In Cambridge, Saturday, the 5th of November, began its daylight in a
driving snowstorm. The long, dry, sunny month of October was, as the
farmers had prophesied, to be followed by a real old-fashioned, early
and hard New England winter. By ten o’clock the warm sun and brisk
northwest wind had dissipated the snow, and bad-weather prophets were
silent. Not for long, however, for at noon the ground was again white,
and as I crossed West Boston Bridge on my way to the train, the Back Bay
was swept by a fierce wind which carried the spray from its gray-green
waves half over the bridge piers, and into the level gravel walks on
Charlesbank. My friends looked at me pityingly when I said that I was
bound for the White Mountains, and asked whether I was not going to take
my snowshoes.
Oddly enough, on reaching Portsmouth, having traveled to that point
through dizzy myriads of flakes of the stickiest kind of snow, I found
the sun brightly shining, and no snow visible on the Kittery pastures.
Not until we were within sight of the hills which bound the Bearcamp
valley on the south did snow again greet my eyes, and then it was
confined to the highlands.
My last trip had been such a revel in color that I found myself noticing
tints more than other beauties in the ever-varying landscape through
which the train flew shuttle-wise. A great change had come over the face
of nature in the fortnight which had fled since my last visit. November
was written in subdued tones where October had burned before. The birch
groves were no longer filled with pale lambent flames. Their yellow
leaves had all fallen, and their massed twigs needed the full power of
the sun to show that behind their dull gray shading lurked the subdued
color of the plum. Even darker, and without warm undertones, were the
alder thickets, more black than gray. The larches were still pure gold,
wonderful in their happy contrast to the pines and spruces. The
apple-trees retained their full suit of leaves, sometimes touched with a
golden light, often perfectly green. Under them the grass was generally
as verdant as in spring. Barberries hung in dense masses in their
bushes; the American holly berries blazed with scarlet, and here and
there in the dull forest a gleam of crimson told of a blueberry or
amelanchier bush. As the train whirled across wood-paths, they showed as
yellowish stripes in the forest. The drifted beech leaves gave them
tone. In the gloom of the matted alders, fuzzy balls of soiled wool
seemed to have lodged. They were the flowers of the white clematis, gone
to seed. Somewhat similar but thinner masses clung to the stalks of the
fireweed.
As the wind swept across a cornfield from which all but the stalks with
one or two flaxen leaves had been stripped, the long leaves streamed and
flapped before the breeze like yacht pennants. In the orchards piles of
red and of yellow apples shone in the sunlight, and when one still
depended from the tree it was as bright as a gilt ball on a
Christmas-tree.
The oaks still held their leaves stubbornly, but the blood had gone from
them and their color was of tanned leather, deepening in places to a
dull maroon. The dry stubble fields, closely cropped mowings, and rank
meadows were all aglow with evenly spread color. The stubble fields were
purplish, the fields pale yellow, and the meadows deep straw color.
Masses of goldenrod stalks were well named, for they were golden brown.
Their leaves were dull brown. If as the train dashed between gravel
banks I caught a flash of crimson on the sand, I knew that blueberry
bushes had caught root there.
The daylight faded early, but as the sun sank it poured more and more
color into the hills. Reflected rays danced from the window-panes of
farmhouses on the high slopes to the east of the track. Such glimpses of
isolated buildings have a flavor of home and snugness which no city
suggests. The absence of leaves and the presence of many shadows cast by
the low November sun revealed more clearly than usual the pleasing
contours of glacial hills and their eroded sides. Most of the gravelly
products of the glacier are graceful in outline, composed of easy curves
or gentle undulations. Not only are the sky lines grateful to the eye,
but those which curve forward and back along the line of vision have in
them the element of beauty. The cutting of banks by streams leaves many
a gentle terrace which advances, retreats, now makes a bold front, the
next moment shrinks away in a bow-shaped bay. Ice and water seem to
abhor straight lines, but to love rhythmic motion. Upon a small glacial
mound shaped like a beehive stood a single pine, brave-limbed and
lichen-grown. I have noticed it for years, and something in its pose
always suggests “The Monarch of the Glen,” with head erect and every
sense alert. It was much fuller of animation than the flock of dingy
sheep which at first sight I thought to be moss-covered boulders.
The sun set not long after four o’clock, and the sky borrowed from it
fleeting rosy light. Then the yellow-white steam from the engine
billowed past my window, and through it shone the blue-white snow,
making the steam seem soiled. As I looked forward at fields which we
were approaching, no snow was to be seen, yet as we passed them and I
looked back upon the northern side of their inequalities they were
wholly white.
