Footing it in Franconia

by Bradford Torrey

That was a pretty good look (at a fox), but far less satisfying than the other of my Franconia experiences. With two friends I had come down through the forest from the Notch railroad by a rather blind loggers’ trail, heading for a pair of abandoned farms, grassy fields in which it is needful to give heed to one’s steps for fear of bear-traps. As we emerged into the first clearing a fox was not more than five or six rods before us, feeding in the grass. Her eyes were on her work, the wind was in our favor, and notwithstanding two of us were almost wholly exposed, we stood there on the edge of the forest for the better part of half an hour, glasses up, passing comments upon her behavior. Evidently she was lunching upon insects,—grasshoppers or crickets, I suppose,—and so taken up was she with this agreeable employment that she walked directly toward us and passed within ten yards of our position, stopping every few steps for a fresh capture. The sunlight, which shone squarely in her face, seemed to affect her unpleasantly; at all events she blinked a good deal. Her manner of stepping about, her motions in catching her prey,—driving her nose deep into the grass and pushing it home,—and in short her whole behavior, were more catlike than doglike, or so we all thought. Plainly she had no idea of abbreviating her repast, nor did she betray the slightest grain of suspiciousness or wariness, never once casting an eye about in search of possible enemies. A dog in his own dooryard could not have seemed less apprehensive of danger. As often as she approached the surrounding wood she turned and hunted back across the field. We might have played the spy upon her indefinitely; but it was always the same thing over again, and by and by, when she passed for a little out of sight behind a tuft of bushes, we followed, careless of the result, and, as it seemed, got into her wind. She started on the instant, ran gracefully up a little incline, still in the grass land, turned for the first time to look at us, and disappeared in the forest. A pretty creature she surely was, and from all we saw of her she might have been accounted a very useful farm-hand; but perhaps, as farmers sometimes say of unprofitable cattle, she would soon have “eaten her head off” in the poultry yard. She was not fearless,—like a woodchuck that once walked up to me and smelled of my boot, as I stood still in the road near the Crawford House,—but simply off her guard; and our finding her in such a mood was simply a bit of good luck. Some day, possibly, we shall catch a weasel asleep.

In a vacation season, like our annual fortnight in New Hampshire, there is no predicting which jaunt, if any, will turn out superior to all the rest. It may be a longer and comparatively newer one (although in Franconia we find few new ones now, partly because we no longer seek them—the old is better, we are apt to say when any innovation is suggested); or, thanks to something in the day or something in the mood, it may be one of the shortest and most familiar. And when it is over, there may be a sweetness in the memory, but little to talk about; little “incident,” as editors say, little that goes naturally into a notebook. In other words, the best walk, for us, is the one in which we are happiest, the one in which we feel the most, not of necessity the one in which we see the most; or, to put it differently still, the one in which we do see the most, but with

“that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude.”

Whatever we may call ourselves at home, among the mountains we are lovers of pleasure. Our day’s work is to be happy. We take our text from the good Longfellow as theologians take theirs from Scripture:—

“Enjoyment, and not sorrow, is our destined end.”

We are not anxious to learn anything; our thoughts run not upon wisdom; if we take note of a plant or a bird, it is rather for the fun of it than for any scholarly purpose. We are boys out of school. I speak of myself and of the man I have called my walking mate. The two collectors of insects, of course, are more serious-minded. “No day without a beetle,” is their motto, and their absorption, even in Franconia, is in adding to the world’s stock of knowledge. Let them be respected accordingly. Our creed is more frankly hedonistic; and their virtue—I am free to confess it—shines the brighter for the contrast.

This year, nevertheless, old Franconia had for us, also, one most welcome novelty, the story of which I have kept, like the good wine,—a pretty small glassful, I am aware,—for the end of the feast. I had never enjoyed the old things better. Eight or nine years ago, writing—in this magazine[2]—of June in Franconia, I expressed a fear that our delight in the beauty of nature might grow to be less keenly felt with advancing age; that we might ultimately be driven to a more scientific use of the outward world, putting the exercise of curiosity, what we call somewhat loftily the acquisition of knowledge, in the place of rapturous contemplation. So it may yet fall out, to be sure, since age is still advancing, but as far as present indications go, nothing of the sort seems at all imminent. I begin to believe, in fact, that things will turn the other way; that curiosity will rather lose its edge, and the power of beauty strike deeper and deeper home. So may it be! Then we shall not be dead while we live. Sure I am that the glory of mountains, the splendor of autumnal forests, the sweetness of valley prospects, were never more rapturously felt by me than during the season just ended. And still, as I started just now to say, I had special joy this year in a new specimen, an additional bird for my memory and notebook.

The forenoon of September 26, my fourth day, I spent on Garnet Hill. The grand circuit of that hill is one of the best esteemed of our longer expeditions. Formerly we did it always between breakfast and dinner, having to speed the pace a little uncomfortably for the last four or five miles; but times have begun to alter with us, or perhaps we have profited by experience; for the last few years, at any rate, we have made the trip an all-day affair, dining on Sunset Hill, and loitering down through the Landaff Valley—with a side excursion, it may be, to fill up the hours—in the afternoon. This trip, being, as I say, one of those we most set by, I was determined to hold in reserve against the arrival of my fellow foot-traveler; but there is also a pleasant shorter course, not round the hill, but, so to speak, over one side of it: out by the way of what I call High Bridge Road (never having heard any name for it), and back by the road—hardly more than a lane for much of its length—which traverses the hill diagonally on its northeastern slope, and joins the regular Sugar Hill highway a little below the Franconia Inn.

I left the Littleton road for the road to the Streeter neighborhood, crossed Gale River by a bridge pitched with much labor at a great height above it (a good indication of the swelling to which mountain streams are subject), passed two or three retired valley farms (where were eight or ten sleek young calves, one of which, rather to my surprise, ate from my hand a sprig of mint as if she liked the savor of it), and then began a long, steep climb. For much of the distance the road—narrow and very little traveled—is lined with dense alder and willow thickets, excellent cover for birds. It was partly with this place in my eye that I had chosen my route, remembering an hour of much interest here some years ago with a large flock of migrants. To-day, as it happened, the bushes were comparatively birdless. White-throats and snowbirds were present, of course, and ruby-crowned kinglets, with a solitary vireo or two, but nothing out of the ordinary. The prospect, however, without being magnificent or—for Franconia—extensive, was full of attractiveness. Gale River hastening through a gorge overhung with forest, directly on my right, Streeter Pond farther away (two deer had been shot beside it that morning, as I learned before night,—news of that degree of importance travels fast), and the gay-colored hills toward Littleton and Bethlehem,—maple grove on maple grove, with all their banners flying,—these made a delightsome panorama, shifting with every twist in the road and with every rod of the ascent; so that I had excuse more than sufficient for continually stopping to breathe and face about. In one place I remarked a goodly bed of coltsfoot leaves, noticeable for their angular shape as well as for their peculiar shade of green. I wished for a blossom. If the dandelion sometimes anticipates the season, why not the coltsfoot? But I found no sign of flower or bud. Probably the plant is of a less impatient habit; but I have seen it so seldom that all my ideas about it are no better than guesswork. Along the wayside was maiden-hair fern, also, which I do not come upon any too often in this mountain country.