between Stairs Mountain and Mount
Resolution. Then a trail east, very slender but distinguishable,
goes to the broad highway of a logging road, and thence the descent,
though precipitous, is easy. The Stairs Mountain is so different
from anything else that one can find in this region that it has an
eerie individuality all its own. To look back as I went on down the
logging road was to see the stairs standing out against the glow of
the lowering sun, less like steps than gigantic rock faces. The lower
one particularly looked as if a giant himself, wild-eyed and bristly
haired, was lying behind the forest with his great head leaned against
the mighty granite cliff that towered above. And so I left him, waiting
doubtless to devour the next lone climber who, if he goes up the
front stairs, must pass directly in front of his jaws. For all that I
hesitate to advise the back stairs route to which the yellow-headed
woodpecker led me. It is rough--and chancey.
XVII
ON MOUNT LAFAYETTE
_Glimpses of Coming Autumn from Franconia's Highest Peak_
Upon the highest mountain tops the winds of winter make their first
assaults upon the summer, driving it southward, peak by peak. In
September the skirmishes begin, and by the end of October the conquest
of the high peaks is complete, but meanwhile the outcome of the contest
is by no means sure, and day by day, sometimes hour by hour, the
redoubts are won and lost again. Mid-September sees the approaches to
the peaks fluttering gayly the banners of both chieftains, summer's
blue and gold in the asters and goldenrod, winter's crimson and gold
in the flare of maple and the glow of yellow birch. Thus I saw them
from the summit of Lafayette on a day when the forces of the north
met those of the south there and the long ridge was now in the hands
of one army, now of the other. Nor was it difficult to prophesy what
would be the outcome of the conflict. It seemed as if moment by moment
the yellow banners of winter, planted almost on the very summit in the
leaves of the dwarf birches, increased in number and crowded farther
down the slope and into the forests of the outlying spurs. Now and
then, too, the eye noted where a shell had exploded in a goldenrod
bloom, or so it seemed, and blown its summer banner out of existence in
a white puff of pappus smoke. So the wind out of the north drives the
summer away, though it rallies again and again and comes stealing up
the southerly valleys and along the sunny slopes to the very summits.
* * * * *
Near the high summits the birches show autumn tints first. These are of
the round-leafed variety of Betula glandulosa, which is peculiar to the
high peaks of the White Mountains. Very dwarf at best, on the highest
peaks they win as near the top as do the dwarf firs, yet at humiliating
expense of stature, becoming scarcely more than creeping vines at the
greatest heights, sending up doubtful branches out of the protection
of soft tundra moss. Up the higher slopes of Lafayette they thus grow,
crowding together in dense masses that now spread a velvety golden
carpet to the eye that looks upon them from the summit. Amidst the gray
and brown of ledges and the green of spruce and fir, which is so deep
that it is black, they glow by contrast and put the goldenrod of the
lower glades to shame with their color. No other deciduous trees reach
this height, and in looking at them in the early weeks in September
it is easy to believe that autumn comes down from the sky and first,
like jocund day, stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. On Lafayette
the color was richest near the top and paled into green as the glance
slipped farther and farther down toward the Pemigewasset Valley.
Even by the middle of September the birches of the valleys show little
of the marvellous yellow that seems suddenly to come upon them a little
later. From the mountain-top they still hold the full green of summer
to the first glance, and only by looking again and more carefully can
one see that they have changed. Then, indeed, little cirrus clouds of
yellow mist them in places, rounding the low hilltops a little more
definitely against the more distant wood. To look again is to see
here and there the undeniable flaunt of a yellow banner, but from the
hilltops, that is all. To tramp the levels along the water-courses or
climb the lower slopes beneath deciduous trees is to see more, and to
learn that the autumn tints come by other routes than a descent upon
the summits. For weeks in the cool seclusion of the forest aisles the
ways have been lighted by yellow flares of birch or elm leaves and red
flashes of the swamp maple. Day by day now these increase in number,
and once in a mile the whole tree seems to have caught all the sunshine
of the summer in itself and to begin to let it glow forth in the
half-dusk of the woodland shadows.
