Saturday, December 26, our last day in the intervale, was the least
pleasant of our visit. At eight A. M. fog covered the mountains, the
forests, and everything, in fact, save a few acres of deep straw-colored
field on which only a few soiled patches of snow remained. The engine
came in promptly, but found no cars loaded, and went back to Bartlett
without freight. About nine o’clock the millmen came home and said there
were no logs at the saw-mill, the Frenchmen having been drunk on
Christmas. There were rumors of fights among the revelers. About ten
o’clock, having finished our packing, we took a short stroll in the
rain. There were kinglets in the woods by the roadside, but no
crossbills could be found at their favorite feeding-ground. I think they
migrated Christmas morning.
We crossed Swift River on the railway bridge and entered the tract of
densely wooded swamp which occupies much of the northern side of the
intervale. It was at this point that my friend saw the deer on Tuesday.
As we strolled along the track, the voices of birds could be heard on
our left. Petulant, and even angry cries came from the damp shades. We
stopped and listened, and I said, “It sounds to me as though an owl were
being worried in there.” Then I entered the spruces, going very slowly
and cautiously. Chickadees, nuthatches, and kinglets were chattering and
scolding. I pressed in, sometimes working my way on hands and knees over
the snow which still remained under the cover of the dense woods. By and
by I could see some of the birds. They were evidently greatly excited,
and they all seemed to be looking at the same thing,—a something around
which they formed a circle. I crept on. Fully twenty small birds were in
sight. Three at least were the weak-voiced, sputtering Hudson Bay
titmice. Their clamor was continuous. When they saw me, they moved about
and scolded at me somewhat. I closely scrutinized the tree which seemed
to be the focus of their wrath. A dark brown object projected from the
shelter of the trunk. It twitched. I wriggled on a foot or two more, and
as I did so a strange little face peered around the tree-trunk, and
wild, yellow eyes glared at me from a white face framed in a chocolate
brown hood. I fairly held my breath and half closed my eyes while the
tiny owl stared at me. Slowly he looked away, and flew a few feet to
another spruce branch. He was now facing me, and he watched me narrowly.
Most of his accusers had gone, and soon all departed, the rain falling
more briskly, and a cold easterly wind shaking moisture from the trees.
The little owl shook himself and seemed melancholy. He was getting wet,
and he did not like my looks at all. He flew again, and a second time I
kept him within sight. His eyes were encircled by discs of white
mingling with snowy eyebrows, so that nearly the whole of his
monkey-like countenance was white. The back and top of his head were
brown, and the same dark color closed in round his neck and throat, as a
baby’s cap closes round its face. The owl’s breast was light, and marked
by several broad perpendicular stripes of reddish brown. His back was
dark, and so were his wings, save for some white spots. From the crown
of his downy head to the soles of his wicked little clawed feet, this
tiny Acadian measured not more than seven or eight inches.
My constant watching made the little fellow very uneasy. He flew nine
times from branch to branch or tree to tree, yet I managed to follow him
closely. From one of his perches he could not see my face well, and it
was amusing to see him stretch himself to his full height and peep over
the obscuring branch. On another perch he was perfectly in view. As he
watched me he tipped his head first on one side, then on the other. Then
he would poke it forward or swing it round on his supple little neck,
and strive to get my measure if not my purposes. I squeaked like a
mouse, and he became agitated, looking keenly at the snow near me.
Suddenly, without warning, he flew into a long, narrow opening in the
spruces and disappeared in its windings. Our search for him was in vain,
and we hurried home to dry ourselves once again before taking our long
drive to Conway.
One o’clock saw us beneath a huge cotton umbrella, packed under a fur
robe, on the back seat of a light two-horse wagon. The east wind beat
fiercely in our faces, and the horses shook their heads and danced as
the rain stung them. The cloud masses rolled through the valley, eddying
between the mountains much as the Swift River whirls around its
boulders. Sometimes the mists opened and a dark face of forest or damp
rock showed for a moment. With a crack of the whip and a good-by to our
hostess we dashed away. Through the window I caught a last glimpse of
little Diddy, curled up on a big feather-bed, taking her midday nap.
Then flying mud, rain, horses, and soaking forests alone met the eye,
and we hurried eastward.
The level intervale was soon left behind, and the road began the descent
towards the Saco. Swift River roared below us; brooks came tumbling down
their rough channels, poured under or across the road, and merged their
currents in the river’s. The trees swayed and shook rain from their
shoulders. Now in front of us, now to our left, the madly descending
river and its presiding mountain walls were always in sight. The bare
faces of the ledges, the rent hillsides and sloping sand-banks, the
boulders heaped in countless numbers in the river bed, all told of
forgotten days like this day of storm-fury, when the waters of the
pent-up lake in the valley we had left rebelled against these hillsides
and ledges, and tore them in fragments, sweeping over them towards the
liberty of water,—the sea.
