Footing it in Franconia

by Bradford Torrey

All signs threatened a day of midsummer heat, though it was only the 2d of June. Before breakfast, even, the news seemed to have got abroad; so that there was something like a dearth of music under my windows, where heretofore there had been almost a surfeit. The warbling vireo in the poplar, which had teased my ear morning after morning, getting shamelessly in the way of his betters, had for once fallen silent; unless, indeed, he had sung his stint before I woke, or had gone elsewhere to practice. The comparative stillness enabled me to hear voices from the hillside across the meadow, while I turned over in my mind a thought concerning the nature of those sounds—a class by themselves, some of them by no means unmusical—which are particularly enjoyable when borne to us from a distance: crow voices, the baying of hounds, cowbell tinkles, and the like. The nasal, high-pitched, penetrating call of the little Canadian nuthatch is one of the best examples of what I mean. Ank, ank: the sounds issue from the depths of trackless woods, miles and miles away as it seems, just reaching us, without a breath to spare; dying upon the very tympanum, like a spent runner who drops exhausted at the goal, touching it only with his finger tips. Yet the ear is not fretted. It makes no attempt to hear more. Ank, ank: that is the whole story, and we see the bird as plainly as if he hung from a cone at the top of the next fir tree.

“No tramping to-day,” said my friends from the cottage as we met at table. They had been reading the thermometer, which is the modern equivalent for observing the wind and regarding the clouds. But my vacation, unlike theirs, was not an all-summer affair. It was fast running out, and there were still many things to be seen and done. Immediately after breakfast, therefore, with an umbrella and a luncheon, I started for the Notch. I would reverse the usual route, going by way of the railroad—reached by a woodland trail above “Chase’s”—and returning by the highway. Of itself this is only a forenoon’s jaunt, but I meant to piece it out by numerous waits—for coolness and listening—and sundry by-excursions, especially by a search for Selkirk’s violet and an hour or two on Bald Mountain. If the black flies and the mosquitoes would let me choose my own gait, I would risk the danger of sunstroke.

As I come out upon the grassy plain, after the first bit of sharp ascent, a pleasant breeze is stirring, and with the umbrella over my head, and a halt as often as the shade of a tree, the sight of a flower, or the sound of music invites me, I go on with great comfort. Now I am detained by a close bed of dwarf cornel, every face looking straight upward, the waxen white “flowers” inclosing each a bunch of dark pin-points. Now a lovely clear-winged moth hovers over a dandelion head; and a pleasing sight it is, to see his transparent wings beating themselves into a haze about his brown body. And now, by way of contrast, one of our tiny sky-blue butterflies rises from the ground and with a pretty unsteadiness flits carelessly before me, twinkling over the sand.

A bluebird drops into the white birch under which I am standing, and lets fall a few notes of his contralto warble. A delicious voice. For purity and a certain affectionateness it would be hard to name its superior. A vesper sparrow sings from the grass land; and from the woods beyond a jay is screaming. His, by the bye, is another of the voices that are bettered by distance, although, for my own part, I like the ring of it, near or far. Now a song sparrow breaks out in his breezy, characteristically abrupt manner. He is a bird with fine gifts of cheeriness and versatility; but when he sets himself against the vesper, as now, it is like prose against poetry, plain talk against music. So it seems to me at this moment, I mean to say. At another time, in another mood, I might tone down the comparison, though I could never say less than that the vesper is my favorite. His gifts are sweetness and perfection.

So I cross the level fields to Chase’s, where I stand a few minutes before the little front-yard flower-garden, always with many pretty things in it. One of those natural gardeners, the good woman must be, who have a knack of making plants blossom. And just beyond, in the shelter of the first tree, I stop again to take off my hat, put down my umbrella, and speak coaxingly to a suspicious pointer (being a friend of all dogs except surly ones), which after much backing and filling gets his cool nose into my palm. We are on excellent terms, I flatter myself, but at that moment some notion strikes me and I take out my notebook and pencil. Instantly he starts away and sets up a furious bark, looking first at me, then toward the house, circling about me all the while, at a rod’s distance, in a quiver of excitement. “Help! help!” he cries. “Here’s a villain of some sort. I’ve never seen the like. A spy at the very least.” And though he quiets down when I put up the book, there is no more friendliness for this time. Man writing, as Carlyle would have said, is a doubtful character.

Another stage, to the edge of the woods, and I rest again, the breeze encouraging me. A second bluebird is caroling. Every additional one is cause for thankfulness. Imagine a place where bluebirds should be as thick as English sparrows are in our American cities! Imagine heaven! A crested flycatcher screams, an olive-side calls pip, pip, a robin cackles, an oven-bird recites his piece with schoolboy emphasis, an alder flycatcher queeps, and a vesper sparrow sings. And at the end, as if for good measure, a Maryland yellow-throat adds his witchery, witchery. The breeze comes to me over broad beds of hay-scented fern, and at my feet are bunchberry blossoms and the white star-flower. At this moment, nevertheless, the cooling, insect-dispersing wind is better than all things else. Such is one effect of hot weather, setting comfort above poetry.