When the lamps were lighted in the car my eyes rested, fascinated, upon
the gilded axe which always hangs above the car door. Significant emblem
of our civilization, which cynically takes unwarrantable risks with
life, limb, and property, in order that man may increase his misery by
perpetually hurrying!
The gleam of Six Mile Pond told me that the train was in Madison. A
moment later I was standing in the crisp night air knocking for supper
at the tavern door.
When we say “It is two miles from Madison to Tamworth Iron Works,” we do
not tell the whole truth. It would be better to add, “over the top of
Deer Hill.” For years Madison has gone to Tamworth over Deer Hill, or
else it has stayed at home and wished that Deer Hill was elsewhere. How
long grim devotion to the one occupied farm on Deer Hill will force the
inhabitants of two townships to ignore the fact that a level road could
readily unite them remains to be seen. Deer Hill given back to Charles’s
Wain as the only team enduring enough to travel steadily over it would
be Deer Hill justly dealt with at last.
At seven o’clock I stood on the crest of this stumbling-block to
progress and gazed at its view of sky and forest. The moon struggled
with eastern cloud-banks. In the north, white clouds drifted over whiter
mountain ridges. Once the peak of Chocorua peeped through its veil and
caught upon its marble sides the radiance of the coy moon. After
following the road to within a quarter of a mile of the Iron Works, I
left it and struck northwestward across the moor towards the Chocorua
House. Suddenly I saw an object upon the level stubble which suggested
danger. For many years I have lived in dread of meeting and being
pursued by a skunk at night. Had the moment arrived? Edging away from
the object, I watched it keenly. Did it move? No. Yes! It was turning
its head towards me and lifting that dreaded tail straight above its
back. Still at least fifteen feet from the beast, I kept steadily on my
way in a semicircle round it. The skunk revolved, keeping his head
towards me, and then I saw his tail snapped forward irritably. I had
reached a stone wall, and, springing upon it, I hooted after the manner
of owls, barked after the manner of dogs, and then fled after the manner
of men. I neither saw nor smelt anything more of the skunk.
My way took me into the golden beech wood on the border of the moor. The
moon, now free from clouds, shed a soft, dim light into the grove.
Scarcely a leaf clung to the trees, but upon the ground they were heaped
up ankle deep. As there had been crackling ice in all the pools in the
road, it was not wonderful that the waters of the leaf-hidden brook were
very cold.
An hour after leaving Madison I stood before an open birch-wood fire in
Chocorua Cottage. Not only did its warmth appeal to my cheeks and
fingers, but something in the whirl of its flames and the snap of its
sparks made my heart beat more in tune with all the world.
The next morning I awoke at six o’clock and at once opened my blinds and
raised my shades so that I could see the mountains both to the north and
to the west. Not a cloud or a suspicion of haze marred the perfect
blueness of the sky or the distinctness of the outlines of hills, trees,
and boulders. The moon was still nearly three hours from her time of
setting, and her light, almost as much as that of the unrisen sun,
contributed to the serene glow which filled the sky and fell softly upon
the sleeping earth.
There is nothing in nature any whiter than snow, and as the peak and
bare upper ledges of Chocorua were covered by an almost unbroken
envelope of snow, no alpine horn ever gleamed with a fairer light than
that which shone from Chocorua’s summit. Paugus, Passaconaway, and
Whiteface are usually dark by contrast to Chocorua, even in midwinter.
To my surprise they were almost as white as the marble lion itself.
Their spruces were coated with snow, which had frozen in masses to the
needles, effectually covering the dark green by a gleaming surface of
white.
As the sun neared the horizon, a faint rosy glow came into the western
sky. Then it touched the snowy peaks, leaving them pale salmon color.
Finally it crept down the mountain slopes, changing the silvery gray of
the leafless forest masses into ashes-of-rose color, delightful to the
eye.
It was a winter landscape, yet as the sun climbed higher into the
cloudless sky, the soft still air was caressing in its warm touch upon
the cheek. I looked curiously at the thermometer, not knowing whether it
would say 25° or 60°. It stood at 30°, a temperature which, with a
Boston east wind and a rainstorm, is quite capable of freezing the love
of life out of one’s vitals. Feeling as buoyant as a cork, I dashed off
after breakfast in search of something high to climb. An overcoat was
unbearable, and my jersey was dispensed with by ten o’clock, leaving me
comfortable in ordinary indoor costume. The air seemed full of
life-giving quality, joy, health, hope. So thought the titmice, robins,
tree sparrows, juncos, and kinglets, all of which were noisy and full of
motion.