* * * * *
In places it is as if autumn had set candles along these dusky
cloisters to light pilgrims to some shrine, and in many a hollow glade
one may think he has found the shrine itself,--an altar perhaps of
gray rock covered with a wonderful altar cloth of dainty cedar moss
all patterned with polypody ferns, and with a great birch candelabra
stretching protecting arms above it, all alight with a thousand candles
of yellow leaves. The heat of the September sun above, ray-filtered
by the feathery firs, is caught in these yellow leaves that hold back
the last of its fire and set the place about with a cool, holy glow,
an illumination that is like a presence before which one must bow down
in reverent adoration. After all it is not a defeat that has come to
the fiery forces of summer that have so well held the hills; it is a
conversion.
[Illustration: "On the way the gray brow of Mount Cannon looks in
through the gaps in the foliage"]
In the cloistered seclusion of the woods one knows this, and that
seclusion obtains for much of the four-mile climb to the summit of
Lafayette. Once or twice on the way the gray brow of Mount Cannon looks
in through gaps in the foliage, from its great height, seeming to lean
across the Notch and peer solemnly down from directly over head, so
narrow is this deep defile between two mighty mountains. A mile up and
the trail leans to a brief level, where it bridges the chasm between
the spur of the mountain which is Eagle Cliff and the main mass. Here
at a glimpse comes an idea of what happened when the mountains were
made. The whole Franconia Range, one thinks, must have come up out
of the hard-pressed levels of the earth in one great rock mass, from
which the foundations settled and let portions lean away and split off.
Here in the Eagle Cliff Notch is a great gap of the splitting, now
more than half filled with fragments of the rock which fell away in
enormous chunks when the action took place. Rocks the size of a city
block lie here roughly placed one upon another with caverns of unknown
depth made by the openings between them. Out of these caverns wells up
on the hottest days a cold that undoubtedly comes from ice that forms
in depths to which no man's eye has penetrated, and that remains the
year through. The clinging of gray lichens upon these rocks has made
roothold for the dainty cedar moss which makes them green and holds
moisture in turn for the roots of firs that grow from the very rocks
and fill their gaps with forest. Here where once was titanic motion is
now titanic rest, and out of summer sun from above and winter coolness
from below wild flowers build tender petals and distil perfumes the
brief season through, asters and goldenrod lingering still in the
crannied wall, the cool airs that made them late in blooming equally
delaying their passing. In this green gap in the gray granite summer's
conversion is long delayed, though winter waits just below her flowers
the whole season through.
* * * * *
More than a mile the path again climbs steeply through closely set
evergreens, in whose perpetual shade the moist mosses are knee deep
above all rocks and fallen timber. Nowhere can one see better the value
of spruce and fir growth on mountain sides in the preservation of the
mountains themselves. Beneath this everlasting cushion of wet moss,
re-enforced by roots, each rock lies in place and nothing short of an
avalanche can stir it. Where the path has let in the sunlight on the
moss the torrents have stripped it clean from the surface and frost
and storm year by year gully the opening deeper. It is astounding,
this sponge of moss that climbs to the top with the path, sphagnums
and dainty cedar moss predominating, but seemingly all other varieties
intermingled as well.
And at the top one finds how persistent in its withdrawal the summit
of a great mountain like Lafayette can be. This is only the top of a
westerly spur, a far greater chunk than Eagle Cliff, but only a chunk
of the main mountain, that also broke off when the foundations of the
range settled. Strange to relate, the ravine that lies between is
choked, not with mighty rocks, but with a level that has for a surface
at least a boggy space in which lie two sheets of water,--the Eagle
Lakes, 4146 feet in elevation. This is no summit; rather it is another
notch, and the peak of Lafayette lies more than a thousand feet farther
on into the blue.
A little above this point the firs cease and the moss with them. The
rest of the way lies over broken stone that has crumbled from rough
ledges unrestricted by any mossy protection. In the gravel ground from
it grow some stunted firs, some very dwarf birches and scattered wild
flowers, but the way to the summit lies for all that through a desert.
From its jagged agglomeration of rocks, scattered on ledges that
still hold to the main mass of rock which is the mountain, one looks
north or south along a great rocky ridge which is the crest of the
Franconia Range. North lie the great outlying spurs and buttresses of
Lafayette, leading across a high col to Garfield, which sticks a bare
rock pinnacle skyward. Southward a well-worn path lies along the ridge
to Lincoln, Haystack, Liberty and Flume, each just a rise in the crest
which lies along the ponderous bulk of really one mountain. Garfield
is in a certain measure off by itself, but these others are all merely
pinnacles of one great structure, Lafayette being the highest. Here
as on the Presidential Range one finds Alpine plants, conspicuously
the tiny mountain sandwort, so constant a bloomer as to show its white
flowers still in mid-September. With this, but no others in bloom, were
the three-toothed cinquefoil, the mountain avens, mountain cranberry,
mountain goldenrod, bilberry and Labrador tea, all to be seen on the
final crest which is Lafayette's summit.
