MOUNTAINS ALL THE YEAR ROUND
In the chequer-boards of most men's lives, the squares they can allot
to the joys of mountain travel are coincident with summer seasons. Thus
most of us cannot know the snow mountains all the year round, but only
in their warm-weather garb. It may be claimed that then they are at
their best, but such claims, in the case of Nature, are untenable.
Nature is never or always at her best. One star may differ from another
star in glory, but not in beauty; for beauty is in the eye that beholds,
rather than in the thing that is beheld. A particular effect in nature
may be more attractive than another to a particular man, but that is not
really a measure of the beauty of the effect, but of the capacity of the
man. None of us can discover all beauty; none of us can always behold
beauty in everything; but all of us together can find beauty everywhere
and always in what Nature makes. He that can oftenest discover beauty,
and is most continuously conscious of it, is most richly endowed and
most to be envied. How often do we hear people say that in their opinion
Niagara, or the view from the Gorner Grat, or Mont Blanc, or some other
great sight, is disappointing, that it failed to come up to their
expectations, that its reputation is ill-deserved, and so forth. Such
persons seem to imagine that their opinions are worth something, and
that they, or any one, has a say in the matter; whereas the fact is,
that the sights of nature may measure men, but that individual men
cannot measure them. If a man thinks little of Niagara, that opinion
measures him, but not Niagara. All sights of nature are beautiful. All
great natural phenomena are greatly beautiful. That is a fundamental
fact. Our business is not to question it, but to see the beauty if and
when we can.
The great mountains therefore are not beautiful at one time, or more
beautiful at one time than another. They are beautiful always, and all
the year round. They may be more comfortable to live or scramble amongst
at some seasons, but he that can render his sense of beauty independent
of his sense of comfort may be able to grow equally conscious of
mountain beauty at all seasons. It is the opportunity that most of us
lack, not the power. The fact that the high Alps are beautiful in winter
also was not popularly realised till recently. A few men had faith that
such would be the case, and they went to see. They brought back lively
accounts of the wonders and glories they had beheld, and so incited
others to follow in their steps.
The classical first account in English of the high Alps in winter was
A. W. Moore's paper in the fourth volume of the _Alpine Journal_,
describing a visit to Grindelwald in December 1866, and the passage of
the Strahleck and Finsteraarjoch by full mid-winter moonlight.
Mid-winter moonlight is doubtless one of the great glories that the
summer traveller misses. So bright was it "that the faintest pencil
memoranda were legible with ease." The landscape beneath it is not the
monochrome picture most of us associate with moonlight. It is rich with
subdued colour, most beautiful to see. The full winter moon in the Alps
bears to the summer moon, for brightness, the same relation that the
equatorial sun does to the sun of our temperate regions. High planted
near the zenith, the winter moon floods mountain and valley with a white
light that turns snow to silver and hangs a curtain of velvet on every
rock-face.
[Illustration: 33. THE WETTERHORN. Grindelwald Chalets, flower-clad
slopes and sunlit trees.]
Who that has been to St. Moritz or Davos in winter does not come home
with a new conception of what the clearness of the atmosphere can be?
The summer air is like poor glass beside the crystal transparency of
winter. Perhaps the effect is to bring distances nearer and thus
decrease apparent scale--an effect which the whitening of the
foundations of the hills tends to increase; but in return, by what
delicacy of detail, what crispness of form, what glitter and brilliancy
we are repaid. In course of time we learn to read scale truthfully anew.
Another winter glory is the snow drapery of the lower slopes and
glaciers below the snow-line. All minor asperities of surface are
smoothed away. Flowing lines take the place of broken ones, and large
surfaces most delicately modelled predominate. In summer you must climb
to the high snow-fields to behold the delicate modelling of which snow
is capable on a large scale, but in winter such sights are all around
you. To watch the play of sunshine upon them from dawn to dusk, and the
even more fascinating appearance they assume under brilliant moonlight,
is joy enough for the hungriest eye.