Speeding past the lakes, I stopped for a moment in my own orchard to
lament the death of an osprey which I found at the foot of an
apple-tree, where some hunters had left him. It is fortunate that all
animals have not man’s propensity for killing merely for the sake of
killing. Here was a bird of beautiful plumage, wonderful powers of sight
and flight, measuring only five inches less than six feet from wing tip
to wing tip, practically harmless, and by no means common in these
mountains, yet after being shot merely for love of murder, his body was
left where it fell, to feed skunks and foxes. Small wonder that creation
seems out of joint wherever man’s influence extends.
My next stopping-place was the lonely lake, now more lonely than ever,
for not a bird flew among its trees, and not a fin stirred in its green
waters. Upon its mossy bank, marvelous to relate, I found three fresh
blossoms of the houstonia. Like the sweet peas at my cottage, the
witch-hazel by the brook, and the tiny sprig of goldenrod picked in the
pasture, these frail flowers had endured frosts by the dozen and a
recent fall of snow which must have buried them several inches deep.
Over them a red maple was doing its best to keep them company, for its
crimson buds seemed as plump and full of color as they ought to be next
March. A flower of another kind bloomed in profusion upon the sand close
to the lake’s rim. It was like frosted silver in sheen, and the sunbeams
loved to play in its beautiful petals. How it grows I know not, but it
comes up from the sand in a single night, rank by rank and cluster by
cluster, often lifting up great masses of sand upon its spearheads. This
flower is the ice flower, whose wonderful armies of needle-like crystals
sprout under the influence of the frost from every damp mass of sand or
gravel, ready to be crunched under foot in the morning as horse and man
pass over the uplifted roads.
In the first brook which I passed beyond the pond I saw two small trout,
the longer of the two being not over an inch and a half from snout to
tail. They seemed to me to be a little sluggish, or rather a trifle less
instantaneous than in warm months. Two or three green locusts were also
evidently depressed by the cool weather, and they played their tunes
rarely and without much spirit. Listening to them and to the sounds
which the wind made in a bunch of dry brakes, I fancied that I saw in
what quarter the first grasshopper took his music lessons. The rubbing
together of the parts of the withered fronds produced sounds almost
exactly like the locust’s strident playing.
Taking the Hammond path, I ascended the eastern spur of Chocorua. The
side of the mountain was one vast bed of loosely scattered leaves. Next
spring each leaf will be pressed so closely upon its neighbor that the
veining of one will be imprinted upon the face of the other. Now they
are still free to drift with wind eddies, and to rustle noisily around
the feet of the passer-by. The smell of oak leaves, newly fallen, is
very powerful, and, except as a reminder of autumn walks, too much like
ink to be pleasant. Among the fallen leaves the bright green of
checkerberry, club mosses, and wintergreen showed now and then, while
the dark liver-colored leaves of a goldenrod contrasted with the brown
of the beech leaves.
I must have climbed fully eight hundred feet from the level of the
pastures before snow began to appear along the path, and it was not
until the line of low spruces was gained that the snow was continuous or
at all deep. No sooner had I struck the snow area than I began to find
evidence of the passing along and across the path of the creatures of
the woods. In five or six places a fox had followed the path for several
rods. Rabbits had crossed it over and over again, and mice even had
recognized it as a thoroughfare and taken laborious journeys in its
drifts.
A few minutes past noon I reached the top of Ball Mountain, or, as it is
generally called, Bald Mountain. Here the snow lay four to eight inches
deep upon everything except the bare ledges, which were dry and warm. As
I gained the crest, a hawk sailed over me and out into that sea of space
above the valley. What joy it must be to fly, and especially to soar and
float, in high ether, with scarce a muscle moving! Suddenly a plaintive
note fell upon my ear, and, turning, I saw a bird about the size of a
robin flying northward. It soon vanished in the distance, I meanwhile
striving to recall when, where, and from what bird I had heard that sad
cry before. Hoping to see more birds, and seeking an uninterrupted view
of the peak, I climbed to the top of the ledges intermediate between
Bald Mountain and the foot of the peak, and there, upon a broad, dry
face of granite, on the edge of the steep incline which reaches far down
into the eastern hollow of Chocorua, I rested and drew strength from the
perfect peace of my surroundings.
