Six witheringly hot days had been followed by one so cool and clear, so
full of rushing Arctic air, that all nature sparkled as on an autumn
morning. About sunset on the evening of this cool day,—July 17,—the pale
blue sky in the north was suddenly barred by ascending rays of quivering
white light. Chocorua, lying dark and still against the cold sky, seemed
to be the centre of the aurora. As it grew dark I watched to see the
heavens glow with the electric flame, but hour after hour passed with
only an occasional gleam of light. Shortly before sunrise, however, the
promised illumination came. I awoke to find my chamber as bright as
though day had come, for from the southeast moonlight streamed across
the floor, while from the north the glow of the aurora flooded the room.
An immense arch of throbbing white light crowned the northern sky, and
within it a smaller coronet rested above the inky blackness of Chocorua.
Between the two hung the Great Dipper, and from one to the other
occasional pulsating rays passed. The eastern end of the upper and
larger belt of light made a sharp bend inward a few degrees above the
horizon, and to a less defined extent the smaller arch was similarly
shaped. The effect of this curve at the base of the two bows was very
remarkable, for it destroyed the image of an arch and created the
impression that one was looking into the inner curve of a ring which
surrounded the earth, just as the rings of Saturn encircle that planet.
Gradually the lower ring faded, the upper one settled down closer and
closer to Chocorua; masses of electric energy seemed to dart across the
eastern sky, where Sirius and the fair Pleiades gleamed, to the moon and
Mars sailing serenely on their westward way. Behind Pequawket the lowest
line of sky grew white. The dawn was coming, and, as though to avoid it,
the hurrying beams and flashing waves of aurora moved faster and faster
until in their dimness they could scarce be seen. Snowy mists raised
their phantom forms from the lake and floated eastward to meet the sun.
A whippoorwill sang his last song to the night, and as the glow of day
grew more real a hermit thrush told in its heartfelt music the joy of
life at the birth of a new period of labor.
[Illustration: CHOCORUA FROM HERON POND]
A scrap of mist which trailed over the forest just at the foot of one of
the ridges of Chocorua was the spirit of a lonely lake rising to do
homage to the day-star. This lake is a rendezvous for all that is
wildest and freest in the animal life of the region. It is sufficient
unto itself, and yields no tribute save to its lord the sun. Around it,
high glacial walls stand, crowned with ancient oaks and graceful
birches. No stream flows from it, or into it, unless threads of ice-cold
water coming from springs in its banks are called streams. Its waters
are deep, the fisherman, so they say, finding places in its centre where
long lines reach no bottom. Seen from the peak of Chocorua, this lake,
even in November, is as green as an emerald, and when one floats upon
its surface and gazes far down into its depths, rich green water-weeds
are seen stretching their tremulous fingers towards him, and crowding
each other for standing-room on its muddy floor.
Many are the days I have spent at this lonely lake learning the secrets
of its tenants, and this morning, soon after the auroral beauties had
faded from the sky, I came to it while the dew sparkled on the ferns.
Drifting with the wind on the water, or stretched on the soft mosses
which flourish under the birches, I stayed by the lake until evening. If
an observer keeps still, it matters little whether he sits hidden under
the spreading branches of a great oak on the shore, or lies upon a raft
anchored in the lake, he is sure to see something interesting in either
case. One morning, as I leaned against the oak’s wide trunk, watching a
bittern on the opposite shore, I noticed that the bird showed signs of
uneasiness, paying more heed to the bushes than to its fishing. Suddenly
the cause of its unrest became apparent. The bushes just behind it were
slowly poked apart and the head of a fox appeared. With a guttural note
of alarm the bittern rose and flew across the lake, above the trees on
the opposite bank, and out of sight. Reynard, graceful and alert, stood
upon the mossy shore for a moment, looking after his lost opportunity;
then turned abruptly and vanished in the underbrush. Another morning,
while I was under the same tree, a big blue heron came softly stepping
along the beach towards me. He was a comical figure, with his attenuated
legs, wasted to the semblance of rushes; his extensible neck, expressive
of centuries of hungry reaching after the partly attainable; and his
long beak as cruel as a pair of shears. His dull eyes told of terror
when he saw me. For a moment I felt their worried glare, and then the
quaint machinery of the bird was put in motion and he flapped off out of
sight.