A north wind out of a clear sky had blown at the start of my trip, but
as if to prove that its day was not yet over, the wind out of the south
came over the long barren ridge, bringing butterflies in its train.
For a time the two winds seemed to meet at the very mountain top,
and a yellow Colias, that was the first to come, caught between the
two, coasted upward and disappeared toward the zenith as if even the
summit of Lafayette were not high enough for him. Later, when the south
wind had fairly driven that from the north back toward the Canadian
boundary, I saw several of these, which I took to be Colias philodice,
the common sulphur, flitting about the summit, their yellow pale and
clear compared with that of the autumn-tinted birches just down the
slope. Two mourning cloaks, a Compton tortoise and a Grapta progne,
made up the list of other butterflies seen. Summer was doing well to
be able to show even these so late in September on so high a summit
as Lafayette. I looked curiously for the little gray Oeneis semidea,
the White Mountain butterfly which is so common in earlier summer on
the Presidential Range and said to be confined to it, but I did not
see it. Perhaps this variety is not to be found on Lafayette, though
the altitude is sufficient, the food plants are there, and the same
geological conditions which left this variety "islanded" on Washington
no doubt apply.
* * * * *
The south wind which brought up the butterflies and which pushed the
north wind back brought up also a gray haze which swept in like a sea
turn. It blotted out the Ossipee Mountains and the little Squam Range.
For a time the Sandwich peaks stood out, deep blue against its pale
blue blur, then they melted into it and were gone. It came on and took
Tecumseh, Osceola and Kancamagus. Kineo, Cushman and Moosilauke were
drowned in it one after another, but still to the eastward Carrigain
and Hancock showed, and below them the broad Pemigewasset Valley was
spread out like a map. Almost at my feet was the broad swath of ruin
which past years of lumbering have cut in this once beautiful valley
of primeval forest. For miles down the western slope of the Franconia
Range and beyond all valleys are bare and all slopes that the utmost
daring can climb are denuded. On mile after mile, save for, in spots,
a pale undergrowth of blueberry and wild cherry, only dead birches
stand, stretching bare white bones to the sky in ghostly appeal.
Islanded in it here and there are peaks and ridges still beautiful in
deep-green evergreens, with just a misty touch of the tender yellow of
autumn-tinted birches, wood too small or too dangerously set to tempt
the axe. The rest is desert; dignified, haughty even in the mighty
uplift of its long slopes and bare gray crags, but desert for all that.
It is a relief to turn the eye from this to the rich green of the
unscathed slopes of the Notch itself. A thin blue line of air between
Eagle Cliff and Mount Cannon shows the narrow passage where the
mountains split apart, perhaps to let man and the streams go through.
Over the way lies Moran Lake, a blue gem among the green ridges of
Cannon. At my feet, so near it seems, is the round eye of Echo Lake,
which is at the bottom of the Notch, but seems almost as near as the
larger Eagle Lake, which is but a thousand feet below, far up on the
side of the mountain. All about are bold, bare cliffs showing through
the green, but their bareness is that of nature, and the deep green
around them grows, forgetful of the axe, which for many long years has
not been laid at their roots, perhaps never will be again. Southerly
the Pemigewasset Valley opened far to the villages of Woodstock and on
to Plymouth, but even as I looked the pale blue haze blotted them out
and swept on up the valley. The south wind was getting into a passion,
bringing clouds behind and above the haze, putting out the sun and
growling in gray gusts about the summit. It shouted threats in my ears
and shook me as I went down the zig-zag trail to the shelter of the
firs about the nearer Eagle Lake. Then it lulled and dropped a tear or
two of warm rain as if ashamed of itself.
[Illustration: Profile Lake, Franconia Notch, and Mount Lafayette from
Bald Mountain]
Star Lake, on Mount Madison, is but a puddle among the bare,
slatey-coherent rocks of the Northern Peaks. The Lakes of the Clouds
are real lakes, beautifully set, but barren in themselves, their
shallow rocky bottoms allowing no growth of water-plants. Spaulding
Lake at the head of the Great Gulf on Washington and Hermit Lake at
the bottom of the Tuckerman Ravine are singularly alike, shallow,
transparent, barren and beautifully set among spiring firs and spruces,
each in the heart of a mighty gorge. But here, way up on the high
shoulder of Lafayette, where one would think no lake could possibly
be, is a little one in a brown bog,--a bog in which the mountain
cranberry sets its deep red fruit to the sun and the snowberry scatters
its pearls all over the maroon carpet of the sphagnum. Curiously
beautiful fruit, that of the creeping snowberry. Here is a cranberry
vine grown slender and with tiny leaves fringing it most delicately.
