The sight, nevertheless, gave me a new conception of the pitch of delicacy to which the sense of taste might be cultivated. It was evident that our human faculty, comfortably as we get on with it in the main, is only a coarse and bungling tool, never more than half made, perhaps, or quite as likely blunted and spoiled by millenniums of abuse. I could really have envied the chickadee, if such a feeling had not seemed unworthy of a man’s dignity. Besides, a palate so supersusceptible might prove an awkward possession, it occurred to me on second thought, for one who must live as one of the “civilized,” and take his chances with cooks. All things considered, I was better off, perhaps, with the old equipment and the old method,—a duller taste and larger mouthfuls.
At the end of the forty-five minutes I came to the burning, a tract of forest over which a fire had run some two years before. Here, in this dead place, there was more of life; more sunshine, and therefore more insects, and therefore more birds. Even here, however, there was nothing to be called birdiness: a few olive-sided flycatchers and wood pewees, both with musical whistles, one like a challenge, the other an elegy; a family group of chestnut-sided warblers, parents and young, conversing softly among themselves about the events of the day, mostly gastronomic; a robin and a white-throated sparrow in song; three or four chickadees, lisping and deeing; a siskin or two, a song sparrow, and a red-eyed vireo. The whole tract was purple with willow herb—which follows fire as surely as boys follow a fire engine—and white with pearly immortelles.
Once out of this open space—this forest cemetery, one might say, though the dead were not buried, but stood upright like bleached skeletons, with arms outstretched—I was again immersed in leafy silence, which lasted till I approached the lake. Here I heard before me the tweeting of sandpipers, and presently came in sight of two solitaries (migrants already, though it was only the 4th of August), each bobbing nervously upon its boulder a little off shore. The eye of the ornithologist took them in: dark green legs; dark, slender bills; bobbing, not teetering—Totanus, not Actitis. Then the eyes of the man turned to rest upon that enchanting prospect: Eagle Cliff in shadow, Profile Mountain in full sun, and the lake between them. The spirit of all the hours I had ever spent here was communing with me. I blessed the place and bade it good-by. “I will come again if I can,” I said, “and many times; but if not, good-by.” I believe I am like the birds; no matter how far south they may wander, when the winter is gone they say one to another, “Let us go back to the north country, to the place where we were so happy a year ago.”
The last day of my visit, the only warm one, fell on Sunday; and on Sunday, by all our Franconia traditions, I must make the round of Landaff Valley. I had been into the valley once, to be sure, but that did not matter; it was not on Sunday, and besides, I did not really go “round the square,” as we are accustomed to say, with a fine disregard of mathematical precision.
After all, there is little to tell of, though there was plenty to see and enjoy. The first thing was to get out of the village; away from the churches and the academy, and beyond the last house (the last village house, I mean), into the company of the river, the long green meadow and the larch swamp,—a goodly fellowship. A swamp sparrow trilled me a welcome at the very entrance to the valley, as he had done before, and musical goldfinches accompanied me for the whole round, till I thought the day should be named in their honor, Goldfinch Sunday.
Pretty Atlantis butterflies were always in sight, as they had been even in the coolest weather, with now and then an Atalanta and, more rarely, a Cybele. I had looked for Aphrodite, also, being desirous to see these three fritillaries (Cybele, Aphrodite, and Atlantis) together, till the entomologist told me that we were out of its latitude. Commoner even than Atlantis, perhaps, was the dusky wood-nymph, Alope (strange notions the old Greeks must have had of the volatility of their goddesses and heroines, to name so many of them after butterflies!), she of the big yellow blotch on each fore wing; a wavering, timid creature, always seeking to hide herself, and never holding a steady course for so much as an inch—as if she were afflicted with the shaking palsy. “Don’t look at me! Pray don’t look at me!” she is forever saying as she dodges behind a leaf. Shyness is a grace—in the feminine; but Alope is too shy. If her complexion were fairer, possibly she would be less retiring.
From the first the warmth of the sun was sufficient to render shady halts a luxury, and on the crossroad—“Gray Birch Road,” to quote my own name for it—where a walker was somewhat shut away from the wind, I began to spell “warm” with fewer letters. Here, too, the dust was excessively deep, so that passing carriages—few, but too many—put a foot-passenger under a cloud. Still I was glad to be there, turning the old corners, seeing the old beauty, thinking the old thoughts. How green Tucker Brook meadow looked, and how grandly Lafayette loomed into the sky just beyond!
Most peculiar is the feeling I have for that sharp crest; I know not how to express it; a feeling of something like spiritual possession. If I do not love it, at least I love the sight of it. Nay, I will say what I mean: I love the mountain itself. I take pleasure in its stones, and favor the dust thereof. The loftiest snow-covered peak in the world would never carry my thoughts higher, or detain them longer. It was good to see it once more from this point of special vantage. And when I reached the corner of the Notch road and started homeward, how refreshing was the breeze that met me! Coolness after heat, ease after pain, these are near the acme of physical comfort.
Best of all was a half-hour’s rest under a pine tree, facing a stretch of green meadow, with low hills beyond it westward; a perfect picture, perfectly “composed.” In the foreground, just across the way, stood a thicket of chokecherry shrubs shining with fruit, and over them, on one side, trailed a clematis vine full of creamy white blossoms. Both cherry and clematis were common everywhere, often in each other’s company, but I had seen none quite so gracefully disposed. No gardener’s art could have managed the combination so well.
Here I sat and dreamed. I was near home, with time to spare; the wind was perfection, and the day also; I had walked far enough to make a seat welcome, yet not so far as to bring on sluggish fatigue; and everything in sight was pure beauty. Life will be sweet as long as it has such half hours to offer us. Yet somehow, human nature having a perverse trick of letting good suggest its opposite, I found myself, all at once,