One still, cloudy afternoon in August, I lay upon a raft of
weather-beaten logs and mossy boards, watching the fitful sky and
listening to an occasional bird-note, when suddenly my eyes were drawn
to the north shore of the lake by seeing a branch of green leaves
swimming, apparently unaided, along the surface of the water. After
progressing for forty or fifty feet it disappeared under the ripples. A
mystery, truly. A few moments later a muskrat’s head rose above the
water, and the creature swam back to the point from which the leaves had
started. Leaving the lake cautiously, the rat crawled clumsily up the
bank into the bushes. After a minute or two it came waddling out bearing
a second branch of ash, and this, too, floated along the placid surface
of the lake until abruptly drawn down into the rat’s burrow in the
submerged bank. Later in the afternoon I noticed a V-shaped ripple
plowing across the lake from the southern shore. On it came, a small,
dark object being at its point, parting the water steadily. As it drew
near the raft I saw that the dark spot was the head of another muskrat,
whose course was shaped straight for the hole into which his mate had
been carrying ash branches. He passed quite close to me without alarm,
and a minute or two later the ripple ceased as the rat sank below the
water a few yards from the mouth of the hole.
The same still, cloudy day, a brownish black creature appeared on the
southern shore of the lake and ambled along the edge of the water. At
first glance it looked like a black kitten, but a plainer view showed it
to be twice the length of a kitten, although no larger round than a
man’s wrist. Its progress at times was almost snake-like, so undulatory
was it. Its head and fore-quarters would be gliding down one side of a
log before its black tail and hind feet had quite reached the log on the
other side. The edge of the pond was lined with tadpoles clinging to
logs and stones, with their heads towards the shore. The black creature
seemed to be attempting to catch these fish-like batrachians, for every
few yards he pounced at something, and, if successful, cantered out of
sight, into the weeds and bushes, where he remained until, so I
surmised, he had eaten his adolescent frog. Although the raft was only
about a hundred feet from the western shore of the pond, the mink kept
his course past me, apparently without a thought of anything beyond the
wary polywogs. He went as far as the mouth of the muskrat hole and then
turned and retraced his cantering until I lost sight of him on the
farther southern shore. Several times, in his eagerness to catch a
tadpole, he plunged wholly beneath the water and pursued his prey as
though he had been a pickerel.
At the northeastern corner of the lake there is a grove of oaks, the
largest of which doubtless stood there before this part of New England
was settled by white men. Squirrels hold this grove as frisky
tenants-in-common with woodchucks and raccoons; a family of porcupines
having a right of way across it by virtue of unopposed use running back
till the memory of rodents knoweth nothing to the contrary. I have never
been so fortunate as to find ’coons in the grove, although some of my
household have found them, but I have seen their footprints in the April
snow. They are strange footprints, which one can never mistake for any
other. If the dearest, plumpest baby in New England patted the soft snow
with its dimpled hands, it could not make daintier images of its little
palms than this wild creature of the forest makes with its feet, as it
hurries over the new-fallen snow. The most conspicuous squirrels by the
pond are the great bushy-tailed grays; the most retiring are the refined
little flying-squirrels, which live in a deserted woodpecker’s hole in a
dead tree. The grays climb after acorns to the highest limbs and
branchlets of the oaks, frequently breaking off leafy twigs, and
dropping acorns to the ground. Below, watching for and improving their
opportunities, are striped chipmunks, which gather up a portion of the
harvest and conceal it in their burrows. Chickaree, too, is there,
nervous, petulant, and noisy, but he is more likely to be found in the
pines, or near the butternuts. In winter, especially, the pine woods are
alive with red squirrels. I recall seeing twenty red squirrels in a
single midwinter day. Chipmunks may be seen late in December, and by the
end of February, if it is warm, and the mouths of their holes are not
covered by snow, they are ready to take a peep at the sky. They store
enormous quantities of food, and the heat and moisture of their nests is
such that they can eat corn sprouts and acorn shoots in midwinter while
poor Chickaree is scratching about in the cold snow for an unnibbled
pine cone. The gray squirrels are fond of the high-bush blueberries,
which grow in abundance on the margins of the pond. They come down from
the oaks to the great fallen trees lying half on the shore and half in
the lake, and bask in the sunlight, drink of the water, and run up and
down the logs with tails arched and waving behind them.