Then there are the frozen cascades by every roadside, glittering
clustered columns of ice fit for fairies' palaces. One beholds them at
almost every turn, for the veriest trickle of water, so it be
persistent, suffices to build them up. Nor must we forget to catalogue
amongst the greater glories of Alpine winter the snow-laden forests. One
day the trees will be burdened down by loads of snow. Another, every
sprig and pine-needle will be frosted over by the most delicate
incrustation of tiny ice-crystals--a natural lacework of surpassing
fascination. When the early sun first shines upon such a scene, which
night has prepared to be a revelation to the day, so magnificent a
vision is provided that even the dullest perceive something of its
beauty, and for a moment forget the trifles of their life.
Akin to this glorification of the trees by frost are the glittering
"snow-flowers," those charming little groups of crystals that form on
the ground in suitable spots under the influence of wind-eddies and
other vagaries of the air. They are as pretty as they are short-lived,
and possess a quality of rareness that makes them additionally precious.
If in winter we lose the blueness of the lakes and the greenness of the
hills, are we not more than repaid? What in its way can be more fair
than the absolute flatness and unspotted purity of a frozen lake-surface
covered thickly by new-fallen snow? It is no joy to skaters and curlers
indeed, but for those who have eyes and have taught themselves how to
see with them, little time is left for the distractions of mere games.
The snow-shoe is the true winter implement, and especially the Norwegian
_ski_, which provides the most glorious exercise and makes accessible
the most delightful spots. An occasional run down-hill is the by-reward
of the skilful, but his main prize is the sights he is privileged to
behold. He can enter the heart of forests or ascend large slopes without
the toil of sinking into the soft snow, to whose presence they owe the
quality of their winter charm. Ski, moreover, grant access with relative
comfort to the higher regions, and enable them to be crossed in suitable
places at a time when the crevasses of the glaciers are deeply buried or
soundly bridged, and when the snowy world sweeps in larger and simpler
surfaces away. Some climbers have found pleasure in attaining in winter
the summits of high peaks, whence they have beheld great panoramas with
a distinctness of distant vision that the summer climber seldom attains.
They tell us that the white filling of the valleys and covering of the
lower slopes tends to flatten the effect of a mountain scene beheld from
above. Whatever the special charm of such expeditions, they cannot be
made with frequency. Weather conditions are usually adverse. Short days
are a hint to make short expeditions. Thus in winter Nature herself
calls attention rather to her own details. She endows with unusual
attraction what is near at hand. She sculptures her ornaments on a tiny
scale and finishes them with a marvellous elaboration. The wise follow
her mood and adapt their eyes to her intentions. The winter months are
none too long for them. Indeed they are gone all too soon, and one day,
lo! the spring is there and the winter votaries turn and flee.
[Illustration: 34. MAeRJELEN ALP. Winter snow on ground. Foot of
Eggishorn on left, ridges of Strahlhorner on right.]
I have only once spent a portion of the spring in an Alpine region.
It is not a comfortable season, but it has its own beauties as great in
their kind as those of summer and winter. Now the snow begins to melt,
and all the hillsides trickle and run with water. The great silence of
winter is past. Nature whispers with a thousand tiny voices, and sings
aloud along the valleys and gorges. The hillsides emerge brown from
their snowy blanket, but the fresh green soon shoots through and early
flowers are swift to put forth. The sense of young life is felt among
the mountains as in the plains, for the awakening of the vegetable world
is everywhere the same. But the mountains possess spring-time splendours
of their own, depending upon the dissolution of the snow. Spring is the
great time for avalanches. They fall indeed all the year round, chiefly
at high levels, but it is only in the spring that the great avalanches
get adrift. Certain great spring avalanches come down with remarkable
regularity in particular places, one every year. An avalanche falls at a
recognised spot in the neighbourhood of almost every village, which
dates from its advent the opening of the spring. Any one who has beheld
the descent of one of these giants will not forget the experience, nor
will it occur to him to compare such an avalanche with the relatively
small ones that tumble among the highest _neve_ regions in the summer.
