During nearly the whole of the forenoon of July 3, 1892, a soft rain had
been falling. It had begun in the night to the discomfiture of the
whippoorwills, but not to the extinguishment of their voices. It
continued until nearly noon, when the wind shifted from east to west,
patches of blue sky appeared, and ever and anon gleams of sunlight fell
upon the distant forest across the lake, or slid slowly over the
tree-tops on the side of Chocorua. Bird voices grew stronger with the
promise of fair weather. Hermit thrushes, veeries, red-eyed vireos, and
Maryland yellow-throats sang four invitations from as many points of the
compass, and I said Yes to the veeries and sought the swamp. A New
Hampshire swamp is full of attractions at all seasons. In winter the
great northern hares make innumerable paths across its soft snow, and
tempt the gunner into the chilly gloom in search of a shot at their
phantom forms. In spring a host of migrating warblers makes merry in its
tree-tops, and the song of the winter wren is sent from heaven to give
joy to its shadows. Summer brings to it many a shy orchid blooming among
the ferns, and the fisherman finds the trout in its brook’s placid pools
long after they have ceased to bite well in the upper reaches of the
stream. There are no venomous serpents hanging from its moss-grown
trees, no tigers concealed in its brakes, and no ague lingering in its
stagnant pools. It is a safe swamp and kind, yet none the less a swamp.
When I reached its borders, after crossing the meadow, I found wild
roses in bloom. It was of these, doubtless, that the veery was singing
so bewitchingly. Certainly nothing less fair could have prompted such
magic music. Moreover, the veery’s nest, framed in nodding osmundas, is
near these beautiful blossoms, with many a pool and thicket between it
and hard ground. Passing into the darkness of the swamp, I glanced back
at the sky. The north and west were filled with black clouds which were
stirred by passionate winds in their midst. A low growl of thunder came
through the heavy air. I felt as though forbidden to enter the mysteries
of the swamp, as though warned that danger lay within those aisles of
twilight. The veery ceased its song. No bird voice broke the stillness
of the gloom, and a hush of expectation held every leaf motionless. The
branches closed behind me and I stole on between lofty trees with mossy
trunks, over fallen logs, and through the dripping jungle of ferns.
Upland woods are cleaner, stronger, more symmetrical than swamp growth,
but they have not the effect of tropical luxuriance which the swamp
forest possesses. The mosses, lichens, ferns of many species, climbing
vines, and such large-leaved plants as the veratrum and skunk cabbage,
give to the moist land an air of wealth of leaf-growth which is
distinctive.
Two species of orchid were conspicuous, rising just above the ferns.
They were the purple-fringed, just coming into bloom, and the white,
which was abundant. Splashing back and forth through the shallow pools,
gathering the spikes of the white orchis, I did not at first notice a
distant sound which grew in volume until its sullen vibration could not
be ignored. The tree-tops above me gave a sudden, vicious swish. Crows
to the westward were cawing wildly. The roar of the storm became
unmistakable; the swamp grew darker; a few big drops of rain fell, and
then, as though a train were plunging down noisy rails upon the forest,
the rain and wind leaped upon the trees, filling the air with deafening
sounds, and twisting the branches until it seemed as though the whole
structure of the woods was about to collapse in one vast ruin. Then
through the tormented tree-tops the floods fell. They were white like
snow, and seemed to be a fallen part of a white sky which showed now and
then as the forest swayed back and forth in the wind’s arms. Wet as the
swamp had been before, its colors became more vivid under this deluge.
Every leaf grew greener, and each lichen gave out new tints as it drank
in rain. The trunks of the trees assumed more distinctive shades; that
of the ash became brown, of the yellow birch almost like saffron, and of
the canoe birch glistening white. The rain pelting into my eyes bade me
look less at the sky and more at the beauties at my feet. Beauties there
surely were at my feet, both of color and form. There were no flowers,
but the leaves were enough to satisfy both eye and mind,—large leaves
and small, coarse and delicate, strong and feeble, stiff and drooping.
Some were long and slender, others deeply cleft, some round, or smoothly
oval, others shaped like arrow-heads. Some received the rain
submissively and bowed more and more before it, others responded
buoyantly as each drop struck them and was tossed off. In some the
up-and-down motion communicated by the falling drop was by the formation
of the leaf-stalk transformed at once into an odd vibration from side to
side, which was like an indignant shaking of the head.