The home of the porcupines is west of the pond on the slope of a heavily
wooded hill, the sides of which are encumbered by very large boulders.
Beneath one of the largest of these boulders and overhung by one almost
as large, which rests against its mate, is the porcupines’ den. By lying
down between the rocks and crawling forward into the mouth of the den I
can see several feet into its black interior. A passage large enough for
a hound to squeeze through leads out of sight below the rocks. Quills
and hairs line the ground, and other marks of long occupancy are
abundant. I have been told by farmers that they had killed old
“hedgehogs” weighing nearly fifty pounds. Tales are told of white
porcupines, and it is impossible to shake the hunter’s belief in the
brutes’ power to shoot their quills at their enemies.
The skunk is a well-known character at the pond, but I have not sought
her society, and it is an open question whether she lives in a deserted
woodchuck hole or among the boulders on the porcupine’s hill.
So far as I know, Bruin never comes to my pond. He lives within sight of
it among the oaks and blueberry patches on the ledges of Chocorua, and
if his small eyes ever scan the landscape from the cliffs above the
heart of the mountain, he can see its emerald water gleaming in the
sunlight. I am more than willing not to find his huge footprints on my
mosses. Deer, on the other hand, go freely and frequently to the pond,
and in May and June come to the garden patch below my cottage.
Wings even more than feet bring wild life to the lonely lake. The first
time that I ever saw the waters of the pond flashing and rippling in the
sunlight, wings awoke the echoes of the basin as a flock of black ducks
rose at my coming and vanished behind the oaks. Wood ducks nested for
years in a hollow oak by the shore. One bright October morning a black
tern, borne by storm or waywardness of wing, came to the lake with five
black ducks. That tiny mirror in the deep woods seemed to please the
weary sea-bird, for it rested there many hours, and even when alarmed
circled for a while in the sky and then returned to the spot where
Chocorua’s horn was reflected in the mountain pool. The great numbers of
tadpoles and frogs always to be found in the lake attract not only the
great blue heron and the bitterns, but also the night herons, which
sometimes come in flocks of eight or ten to fish in the lakes of this
region. Early in August of each year a kingfisher appears at the pond
and passes much of his time by it. There are certain dry branches upon
which he perches one after another in order, as he circles round the
pond uttering his harsh rattling cry. I suspect that fishing of the same
kind goes on after dark, for the lake is a favorite resort of the barred
owls, whose trumpet tones are heard nightly at certain seasons. More
than once I have seen them on branches above the water, or floating on
noiseless wing from shore to shore. The fondness of this owl for frogs
and fish is remarkable, particularly for hornpout, which abound in this
lake. I have known my captive owls to strike a fish with their talons
when it was several inches below the surface of the water in a tank.
Many a time as I have been hidden by sheltering boughs, scanning the
lake and its shores for signs of life, I have seen a dark shadow glide
across the water, and then a broad-winged bird alight noiselessly on a
dead limb from which the whole surface of the lake could be seen. Its
face would express cruelty and hunger, apprehension and something akin
to remorse. The eyes of a hawk are full of meaning; they tell the story
of guilt and of the eternal misery of spirit which follows guilt. The
hawks which come to my pond are of several species, including the slow
_buteos_, which one sees circling by the hour in the high skies; the
dangerous _accipiters_, so ruthless in their raids upon poultry and
small birds; and the low-flying, graceful, mouse-hunting marsh hawk,
readily to be known by its white rump. At evening the whippoorwills and
their cousins the night-hawks frequent the lake. Just at twilight I have
heard six whippoorwills at once singing their strange song on the edge
of the water. Perhaps they come there to bathe; at all events they sing
only for a moment, after which only an occasional cluck or “whip”
betrays their presence. Late in August the night-hawks fly in large
companies, and as many as twenty-five have sometimes wheeled into the
lake’s basin and circled over it, to the consternation of the small
frogs.