These are the veriest snow-balls compared with those vast discharges.
A great spring avalanche is no sudden freak of Nature, but an
inevitable occurrence, slowly engendered. The snow that piles up, flake
by flake, during the winter months, on what in summer are the grass
slopes below the snow-line, gradually becomes unstable as spring melting
advances. The mass loses its cohesion, ceases to bind firmly together,
and tends to flow downwards. The conformation of the ground decides how
it shall fall. If the slopes upon which it lies are narrow, and lead
straight to a suitable resting-ground, or if they are of gentle
declivity, it may fall in small masses and early come to rest; for the
distance to which it is projected depends upon the momentum of a fall,
and the momentum depends upon the volume and the slope. But if the snow
lies upon large concave slopes, or upon a cirque, then, when the
discharge begins, all the snow within the cirque may flow together, and
pouring down the bottom like a fluid, may form a great cataract; then
tumbling over cliffs and rushing down hollows and through gorges, it
will continue its descent till it reaches a valley bottom, flat enough
to hold it. There it will pile up into a great cone or "fan,"
solidifying as it comes to rest, and strongly bridging over the valley
torrent.
An avalanche of this kind does not fall in a few moments, but may
occupy hours in its discharge. I saw several of them falling, in the
first days of May 1882, in the neighbourhood of the Simplon road. Near
Berisal I crossed one which had recently come to rest, traversing the
road. By its rugged white surface, broken into great protuberances, its
solidity, and its general form, it resembled a small glacier. To climb
on to it one had to cut steps, so steep were the sides. Higher up I
crossed several more such fallen masses, through which gangs of workmen
were cutting out the road. Towards the top of the pass the snow was
tumbling in smaller masses. Over a hundred little avalanches crossed the
road within a couple of hours. Then they stopped. On the Italian side
similar conditions obtained, but it was not till I reached Isella that
the greatest fall took place, or rather was taking place, for it had
begun before I arrived, and it continued after I had passed. There, a
narrow gorge, with vertical cliff-sides facing one another, debouches on
the main valley. It leads upwards to a great cirque in the hills, a
cirque that is a grass-covered alpine pasture in the summer. The
avalanche was pouring out through this gorge and piling itself up upon
the main valley-floor. How the mass of it was being renewed from behind
I could not see. Doubtless all the hill-sides above were shedding their
snow, and it was flowing down and crowding into and through the gorge
with a continuous flow. As the pressure was relieved below by the
outpouring of the avalanche on to the valley floor, more snow came
down--snow mixed with slush, and semi-liquid under the great pressure
that must have been developed. As the fan was built up, the snow,
relieved of strain, hardened into ice-like consistency.
It is easy to describe the process that was going forward, but it is
not easy to suggest to the reader the grandeur of effect that was
produced. The volume of noise was terrific--a noise more massive and
continuous than thunder, and no less deep-toned. A low grey cloud roofed
in the view and cast over everything a solemn tone. The avalanche,
pouring through the massive gateway of the hills and polishing its
sides, came forth with an aspect of weight and resistless force that was
extraordinarily impressive. Yet Nature did not seem to be acting
violently, though her might was plain to see. She appeared to proceed
with deliberation. One looked for an end of the snow-stream to come, but
it flowed on and on, pulsating but not failing. The pressures that must
be developed were easily conceived; correspondingly evident became the
strength of the hills that could sustain them as if they had been but
the stroking of a hand.
Later in the season the traveller often encounters, in deep-lying
valleys, the black and shrunken remnants of these mighty avalanches,
melted down by summer heats. Little idea can they give him of the
splendour of their birth and the white curdled beauty of their surface
when they first come to rest. In the nature of things they travel far
and fall low, well into the tree-belt, and even down to the
chestnut-level on the Italian side. It is a strange sight to see these
vast, new-fallen masses lying in their accustomed beds, but surrounded
by trees all freshly verdant with the gifts of spring. Yearly each one
falls in the same place, falls harmlessly and duly expected. Its coming
is welcomed. Its voice is the triumphant shout of the coming season of
summer exuberance and fertility. Nature, newly awakened, cries aloud
with a great and solemnly joyous cry, and the people dwelling around
hear her and arise to their work upon the land. It is not well for a
mountain-lover never to have beheld this characteristic awakening, for
it is one of the great events of the mountains' year.
