Floating upon the clear waters of Chocorua Lake in the latter part of a
warm July afternoon, and looking northward, I see the coolness of night
beginning to grow in the heart of the mountain. At first there is but a
slender dark line marking a deep ravine, through which a brook flows;
then the shadow widens until a great hollow in the mountain’s side is
filled with shade. As the sun sinks the shadow reaches higher and higher
upon the wooded flanks of the two spurs which hold the hollow between
them, until at last only the vast rock of the peak, resting upon its
forest-clad shoulders, is left warm in the sun’s rays. The point where
the shadow begins to form is more than a thousand feet above the level
of the lake. From it, reaching upwards, two folds in the forest drapery
extend towards the foot of the peak. One marks a brook coming from the
upper part of the right-hand ridge, the other a brook which rises at the
very head of the left-hand, or west ridge. The heart of the mountain is
the wild ravine where these two streams mingle in perpetual coolness and
shadow. No path leads to it and few are the feet which have found a way
to its beauties. There is a peculiar charm in a spot unknown to the
many. Its loneliness endears it to the mind, and gives its associations
a rarer flavor. If besides being unfrequented it is singularly beautiful
in itself, it becomes a shrine, a place sacred to one’s best thoughts.
To me the heart of Chocorua is a shrine, all the more valued because of
the weariness of flesh required to attain to it.
Early on the morning of July 10, I set out across the pastures for the
foot of the mountain. The sun was hot, the air hazy, and not a breath of
a breeze made the aspens quiver. In the shaded hollows something of the
night’s chill still lingered, and from them floated the psalm of the
hermit and the gypsy music of the veery. Now and then the clear, cool
phœbe-note of the chickadee reached the ear, in contrast to the trill of
the field sparrows which came from the warmest parts of the grass-land.
On the hill to the westward young crows with high-pitched voices
clamored for food, and quarreled with each other on their shady perch in
the beeches.
The flowers which bloomed by the path were children of heat, types of
midsummer. Buds were large on the goldenrod, the St. John’s-wort was in
full bloom, and so, too, were the diurnal evening-primrose, the fleabane
and dogbane, both worthy of sweeter names; the yarrow, as disagreeable
among flowers as a cynic is among men; the tall potentilla, yellow
clover, and, representing the purple flowers, the brunella. In many
places thick beds of checkerberry, decked with brilliant berries, were
made gayer by many heads of the brunella growing through them. The
brunella is shaped somewhat like the conventional chess castle, but the
castle is never quite complete while blossoming, owing to the lack of
harmony among the many little flowers which unite to form its head. Low,
running blackberry dotted the banks with uninteresting white blossoms,
and the stiff spikes of the spiræa were abundant. The daisy, stigmatized
as whiteweed by the indignant farmers, still displayed a few battered
blossoms, which kept company with heads of red and of white clover.
After passing these flowers of summer, it seemed strange, on descending
into a deep cup-shaped basin where a small pond fed by springs is shaded
by lofty oaks and birches, to find the houstonia still in full glory,
and the dwarf cornel blooming in dark and mossy nooks. Animate nature
takes solid comfort in a hot day. As I stole softly downward to the
shore of the little pond, scores of tadpoles shot away from the edge of
the water into its green depths. Painted tortoises, which had been
baking on logs and stones in the full glare of the sun, dropped off
unwillingly into the water. Countless dragonflies skimmed the surface of
the pond, devouring smaller insects, and from a dead limb overlooking
the shore, a crow, whose plumage gleamed with iridescent lights, flapped
sluggishly out of sight among the trees. Snakes love to lie coiled in
the hottest sunlight; squirrels stretch themselves contentedly on
horizontal limbs and bask by the hour; the fox, woodchuck, and weasel,
and even toads and newts, and those so-called birds of darkness the
barred owls, seek the broadest glare of the midsummer sun and absorb
comfort from its scorching rays.
Taking tribute from the pond-basin by a deep drink of ice-cold water at
a spring in its bank, I crossed another strip of open pasture—where the
tinkle-tankle of the cow-bells sounded with each bite the cows took of
the grass—and gained the edge of the forest and the foot of the
mountain. There was something akin to coolness in the shade of the
birches, poplars, and beeches. New flowers bloomed here and new birds
called. The dependent bells of the white pyrola, of the small green
pyrola, and of the quaint pipsissewa were found beneath the brakes.
Here, too, was the Indian pipe, looking as though formed from sheets of
colorless wax, and its tawny sister the pine sap (_Monotropa
hypopitys_). The wintergreens are strong, positive herbs with rich
pungent flavor, but the pale parasitic plants are mere negations. They
are the “poor relations” among flowers, content to draw their sustenance
from others, while showing no color, giving out no perfume, attracting
no butterflies, and not even daring to face the blue sky until they are
dead.