I leave the wind behind, and take my way into the wood, where there is nothing in particular to delay me except an occasional windfall, which must be clambered over or beaten about. Half an hour, more or less, of lazy traveling, and I come out upon the railroad at the big sugar-maple grove. This is one of the sights of the country in the bright-leaf season, say the first week of October; something, I have never concluded what, giving to its colors a most remarkable depth and richness. Putting times together, I must have spent hours in admiring it, now from different points on the Butter Hill round, now from Bald Mountain. At present every leaf of it is freshly green, and somewhere within it dwells a wood thrush, for whose golden voice I sit down in the shade to listen. He is in no haste, and no more am I. Let him take his time. Other birds also are a little under the weather, as it appears; but the silence cannot last. A scarlet tanager’s voice is the first to break it. High as the temperature is, he is still hoarse. And so is the black-throated blue warbler that follows him. A pine siskin passes overhead on some errand, announcing himself as he goes. There is no need for him to speak twice. Then come three warblers,—a Nashville, a magnolia, and a blue yellow-back; and after them a piece of larger game, a smallish hawk. He breaks out of the dense wood behind me, perches for half a minute in an open maple, where I can see that he has prey of some kind in his talons, and then, taking wing, ascends in circles into the sky, and so disappears. That is locomotion of a sort to make a man and his umbrella envious.

A rose-breasted grosbeak, invisible (but I can see him), is warbling not far off. He has taken the tanager’s tune—which is the robin’s as well—and smoothed it and smoothed it, and sweetened it and sweetened it, till it is smoother than oil and sweeter than honey. I admire it for what it is, a miracle of mellifluency; if you call it perfect, I can only acquiesce; but I cannot say that it stirs or kindles me. Perhaps I haven’t a sweet ear. And hark! the wood thrush gives voice: only a few strains, but enough to show him still present. Now I am free to trudge along up the railroad track, pondering as I go upon the old question why railway sleepers are always too far apart for one step and not far enough for two. At short intervals I pause at the sound of a mourning warbler’s brief song, pretty in itself, and noticeable for its trick of a rolled r. Some of the birds add a concluding measure of quick notes, like wit, wit, wit. It is long since I have seen so many at once. In truth, I have never seen so many except on one occasion, on the side of Mount Washington. That was ten years ago. One a year, on the average, shows itself to me during the spring passage—none in autumn. Well I remember my first one. Twenty years have elapsed since that late May morning, but I could go to the very spot, I think, though I have not been near it for more than half that time. A good thing it is that we can still enjoy the good things of past years, or of what we call past years.

And a good thing is a railroad, though the sleepers be spaced on purpose for a foot-passenger’s discomfort. Without this one, over which at this early date no trains are running, I should hardly be traversing these miles of rough mountain country on a day of tropical sultriness. The clear line of the track gives me not only passage and a breeze, but an opening into the sky, and at least twice as many bird sights and bird sounds as the unbroken forest would furnish.[10] I drink at the section men’s well—an ice-cold spring inclosed in a bottomless barrel—cross the brook which, gloriously alive and beautiful, comes dashing over its boulders down the White-cross Ravine, fifty feet below me as I guess, and stop in the burning on the other side to listen for woodpeckers and brown creepers. The latter are strangely rare hereabout, and this seems an ideal spot in which to look for them. So I cannot help thinking as I see from how many of the trunks—burned to death and left standing—the bark has warped in long, loose flakes, as if to provide nesting sites for a whole colony of creepers. But the birds are not here; or, if they are, they do not mean that an inquisitive stranger shall know it. An olive-sided flycatcher calls, rather far off, making me suspicious for an instant of a red crossbill, and a white-throated sparrow whistles out of the gulch below me; but I listen in vain for the quick tseep which would put an eighty-seventh name into my vacation catalogue.

Here is the round-leaved violet, one pale-bright, shy blossom. How pleased I am to see it! Hobble-bush and wild red cherry are still in bloom. White Mountain dogwood, we might almost call the hobble-bush; so well it fills the place, in flowering time, of Cornus florida in the Alleghanies. In the twilight of the woods, as in the darkness of evening, no color shows so far as white; which, for aught I know, may be one of the reasons why, relatively speaking, white flowers are so much more common in the forest than in the open country. In my eyes, nevertheless, the leaves of the hobble-bush—leaves and leaf-buds—are, if anything, prettier than the blossoms. Such beauty of shape, such expansiveness, such elegance of crimpling, and such exceeding richness of hue, whether in youth or age! If the bush refuses transplantation, as I have read that it does, I am glad of it. My sympathies are with all things, plants, animals, and men, that insist upon their native freedom, in their native country, with a touch, or more than a touch, of native savagery. Civilization is well enough, within limits; but why be in haste to have all the world a garden? It will be some time yet, I hope, before every valley is exalted.