For the rest, spring in the Alps has many of the qualities of spring
everywhere else, which need not detain us, for to say that is to say
enough. Characteristically Alpine alone are the passing away of the snow
and the phenomena that accompany it. After the avalanches have fallen,
steady melting does the rest. Each warm day withdraws the winter blanket
somewhat and reveals the earth to the sunshine. Convex slopes melt
sooner than concave, steep slopes sooner than flats or gentle inclines.
Thus the large uniform winter covering breaks up into islands and
stripes of white. Gullies are defined against slopes, which previously
were lost in them. The detailed anatomy of the hills is manifested more
clearly from day to day.
It may be claimed that the effect produced is patchy, and so, judged by
spring-time photographs, it appears indeed to be. Never, for
photography, are mountains less suitable than in the spring; by some
ill-luck the camera seizes upon and magnifies the patchiness of the
receding snow. In actual vision the margin of the snow bears a less
piebald aspect. Indeed patchiness is not the effect that the eye
receives from it. The edge is at once perceived to be melting. The white
garb is being withdrawn. That fact is apparent. If one watches the
changes from day to day, they will be found most entertaining from the
manifestations of form they yield. Moreover, the daily alteration of the
colouring of the ground from which snow has recently melted is most
remarkable. The transition is from brown to green. Hence the edge of the
snow is margined with brown, and that in turn by green--a kind of iris
effect which ascends the hillside as the snow withdraws.
Finally, spring is the time of spilling waters, of torrents brimful and
overflowing, of voluminous cascades, of gurgling brooks everywhere--a
time, too, when the waters are bright and crystalline, and when the
valleys and lower slopes are as vocal with their song as the upper
regions are with the deeper diapason of falling snow. If, amongst all
these voices, the winds blow shrilly and the storms not infrequently
rage, the effects produced, however uncomfortable they may be to the
touch of the comfort-loving body, are essentially harmonious in a grand
and glorious fashion.
From spring to summer there is no step in Alpine regions. It is
merely that as the year advances the level of spring rises. At the edge
of the ever-retreating snow it is always spring. Even in August you have
but to climb to find it, but it reigns then over a narrow belt and is
not a land-encompassing mood. What turns spring into summer for the eye
is not easy to indicate. Shall we be far wrong if we say that, in the
first instance, it is the flowers? The little venturesome plants of
spring, that blossom at the very edge of the withdrawing snow,
themselves withdraw when they have smiled upon the world. They are
followed by the bright carpet of early summer--the June carpet, which
few mountaineers ever behold. It is lovely everywhere--loveliest perhaps
in the Maritime Alps, or along the sunny Italian face of the Alpine
wall. You must see it before the scythes get to work on the first hay
crop, and even before the grass is full grown--a sheet of many
colours--not, however, a mere chaos of all kinds of blossoms, but
something far more orderly than that. For there is generally some
predominant plant at a given spot, luxuriantly blossoming at a
particular time, and all the rest do but serve to embroider it. Here
indeed may be a sheet of one kind of blossom, there of another. It is as
though some one had passed by and tossed fair Persian carpets down in
different places, carpets of different design, but all in the same
general style.
[Illustration: 35. LOWER GLACIER AND GRINDELWALD CHURCH. June 3, 1903,
the valley thickly covered with flowers; for four days heavy clouds hung
low over peaks and ridges. Only a glimpse such as this to be seen at
intervals in the slow swaying fringe of the cloud-curtain.]