The oven-bird stepped primly about upon her neat carpet of dry leaves,
the red-eyed vireo preached his perpetual homily from the treetops, a
young Cooper’s hawk screamed shrilly in the distance, and two
inquisitive red-capped sapsuckers hitched up and down tree-trunks near
me, while I hooted at them after the manner of my barred owls. A grouse
had been wallowing among the leaves, and had left a round hollow in the
dust with five discarded feathers and the prints of her feet to show
that she had been there. _Rana sylvatica_, the wood-frog, betrayed
himself by leaping over the dry beech leaves. I followed him quickly as
he sought to elude me. Not only were his leaps long, but his skill in
doubling was something marvelous. His second jump was generally at right
angles with the first, and thrice he no sooner struck the ground than he
turned and rebounded upon his tracks, so that he passed over or between
my feet. When he was weary I caught him and, laying him on my knee,
stroked the nape of his neck, his back and sides. He soon ceased to
struggle and sat motionless. I laid him gently on his back and stroked
him beneath. His throat throbbed and his eyes blinked, but he made no
effort to escape. Then I restored him to his proper position, and
extended one leg after another. He was as pliable and nerveless as a
rubber frog. Finally I let him alone, wondering how soon he would hop
away; but he showed a willingness to spend the day on my knee, and not
until I placed him on the leaves did he seem to awaken to life and the
advantages of freedom.
A few rods beyond, a toad hopped from me and I followed him to see what
method of escape he would adopt. As soon as he saw that he was pursued
he increased his speed and by a series of rapid hops reached a cavern
under the arched root of a stump and plunged out of sight in its depths.
Our toads, although of but a single species, vary in color from black to
the paleness of a dry beech leaf. This one, living in the midst of pale
browns and yellows, was nearly as light in tone as the light-footed
_Rana sylvatica_.
The color of the dry beech leaves as they lie upon the ground is
sometimes curiously bewitched by the spots of sunlight which dapple the
woodland carpet. Walking with the sun behind me, the sunlight,
especially where it fell in small round spots on the beech leaves before
me, was of an unmistakably amethystine hue. Several years ago when I
first noticed this, I supposed it to be due to temporary causes, but I
am now convinced that the color will always be distinguishable when the
conditions named are favorable.
The loveliest July flower in the woods fringing Chocorua is the
mitchella, named by Linnæus for Dr. John Mitchell of Virginia. In their
small round leaves of dark glossy green, their creeping stems, their
modest, delicate-tinted and highly-perfumed blossoms, the flower of
Linnæus and the flower of Mitchell are much alike. The partridge-berry,
as the mitchella is commonly called, begins to bloom just as the linnæa
bells cease to swing. It is an evergreen, and all through the winter its
bright green leaves and red berries are one of the pledges of returning
life after snow and ice have vanished. The flower is small and faces the
sky. It is white with a delicate rosy blush tinging its corolla, chiefly
on its outer side. The four pointed petals open wide and curve back,
exposing the whole interior of the flower to view. Each petal is covered
on its inner surface with a thick velvety nap which is the
distinguishing characteristic of the blossom. The perfume of this flower
is both powerful and pleasant. When freshly picked it suggests the scent
of the water-lily, coupled with something as spicy and enduring as the
heavier perfume of heliotrope.
[Illustration: WATER-LILIES IN CHOCORUA LAKE]
Fifteen or twenty minutes’ walking over the beech leaves brought me
within hearing of the torrent which flows from the heart of the
mountain. Presently I came to the edge of its cutting and saw far below
me, through the trees which filled the gorge, the flash of its waters
and the vivid green of mosses. Walking upstream along the face of the
bank, yet neither climbing nor descending, I struck the level of the
water at a point not many rods distant. I had not gone down to the
brook; it had come up to me. The whole ravine was filled with its music,
and following down with its eager flow was a current of cold air. Above,
in the woods, quiet and heat had prevailed. Here noise and coolness
ruled with absolute sway. The sound came in waves as did the water and
the breeze, but no human senses could measure the intervals between the
beats. The sound seemed threefold,—a splash, a murmur, and a deeper
roar. The roar reached me even if I pressed my hands tightly over my
ears; while, if I made ear-trumpets of my hands, the splashing thus
intensified drowned the heavier sounds. The rhythm of the water was most
prettily shown on a boulder faced with thick moss. When the high water
came it poured over the top of the rock, and the moss was filled with
white shining drops coursing downward through it; but, on the reaction,
it instantly became vivid green. The same pulsation showed in each
cascade, which was greater then less, greater then less, in each second
of time. As I bent over a pool, taking now and then a sip of the icy
water, a small trout suddenly jumped near the foot of the fall below. He
was intensely busy working about in the edge of the falling water, where
rising bubbles and whirling foam half concealed him. In color he looked
not unlike a beech leaf, and he moved so constantly that only an
attentive eye could distinguish him from the waste of the stream whirled
about in the eddies. I cast him some moss and mould, and he darted
hither and thither in the water clouded by it, snapping up bits of food
or specks which he mistook for food. His eagerness and restlessness
seemed born of the restlessness of the stream and the keen temperature
of the water in which he lived.