The only sounds which I could hear, and they were only occasional, were
produced by the fall of masses of snow from spruce limbs, and the
sighing of the breeze in the tree-tops far below me in the ravine. When
the wind ceased, the hush was wonderful. In so vast a space it seemed as
though some voice of nature must make itself heard; but above, below,
northward towards Canada, eastward towards the ocean, southward, where
Winnepesaukee’s waters were too dazzling to watch, and westward, among
the snowy ravines of clustered mountains, all was absolute repose and
silence. Not a bird or an insect was to be seen, and the stiff spruces
were as motionless as the rock from which they sprang. The peak was the
most forceful element in the landscape. It seemed the embodiment of
cold, silent strength. Nine tenths of its surface were pure white snow,
one tenth black rock, whose steep faces or sharp angles refused to hold
the snow. Rising fifteen hundred feet above the ledges on which I sat,
yet being not more than half a mile from me, its massive presence was
not only impressive but oppressive. I felt as though it might fall and
crush me to powder.
[Illustration: THE PEAK OF CHOCORUA FROM BALD MOUNTAIN]
Across the eastern valley, filled with its white-stemmed birches and
poplars, rose a forbidding line of snowy cliffs. Of all the buttresses
which prop the peak, this lofty ridge of nude rock is the most
inaccessible and sullen. Now and then a bear is seen traversing its
dangerous faces in search of berries, but man rarely steps upon its
ever-visible but repellent heights.
Looking away from the sun, all the world was white or gray; looking
towards it, deep violet tones predominated, while from between the hills
many lakes flashed towards me the slanting, dazzling rays of the
low-hanging sun. So dark was the south that I found it hard to realize
that the hour was but one o’clock and the sky cloudless. In six weeks
the sun will be even lower, the violet shadows deeper, and midwinter
will rule the whole of the frozen land.
When I opened my lunch, a house-fly came to share it with me.
Omnipresent and much enduring insect, for once he was welcome, and I
felt as though a companion sat with me. In the rock upon which I rested
there was a little rift, filled with water upon which floated a
fish-shaped cake of ice. This was my punch-bowl, and never thirst found
sweeter, purer draught for its quenching, than came from that
heaven-filled and frost-cooled cup. I wanted to bless it, but found it
blessing me, for it was much to me, while I was nothing to it. Rift and
rock were there before I took breath, and they will be there centuries
after I am a vanished mote in the sky. Just as I left the ledge,
homeward bound, a bird call rang out sharply. I listened and a low
tremulous song came from the spruces. Sweeping their serrated border
with my glass, I found the birds and recognized them ere they flew,
uttering the same sad plaint I had heard an hour before. They were a
pair of pine grosbeaks, “winter robins” as the farmers call them; one a
male, with his rosy breast, the other his Quaker mate. Flinging
themselves into space, they flew southwestward till my glass could
follow them no longer.
Passing through the beech woods on my way down the mountain, I noticed
how much more firmly the leaves clung to the young trees than to the
older ones. Many of them, if pulled steadily by the tip, tore sooner
than give way at the stalk. On oak and poplar sprouts or suckers, the
leaves remain much longer than on old wood; they keep their rich
coloring far into November, and they are often very conspicuous by
reason of their great size.
I found more life stirring in these beech woods than anywhere else.
Squirrels both red and gray were hard at work upon the ground, gathering
winter stores. A fine gray, on seeing me, scrambled to the high leafless
limbs of an oak, becoming there much more conspicuous than he had been
among the fallen leaves.
This autumn a farmer shot a gray squirrel and hung it in his shed. The
cat stole the squirrel and shared it with her family. Next day, puss
went gray-squirrel hunting, and to the farmer’s astonishment captured
her game and brought it home. The squirrel was so large that the cat, to
avoid tripping over it, walked backwards much of the way, pulling it
after her. Thus far for her thriving family puss is said to have secured
six gray squirrels.
A friend of mine, while hunting this fall in a grove of oaks, noticed a
large gray squirrel coming directly towards him through the woods,
pursued by a red squirrel. Chickaree soon saw his danger and stopped,
but the gray came slowly on, as though searching for something. The
hunter stood motionless, wondering. Nearer and nearer came the
inquisitive squirrel, until it reached the man’s feet and sniffed at his
gun-stock. Its eyes seemed to have been injured or to be partially
covered by a morbid growth. The moment the man moved in an effort to
catch the creature alive, it bounded from him and disappeared.
The perfect clearness of the sky lasted until nightfall, then a narrow
line of golden orange light separating a pale silvery sky from a deep
violet earth was all there was of sunset.