Even at this period greens are predominant, for the flowers are not to
be discovered from a distance. And what greens they are--these shrill
verdancies of early summer--the despair of artists, the joy of Nature's
friends! Later on they will tone down to a more paintable key, but at
first they transcend the powers of paint, having in them something
almost of the shine of flame. Their coming is sudden. They descend upon
the broad bosom of fertile valleys and the wide skirts of gentle slopes,
as the daylight descends when the sun grows high. Yesterday all was
brown; to-day the greens have come, exultant, exuberant, with the
star-flowers spangled amongst them. Then indeed it is good to be alive.
The voice has gone out to the valley--"Arise, shine, for thy light has
come"--and the valley responds to the call.
With July the full summer is there, and the summer crowd at hand. The
longest days are passing. The freshness is wearing off from the valleys.
Now heat, dust, and flies drive men aloft. It is the reception period of
the high peaks, when they differentiate themselves plainly from the
region below, and alone retain the perfect purity of the winter world.
In winter the great mountains stretch themselves visibly down to the
valleys. Then Mont Blanc begins at Chamonix, the Matterhorn at Zermatt.
But in summer the high peaks seem to be planted aloft on the green
world. The Matterhorn is reduced to a pyramid standing on the Schwarzsee
Alp. Thus in summer, though the actual peaks themselves look larger,
they are more removed out of the way. You must mount afar before you
come to their apparent foot. You thus acquire the sense of their
belonging to a world of their own. In winter snow glories are at your
door. In summer you must labour to behold them, and when beheld they are
emphasised by contrast with the fertile world you have left. That is why
(apart from all questions of comfort and safety) summer climbing is more
impressive than winter. It presents more stages, more variety. In
winter-time all is winter; but in summer it is summer in the valleys,
spring on the alps, and winter above the snow-line; only autumn is not
there.
Autumn, in fact, is the rarest of the seasons. Its effects are the most
evanescent. That is one of its special charms--that, and the tender
sadness that pertains to the passing away of things which have
flourished and had their day in glory. October in the Alps is a season
perhaps more generally delightful in these days than any other period of
the year. Then the great summer crowd has gone, and there is room in the
caravanserais and on the footpaths. The country-folks have leisure for a
word with the wayfarer, and the painful sense of over-pressure is gone.
In October the Alps are almost as they used to be in the sixties--a
spacious region where a man may find himself alone, or almost alone, in
the face of Nature. He cannot now, indeed, heal the scars that the crowd
have furrowed upon the face of the earth, nor remove the ugly buildings
and defacing embankments that have been raised to dam and form
reservoirs or canals for the human flood, but with that exception he can
possess the landscape in peace.
October, again, is sometimes a month of much fine weather and of skies
marvellously clear. If the days are short, they are yet long enough for
early risers. Evening and morning are brought within the limits of a
normal man's possible activity, so that he may enjoy both the splendour
of sunrise and sunset without transgressing the daily hours of healthy
wakefulness. The October sun does not climb so far aloft as does the
royal monarch of the midsummer sky. If the effulgence of day is thus
rendered less overpowering, in return the shadows spread wider and
retain a richer colouring in their depths. More modelling is visible
upon the hillsides and the snow-fields in the bright hours; there are
bluer noontide shadows and perhaps even a bluer sky also.
[Illustration: 36. GRINDELWALD LOOKING TOWARDS THE WENGEN ALP. Winter
snow on the slopes.]
All this is true and characteristic of Alpine autumn, but the most
characteristic feature, there as elsewhere, is the fading of vegetation
and the flaming colours that accompany it. Not only does the foliage of
the trees disclose the change, but the very hillsides blend in harmony
with the forests. Berries shine bright on small shrubs and even lurk
amongst russet or crimson foliage upon the ground. Plants of all lowly
sorts put on a new bright livery, and thus change the character of the
foreground. The bright greens vanish; in their place large slopes grow
orange and brown. But it is beneath, at lower levels, that the changes
are greatest and the autumnal effects most striking. Seek for them in
the Rhone valley or round the shores of Thun. There you will find the
woods absolutely golden or crimson according to their kind--a colouring
at once so rich and so brilliant as to seem almost incredible even to
him who, having seen it once, and believing that he remembers it,
beholds it again and finds it so far surpassing the wealth of his memory
and expectation. To behold the snowy peaks rising into the clear
autumnal sky, far away beyond a foreground such as this, is a sight well
worth an effort. Would not some of our holiday-makers of the better sort
find it pleasant sometimes to change the date of their outing, so as not
always to herd with their fellows nor every year to behold Nature under
a similar illumination?
