DOWN THE TORRENT’S PATHWAY.
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.
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.