There was something of the impressiveness of the sea in this mountain
brook. The sea rolls its waves upon the shore by night and by day all
through the endless years, and this brook rolls down its tons upon tons
of water by night and by day forever. It seems impossible that this and
all the other streams which flow down rocky mountain-sides can be
nourished simply by the softly falling rain and snow.
Much of the fascination of the sea is in its voice, so seldom hushed, so
often roused to anger. The torrent by which I stood had something of the
same weird power. For the moment, all outside those narrow wooded
steeps, between which the splash, murmur, and roar of the stream
pervaded everything and overwhelmed everything, all beyond that
controlling sound was forgotten, barred out, lost. All within the power
of the stream was under a spell, cooling, soothing, comforting.
To reach the heart of the mountain nearly a mile of brook bed had to be
traveled, so I climbed upward rock by rock, past falls and pools,
clusters of nodding ferns, bridges of ancient trees now hung with
mosses, and sloping ledges faced with moss, down which the water rolled
in glistening sheets. At one point the brook, years ago, had cut through
a ledge which crossed its path diagonally. One great shoulder of rock
remained, protruding from the western bank and hanging over the water,
which poured into a black cavern beneath, making a whirlpool in the
darkness. The temperature under this ledge was nearly forty degrees
lower than on the top of the bank a few yards above. Standing by the
ledge, I counted nine distinct cascades varying from three to six feet
in height. One of them was an ideally symmetrical fall, for the whole
body of water, gathered between two rocky faces, fell into a deep round
pool just at its centre. Another fall showed clearly why the water under
a cascade looks white. The water poured into a very broad, deep basin at
its upper corner, leaving most of the surface undisturbed; and between
the limpid falling water and the flat face of rock behind it air was
caught and sucked downward by the flow. It was carried to the very
bottom of the pool, where, breaking into small round bubbles, it
struggled to the surface. Strings and masses of snow-white bubbles
filled the area in front and at each side of the fall, while some were
drawn some distance down-stream by the escaping water. These bubbles,
when under water, produced the whiteness of the pool, and, on reaching
the surface, burst and made a large part of its foam and spray. In this
pool, as in many others, small trout hovered about the edge of the
rising bubbles, seizing upon everything which looked like food. They
rose with charming promptness to anything resembling a fly which I
tossed upon the surface of the foam.
As I neared the heart of the mountain I saw, towering above twin
cascades which fell into a single pool at its feet, the rough likeness
of a sphinx. It was a huge boulder, dividing the torrent by its
lichen-covered mass, and lifting its frost-hewn face towards the narrow
strip of sky left between the trees overarching the ravine.
Close above the sphinx a spring in the eastern bank filled a hollow in
the hill with cold, fern-decked mud. A flower I never should have sought
in this lofty nook had taken possession of the spot and raised hundreds
of its white spikes towards the sky. It was a white orchis, _Habenaria
dilatata_. In a space six feet by ten, I counted seventy-five of its
plants, each in full bloom. On the edges of this miniature swamp the
leaves of the mayflower mingled with those of the linnæa. The blossoms
of the mayflowers were dry and brown; those of the linnæa, with one
fragrant exception, had fallen. Close by, the open-eyed flowers of the
oxalis smiled from their beds of clover-shaped leaves.
A few rods farther up the stream, the land grew steeper and the walls of
the ravine drew more closely together. Taller trees presided over the
torrent, and the water struggled downward between larger boulders. A
stream, tumbling down its narrow bed, came from the high eastern ledges
and met that which poured from the heights on the west. Here, in the
perpetual music of falling drops, where one or another of the great
walls of the gorge always casts a deep shadow upon the ferns, is the
heart of the mountain, the birthplace of the twilight.
Early in the afternoon I followed the western stream to its source,
where, in a dark hollow at the head of the west ridge, hidden wholly
from view by the forest, lies a small mountain lake. Perhaps it would be
more truthful to call it a large pool, fed as it is mainly by melting
snow or the streams of rain-water poured into it from the crags of
Chocorua. Beneath its shallow water the maroon and dark green sphagnum
formed a submerged carpet of intense colors. The growing tops of the
moss, star-shaped and erect, glowed with the tint of life. The borders
of the pool were fringed with dense growths of yellow-green _Osmunda
regalis_ which were swayed by a sweet wind. Through the soft foliage of
the deciduous trees surrounding the pool, lance-shaped spruces and
balsams pierced a way for themselves towards the sky. No fish were
visible in the pool, and its only living tenants seemed to be some
tadpoles about the size of squash-seeds. Now that the noises of the
brook no longer overwhelmed every other sound, the songs of birds could
be heard. Red-eyed and solitary vireos, oven-birds, a black-throated
blue warbler, a hermit thrush, and another thrush which was neither
hermit nor veery, were singing either in the woods close by or among the
small spruces which crowned the adjoining ledges. I climbed to the top
of the nearest ledge in search of the thrush, and gained not only the
full benefit of his song, but a view of many a mile of the fair lake
country, the Bearcamp valley, and the rugged peaks of the Sandwich
range. The air was full of quivering heat and hazy midsummer softness.