Looking at the marvelous variety in the outlines of these gleaming
leaves, I suddenly found my memory tugging me back to the schoolroom
where I was first taught botany. I recalled one melancholy morning when
my teacher, who knew neither the derivation of botanical terms nor the
true beauties of botanical science, ordered me to commit to memory the
list of adjectives applied to the various shapes of leaves. The dose
prejudiced me against botany for full ten years of my life, yet here in
this glistening carpet of the swamp I saw “lanceolate,” “auriculate,”
“cordate,” “pinnate,” written, not in letters of gold, but in something
equally impressive to the memory, and much more easy for a dull teacher
to obtain.
When one is in the deep woods and a flash of lightning comes, the eye
seems to see a narrow horizontal belt of light play swiftly across the
foliage immediately in the line of vision. If I looked at the ground I
caught it there; if my eyes were fixed on the low branches at a
distance, the flash was there. Each flash was promptly followed by the
glorious mountain thunder which is so much more impressive than that in
level regions. At first heaven was rent by the sound; then mountain
after mountain seemed to fall in noisy ruin, the great ledges tumbling
in upon each other with deafening shocks; then the sound rolled away
through the sky, striking here and there upon some cloudy promontory and
giving out a softened boom or waning rumble.
For full twenty minutes the trees writhed in the wind, the rain fell,
the leaves nodded and shivered under the drops, and the rhythmic roar of
the rain was broken irregularly by the thunder. As time passed, the
shower slackened, the thunder followed the lightning at longer and
longer intervals, the wind seemed to take deeper and less nervous
breaths, and I listened to discover what creature of the swamp would
first raise its voice above the subsiding storm. A mosquito hovered
before me, dodging the drops in its vibratory flight. If it was buzzing
I could not hear it. Suddenly a single call from a blue jay came, in a
lull of the wind, from a thicket of spruces. “Yoly-’oly,” it said, and
was silent again. I took a few steps forward, and the shrill alarm-note
of a chipmunk sounded through the gloom. I strolled slowly through the
drenched and dripping woods fragrant with the perfume of moss and mould.
It was more like wading than walking, for every leaf had a drop of cold
water ready to give away to whatever first touched it. A ray of sunlight
dodged through the lifting clouds and fell into the swamp. The song of a
parula warbler, distilled by it, floated back skyward. As the west grew
golden and blue, bird-songs sounded from every quarter. The merry
chickadees, conversational vireos, and querulous wood pewees vied with
each other and the tree-toads in replacing the orchestral passion of the
storm by the simple music of their solos.
Leaving the swamp, I climbed the terrace marking the ancient border of
the lake, which once included the swamp in its area, and passed through
a grove of slender birches and poplars. Their stems, streaming with
rain, were as bright as polished marble, and their foliage, illuminated
by the clear sunlight, was marvelously green against the deep blue of
the sky. Presently a vista opened northward, and at its end rose the
dark peak of Chocorua. After a rain this towering rock presents a
noticeably different appearance from its normal coloring. Most of its
surface is covered by lichens, one species of which, when dry, resembles
burnt paper. When rain falls upon these lichens they alter their tints,
and the burnt paper species in particular becomes so green that a
wonderful change takes place in the whole coloring of the mountain.
Looked upon through the birch vista, the air being clear and clean, and
the colors of the mountain uncommonly bright, the peak seemed near at
hand, and even grander than usual. There are few things in New England
as truly picturesque as this horn of Chocorua. Three thousand feet above
its lake and the level of the Saco, the great rock lifts itself with
bold and naked outline into the midst of the sky. No foot seems able to
creep up its precipitous slopes to its dizzy tip, and even the sturdy
spruce can cling only to the deep clefts in its storm-swept ledges.
There was a time when the forest reached to its crest, and when the cold
rocks, now naked, were covered deep in soil and mosses. Passaconaway,
close by, shows how this could have been, and how Chocorua must have
looked draped in evergreens. Fire and hurricane destroyed the trees; the
parched soil was washed away from the rocks; and now the only trace of
the old forest growth is an occasional bleached stump or log hidden in a
cleft in the ledges.
As I strolled homewards I passed a spot where the linnæa has covered
several square yards of ground in a birch wood. The tiny bells had rung
out their elfin music for the year. By dint of laborious search on hands
and knees I found eight of the flowers, still wonderfully fragrant
though somewhat faded. All the rest of the chime had fallen. Not far
away a growth of dogbane fringed the path. I picked some of its blossoms
and held the two sets of bells side by side in my hand. The comparison
made me feel sorry for the dogbane.