Just as spring definitely opens with the great avalanches, so winter
opens as definitely with the great snow-falls. One day all is clear and
bright. The snow-line has retreated to its very highest level. The hard
ice of the glacier is revealed far up from the snout. The maximum number
of crevasses are open, and the wide-yawning bergschrunds form moats at
the foot of all the final snow slopes that lean against the great faces
of the peaks. Next morning all is grey and wet and cold. Clouds cover
everything; winds rage; large snow-flakes in countless millions fill the
air and drive across the ground. The drifts pile up and up, and all the
ground is covered, white to the very depths of the valleys. For two or
three days or longer the storm rages, and when at last the sun bursts
forth again and the clouds withdraw their curtains, lo! the visible
world is deeply buried in the white winter garment that will not be
withdrawn till spring once more arrives. As a rule the first great
snow-fall of winter comes thus definitely upon the Alpine world. Others
that follow may be as great or greater in volume, but they only
emphasise existing conditions; they do not, as this one does, change the
face of Nature.
Thus the annual drama of the mountain world is played in its four acts,
year after year, with infinite variety in detail and great uniformity in
the large features. We talk of the seasons as definite divisions, but we
must remember that their progress and succession is an affair not merely
of day following day but of moment following moment. It is the steady
progress, the gradual, imperceptible advance, that the close observer of
natural beauty loves to watch. To-day is not absolutely like yesterday,
and will not absolutely resemble to-morrow even though all three prove
faultlessly fine. The superficial observer may note no change, but that
is because he is superficial. There is always change, and in change the
life of things consists.
To know mountains truly, means to recognise the changes which pass
over them and happen amongst them. A mountain-lover may be compelled to
live in some city of the plains, but, if he could, and in so far as
mountains are his chief delight, he would live amongst them, not merely
in one season but in all. No man, however, is or can be entirely
single-minded. We cannot confine our affections to a single category of
natural beauty, nor even to Nature alone. We are folk of many interests.
Even the most enthusiastic lover of mountains is something more, and
fails from the ideal. Mountains must take their share with other
interests in the life of any one who cares for them at all. In so far,
however, as they are an interest for any of us, it behoves us to make
that interest wide and comprehensive, not restricting it to mountains as
mere things to climb, nor to mountains of a particular character or at a
particular time of year, but allowing it to embrace mountain scenery as
a whole and at all seasons. Those of us who can do this, will find that
the wider and more varied our experience of and sensitiveness to all
varieties of mountain scenery becomes, the more intense will it likewise
grow to be at any special moment, and the more keenly will any
particular effect of beauty affect our hearts. In mountains, as
elsewhere, all seasons of the year are marked by beauties that belong
specially to them. Each season prepares for that which is to follow, and
every day that passes is a transitional step from the one to the other.
Let me commend my fellows of the mountain brotherhood to bear this fact
in mind when they are wandering amongst the hills. If they attend not
merely to the spectacle of the moment, but to the changes that are daily
wrought out before their eyes, they will find their pleasures enlarged
and their capacity for enjoyment increased. They will obtain a greater
consequent understanding not merely of the aspects and moods of the
mountains, but of what I may call their settled character as manifested
by the larger mutations of aspect which they undergo in passing through
the vicissitudes of the seasons of the year.
[Illustration: 37. RIMPFISCHORN AND STRAHLHORN FROM THE RIFFELBERG]