Over the shoulder of the Ossipees, south of Bearcamp Water, sparkled
Squam Lake and Winnepesaukee. The hayfields of Sandwich were baking
under the sun’s fierce heat. North of them began the mountains,—Black
Mountain in the edge of Campton, Whiteface, Passaconaway, and, nearer at
hand, Paugus, towards which all the western ridges of Chocorua were
tending. The sun being over and beyond these wooded mountains, they were
very dark, lacking in detail, but clearly outlined against one another.
Northward and just above me the cliffs of the Chocorua horn hung in the
sky. The lichens on the crag were dry and very black. Towering into the
air, ledge upon ledge, and cliff over cliff, the peak was like a huge
citadel defying attack. I had climbed upon the shoulders of the
mountain, but its proud head, held high, was still out of reach.
The thrush was one which is common upon the upper slopes of the
mountains, wholly replacing the veery there and probably outnumbering
the hermit. Its song, while pleasing, is not as musically beautiful as
that of the hermit, nor yet as unique as the veery’s. The hermit has
three distinct phrases, the veery one, and Swainson’s several which are
not distinct, but rather jumbling reproductions of the same notes. If
this bird had learned his song for himself, I should surmise that he had
listened closely to a veery and a thrasher, and then tried to model a
combination of their notes upon the lines of the hermit’s exquisite
song. Perhaps it was the heat and the glare of light on the ledges, or
perhaps it was a certain dullness in the Swainson’s song, at all events
I wearied of it and sought a higher ledge beyond the pool.
On this higher ledge, lambkill (_Kalmia angustifolia_) was blooming in
great abundance. It is a handsome flower, and it goes a little way to
console us for not having mountain laurel. Between two great patches of
lambkill and flowering diervilla was a level strip of gravel. It bore
printed on its face an interesting history. Beginning near the edge of a
thicket and extending to the edge of the cliff, where a view of miles of
surrounding country could be obtained, was a line of sharp hoof-marks. A
deer had walked slowly to the verge of the ledge, presumably to survey
the landscape. The track had been made since the rain of the day before,
and, for all that I could see, might have been made within an hour.
While studying it I heard an unfamiliar bird-song reminding me slightly
of the Maryland yellow-throat’s. The bird was in the thicket. I crept
towards him, but he retreated, singing at intervals. After following for
some time, I tried working on his sympathies, and “squeaked” like a bird
in distress. Instantly a flash of vivid yellow came through the trees
and a magnificent male magnolia or black and yellow warbler appeared in
search of the supposed sufferer. His mate soon joined him, as did a
junco and two white-throated sparrows. The coloring of the magnolias is
certainly gay. It includes blue-gray on the head, black on the back,
canary-yellow beneath and on the rump, with white and dark bars,
stripes, and spots enough on various parts of his body to make him as
variegated as a harlequin.
While the magnolia warblers are members of the Canadian fauna, and
seldom seen in the breeding season south of the White Mountains, the
bird which I next heard singing was even more interesting. It was a male
blackpoll warbler, perched upon the highest plume of a spruce and
pouring out his unmusical _ze-ze-ze-ze-ze_ with all a lover’s
earnestness. He clearly considered two thousand feet rise on Chocorua
equivalent to several hundred miles’ flight towards Labrador. In this
the flowers sustained him, for growing near by was the charming
_Arenaria grœnlandica_, with its cluster of delicate white flowers
springing from the sand, and the _Potentilla tridentata_ blooming
freely. Apparently dissenting from this boreal majority was a bunch of
goldenrod in full bloom. It was a mountain species which comes into
flower a fortnight or more earlier than its lowland relatives.
My homeward path followed the crest of the great eastern ridge of
Chocorua as it descends towards the basin of Chocorua ponds. The ridge
is narrow and mainly open, save for a few stunted spruces. In every
direction far-reaching and beautiful views charmed me and tempted me to
linger. From the last of the open ledges, the top of what is called Bald
Mountain, I saw the sun set just behind the peak. Then with quickened
pace I entered the forest and ran through the gathering gloom down the
rough path to the pastures a mile below.