Here at its tip is an elongated checkerberry, waxy, almost transparent
white, with an odor of checkerberry, a pleasantly acid pulp that
reminds one of cranberry and an after-flavor of checkerberry also. If
there were prehistoric wizards in plant-breeding in these mountains,
surely one must have cross-fertilized the cranberry with the pollen
of the checkerberry to the producing of this shy, delicate, hardy
and altogether lovely fruit. To this antediluvian Burbank it may be
that the Old Man of the Mountain is a statue, erected by a grateful
posterity in the Notch below.
* * * * *
In the lake itself grows the tape grass, stretching its straw-yellow
ribbons along the surface and curiously ripening its knobby fruit
under water. With it in scattered groups was the yellow pond-lily,
its broad, ovate leaves floating and turning up their edges to the
gusts of the south wind that swung in over the corner of the mountain.
Strange indeed these familiar water plants looked in this little tarn
swung more than four thousand feet in air on the shoulder of so mighty
a mountain. All other mountain lakes at such heights had seemed weird
to me in the crystalline barrenness of their purity. This one with its
boggy shore, its mud and its homely water weeds was so friendlily
familiar that I lingered long on its banks. The southerly wind had
massed its clouds high above the Notch, and in their shadow the dusk of
early nightfall was on the path and deep in the woods on my way down.
Yet in the bottom of the deep defile between Lafayette and Cannon I
saw the north wind again pressing on to victory, scattering the clouds
above Mount Cannon and letting the sunset light through far over its
northerly slopes. The nimbus broke into cumulus clouds, and these to
fluffs of cirrus that showed at first an angry red. Then this softened
to pink and finally dimpled into miles of gold between which the depths
of the sky showed a pure blue of forgiveness such as can be found in
heaven only when one looks up into it from the bottom of a deep like
that of Profile Notch. Not in flowers or gems or in the pure eyes of
children can be found such a blue as the Franconia sky showed, out of
which night and deep peace settled like a benediction on the mountains.
XVIII
A MOUNTAIN FARM
_One on Wildcat Mountain the Highest Ever Cleared in New England_
Last night the north wind died of its own cold among the high peaks and
black frost bit deep down in the valley meadows, killing all tender
herbage. Then morning broke in a sky of crystal clarity, of a blue as
pure and cool as the hope of Heaven in the heart of a Puritan, through
miles of which all objects showed as if through a lens. From the ledges
of Wildcat Mountain I looked over to the summit of Mount Washington,
whose details were so plain that the five trains that came up were
visible to the naked eye, and with glass I could see the people flow
from them in a slow black stream, its tide flecked with the flotsam of
fall millinery. So still was the air upon the summit that from each
engine as it came in sight over the ridge stood high and straight a
cloudy pillar of mingled smoke and steam. The Israelites who of old
were thus led through the wilderness to the promised land could have
had no more visible guide. Slowly to the mountain rim sank the frosted
fragment of the once round and yellow moon, a wan, gray ghost seeking
obliteration in the grayer ledges of the summit cone.
On these gray ledges of the cone the scant herbage of the summer clung
in flowing, warm, tan-brown streaks drifting down as snow does from
the summit, but coloring only perhaps a twentieth part of the surface.
All else was the gray of the rock, softened by distance into a cool
delight to the eye. Lower the Alpine Garden slants toward the ravines,
black in patches with dwarf firs, soft green in others where in moist
hollows the grasses and moss still grow, but for the most part showing
the olive yellow of autumn-tinted tundra. Only below this, where the
garden drops off steeply to the slope between Tuckerman and Huntington
ravines, was the rich yellow of the dwarf birches to be seen, here a
clear sweep of color, lower still mottled with the black growth of
spruce and fir.
There was never a flame of rock maple in sight on all the visible slope
of the big mountain, but below, in the middle distance of a slope up
to Slide Peak, below the boulder and from there down into Pinkham
Notch, they flared, one after another, ending in a blazing group whose
conflagration was stabbed by the points of the firs on the near slope
of Wildcat.
* * * * *