CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER.
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.
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.