The northern spurs of Chocorua came towards us through the mist as
though to crush us; but the horses dashed on, leaving their threatening
heights behind. Then Bear Mountain’s black spruces and glistening cliffs
barred our way; but we followed the river’s lead and came out into the
pastures and fields next to Moat. After nearly three hours of soaking,
our steaming horses drew up at Conway station, and we were left to dry
and await the train. Letters accumulated during the week made the time
pass quickly until the train came and we were fairly homeward bound. The
storm hid the mountains and half obscured Six Mile Pond and its ragged
pitch-pine shores. Rain—cold, stinging, winter rain—beat upon the
Bearcamp, Salmon Falls, the Piscataqua, and the Merrimac. The night
inside of Salem tunnel was no darker than the night on Saugus marshes,
and even the myriad lights of Boston reflected in the Mystic only made
the winter gloom more visible. As I struggled through the Saturday-night
crowd on the narrow streets near the stations, and marked the faces of
waif and thief, drunkard, jester, sordid vender of evil wares, weary
workman or thrice weary workwoman, my heart was heavier than it had been
in the wild valley back of Passaconaway. Even Bumblebee, with his sick
wife and five children, crowded into one room in that hut by Sabba Day
Brook, had something of life of which this foul city humanity knows
nothing. Certainly Bumblebee’s boys lack the chance to absorb the virus
of the slums which the wretched waifs of the streets have. As I waited
for my Cambridge car, the stream of humanity surged and eddied round me
and the foul fog hung over us. Swift River, plunging on resistlessly
towards the sea, is seeking rest, far away; but this stream of
humanity,—what is it seeking? To me it seemed to be seeking anything but
the rest, everything but the peace, to which its current ought to tend.
[Illustration: MOAT MOUNTAIN AND THE SWIFT RIVER]
Fast and furious as is the torrent of Swift River, its beginning is in
the heavens, and as long as the noble forests cloak the hills and guard
the springs, so long will its current be sustained by fresh supplies of
moisture drawn from the distant sea. This human current, coursing into
and through the city, draws a part of its strength from the hills. All
our New England uplands are draining their youth and strength into the
cities, but the ocean which these life-streams reach gives back no
gentle, purified life to fill the mountain farms. It takes all, pollutes
much, but yields nothing in return.
A deep-toned bell in the Old North Church spoke to the foggy night.
Answering voices came from a dozen belfries. They seemed to call in
review the long year now drawing to its close. Years are as days to them
in their high places far above the human stream, but years are very real
to us who can count so few of them before we reach that wide Ocean
towards which our stream flows. The flower has a day for its year, the
gnat an hour. What a mighty harvest Death has reaped since this year
began; yet no one expects any shrinkage in the current of life in the
next year. The world’s rhythm will be just as strong, just as even, just
as full of joy to those who will accept joy as the birds accept it.
What, then, is death if it cannot diminish the sum total of creation’s
forces? Is it more than a transfer of energy from one point to another?
When the flower dies we can see and measure the transfer; when a man
dies we who live cannot see it all, but we can measure the poor shell
which is left to us and feel sure, terribly sure at first, joyously sure
in time, that all which was there in life is not still there; that
something has been transferred where we can neither see nor measure it.
The year begins in snow and ends in snow. When it begins, the pendulum
of life is far up at the left of its arc, all its force is gathered in
position, none is displayed in motion. But suddenly the pendulum begins
to move; it is falling; it moves faster and faster towards the right.
Then it is that snows melt, buds swell, birds come northward singing,
dormant creatures leave their caves, and all Nature displays her latent
energy in motion. Just when the motion of the pendulum is fastest it
passes that middle and lowest point in its arc and begins to turn its
momentum into the force of position. Up it goes, and as it ascends to
the far right, it goes more and more slowly until finally it stops. This
upward swing in Nature begins when the first flowers fade, the first
nestlings are hatched, and the first leaves fall. In summer we do not
always notice the lessening speed of Nature’s motions; not until autumn
comes do we realize that the days are shorter, the sun’s rays less warm,
the birds fewer, and vegetation almost without power of growth. In
December the pendulum stops and all that Nature has of energy is latent,
awaiting the turn in the world’s rhythm.
The baby, gurgling and cooing in its basket, is full of latent forces.
As life goes on, these powers are exercised more and more to the flood,
less and less as the tide ebbs. Yet who is there who dares to say that
when old age is reached there is not as much laid by in that soul
wrapped in its weary body as there was in the infant full of latent
power? We know not where the infant’s forces came from, nor where the
dying man’s energy goes to, but if Nature teaches us anything, it
teaches us that forces such as these are eternal in the same sense that
matter is eternal and space endless.