Behind the great oaks, in which scarlet tanagers breed, there is a level
overgrown with gray birches. Nearly a dozen of these trees have been
converted into drinking fountains by a family of sap-sucking
woodpeckers, and through the summer days, as long as the sap is sweet
and abundant, the indolent birds cling to the trunk, sip the tree’s
lifeblood as it drains away, and catch a few of the many insects which
hover around the moist bark. The product of the trees is shared with
several humming-birds, and the insects attract small flycatchers and
warblers.
To tell of all the birds which either live near the lake or come to it
more or less regularly, would be to recount the doings of most of the
six-score species which are found in the Chocorua country. The lake is
not only a favorite place of resort for resident birds, but it is a
section of one of those dimly recognizable “lines” of migration along
which bands of spring and autumn birds seem by instinct to take their
way year by year. On this “line,” above the lake shore, I met my first
and only Philadelphia vireo, one of the rarest of our migrants.
The vegetation of the lake shore has a great deal to do with its power
to attract animal and bird life. I know of some woods which are forever
silent to bird voices, and in which the snows of winter seem untrodden
by any foot save mine. The lake was once in the heart of a white pine
forest. Scores of huge stumps show where the giant trees lived until a
tornado overturned them. Now the canoe birch is the prevailing tree, and
few creations of the New England soil can rival it in grace, beauty, and
useful qualities. The forest’s carpet of gray and green mosses,
wintergreen, checkerberry, linnæa, dwarf cornel, asters and goldenrod,
ferns and brakes, is strangely lacking in one flower generally common to
the region. I have searched for half a mile in every direction from the
pond and failed to find more than one root of the mayflower. That root,
with its three or four clusters of flowers, is well hidden in a deeply
shaded and poorly watered spot, where its future is threatened by a lack
of all the elements which make plant life prosperous. Near this solitary
root of mayflower there grows an eccentric blueberry bush, which bears
pale pink and white berries very sweet to the taste, but which never
grow blue. Here, too, is to be found the shy little snowberry, whose
fruit has the art of hiding itself beneath glossy round leaves, so that
close search is needed to gather it. Along the banks of the lake
high-bush blueberries of fabulous size tempt the stroller from his
course. Some of these berries were once mistaken for fox grapes. In the
moist sand at the foot of these blueberry bushes, the modest houstonia
blossoms throughout six consecutive months of the year. It comes in May,
and it fades not until November. The bunchberry retains its flowers in
these groves until long after its berries are red elsewhere. Yet autumn
flowers are not noticeably slow in blooming by the lake. One of these
autumn flowers is an interesting hybrid, so recognized at the Gray
Herbarium. For four years we have found several roots of a goldenrod
which is neither the _cæsia_, which it closely resembled in form, nor
the _bicolor_, from which it inherits its white ray flowers. Both of
these familiar species grow near it, and are presumably its parents.
[Illustration: CANOE BIRCHES OF THE BEARCAMP VALLEY]
Within the waters of the lake there is abundant life. Years ago it was a
famous trout pond, stocked perhaps by the Indians, but the malice of the
white man spoiled it. A man who had a grudge against those who most
enjoyed trout-fishing in the lake caught a pailful of horn-pout and
turned them into the green waters. They multiplied, and now legions of
them move their hideous bodies back and forth through the swaying weeds
beneath its surface. They never grow large, but their numbers are
appalling. Sometimes when, in a still summer evening, the surface of the
lake is unruffled by wind, and myriads of small insects have fallen upon
the water, the pout appear in countless multitudes, swimming so that
their horns or tails show above the water.
The tadpoles also are extraordinarily numerous at some seasons, and
they, too, have a way of coming to the top of the water and
contemplating the upper world, to which they hope some day rightfully to
attain. A sudden stamp of the foot upon the shore will cause hundreds of
these floating polywogs to splash into foam the water over half the
surface of the lake. The painted tortoise lives in the lake, but no
other creature of his kind is found near it. In fact, I have never seen
the spotted turtle in the Bearcamp valley. I once dug seventeen painted
turtles out of one hole in the mud on the western edge of the lake,
where they had crowded for some reason of their own.
Of all the many creatures which frequent the lonely lake, the big blue
heron seems to be the most in sympathy with its shy silence and
loneliness. He is its king, and by his name the lake is known.