This sense of distance and strangeness is not to be obtained, in my case at all events, by a few hours' stay in such a spot. I must pitch my tent there, for at least a night or two. I cannot even see the prospect at first, much less feel the spirit of the place. There must be time for the old life to drop off, as it were, while eye and ear grow wonted to novel sights and sounds. Doubtless I did take note of trivial things,—the call of a bird and the fragrance of a flower. It was a pleasing relief after living so long with men whose minds were all the time full of those serious and absorbing questions, "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?"
I remember with special pleasure a profusion of [white orchids (Habenaria dilatata)] which bordered the roadside not far from the top, their spikes of waxy snow-white flowers giving out a rich, spicy odor hardly to be distinguished from the scent of carnation pinks. I remember, too, how the whole summit, from the Nose to the Chin, was sprinkled with the modest and beautiful [Greenland sandwort], springing up in every little patch of thin soil, where nothing else would flourish, and blossoming even under the door-step of the hotel. Unpretending as it is, this little alpine adventurer makes the most of its beauty. The blossoms are not crowded into close heads, so as to lose their individual attractiveness, like the florets of the golden-rod, for example; nor are they set in a stiff spike, after the manner of the orchid just now mentioned. At the same time the plant does not trust to the single flower to bring it into notice. It grows in a pretty tuft, and throws out its blossoms in a graceful, loose cluster. The eye is caught by the cluster, and yet each flower shows by itself, and its own proper loveliness is in no way sacrificed to the general effect. How wise, too, is the sandwort in its choice of a dwelling-place! In the valley it would be lost amid the crowd. On the bare, brown mountain-top its scattered tufts of green and white appeal to all comers.
To what extent, if at all, the sandwort depends upon the service of insects for its fertilization, I do not know, but it certainly has no scarcity of such visitors. "Bees will soar for bloom high as the highest peak of Mansfield;" so runs an entry in my notebook, with a pardonable adaptation of Wordsworth's line; and I was glad to notice that even the splendid black-and-yellow [butterfly] (Turnus), which was often to be seen sucking honey from the fragrant orchids, did not disdain to sip also from the sandwort's cup. This large and elegant butterfly—our largest—is thoroughly at home on our New England mountains, sailing over the very loftiest peaks, and making its way through the forests with a strong and steady flight. Many a time have I taken a second look at one, as it has threaded the treetops over my head, thinking to see a bird. Besides the Turnus, I noted here the nettle tortoise-shell butterfly (Vanessa Milberti—a showy insect, and the more attractive to me as being comparatively a stranger); the common cabbage butterfly; the yellow Philodice; the copper; and, much more abundant than any of these, a large orange-red fritillary (Aphrodite, I suppose), gorgeously bedecked with spots of silver on the under surface of the wings. All these evidently knew that plenty of flowers were to be found along this seemingly barren, rocky crest. Whether they have any less sensuous motive for loving to wander over such heights, who will presume to determine? It may very well be that their almost ethereal structure—such spread of wing with such lightness of body—is only the outward sign of gracious thoughts and feelings, of a sensitiveness to beauty far surpassing anything of which we ourselves are capable. What a contrast between them and the grub gnawing ceaselessly under the spruce-tree bark! Can the highest angel be as far above the lowest man? And yet (how mysteriously suggestive would the fact be, if only it were new to us!) this same light-winged Aphrodite, flitting from blossom to blossom in the mountain breeze, was but a few days ago an ugly, crawling thing, close cousin to the borer. Since then it has fallen asleep and been changed,—a parable, past all doubt, though as yet we lack eyes to read it.
I have spoken hitherto as if I were the only sojourner at the summit, but there was another man, though I seldom saw him; a kind of hermit, living in a little shanty under the lee of the Nose. Almost as a matter of course he was reputed to be of good family and to read Greek, and the fact that he now and then received a bank draft evidently gave him a respectable standing in the eye of the hotel clerk. Something—something of a very romantic nature, we may be sure—had driven him away from the companionship of his fellows, but he still found it convenient to be within reach of human society. Like all such solitaries, he had some half-insane notions. He could not sleep indoors, not for a night; it would ruin his health, if I understood him correctly; and because of wild animals—bears and what not—he made his bed on the roof of his hermitage. I had often dreamed of the enjoyment of a life in the woods all by one's self, but such a mode of existence did not gain in attractiveness as I saw it here in the concrete example. On the whole I was well satisfied to sleep in the hotel and eat at the hotel table. Liberty is good, but I thought it might be undesirable to be a slave to my own freedom.
Two or three times a wagon-load of tourists appeared at the hotel. They strolled about the summit, admired the prospect, picked a bunch of sandwort, perhaps, but especially they went to see the snow. They had been at much trouble to stand upon the highest land in Vermont, and now that they were here, they wished to do or see something unique, something that should mark the day as eventful. So they were piloted to a cave midway between the Nose and the Chin, into which the sun never peeped, and wherein a snow-bank still lingered. The mountain was grand, the landscape was magnificent, but to eat a handful of snow and throw a snow-ball in the middle of July—this was almost like being at the North Pole; it would be something to talk about after getting home.
One visitor I rejoiced to see, though a stranger. I was on the Nose in the afternoon, enjoying once more the view of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks, when I descried two men far off toward the Chin. They had come up the mountain, not by the carriage road, but by a trail on the opposite side, and plainly were in no haste, though the afternoon was wearing away. As I watched their movements, a mile or two in the distance, I said to myself, "Good! they are botanists." So it proved; or rather one of them was a botanist,—a college professor on a pedestrian collecting-excursion. We compared notes after supper and walked together the next morning, enjoying that peculiar good fellowship which nothing but a kindred interest and an unexpected meeting in a lonesome place can make possible. Then he started down the carriage road with the design of exploring Smugglers' Notch, and I have never seen or heard from him since. I hope he is still botanizing on the shores of time, and finding many a precious rarity; and should he ever read this reference to himself, may it be with a feeling as kindly as that with which the lines are written.
That afternoon I followed him, somewhat unexpectedly. I went down, as I had come up, on wheels; but I will not say in ignoble fashion, for the driver—the hotel proprietor himself—was in haste, the carriage had no brake, and the speed with which we rattled down the steep pitches and round the sharp curves, with the certainty that if anything should break, the horse would run and our days would be ended,—these things, and especially the latter consideration, of which I thought and the other man spoke, made the descent one of pleasurable excitement. We reached the base in safety and I was left at the nearest farmhouse, where by dint of some persuasion the housewife was induced to give me a lodging for the night, so that on the morrow I might make a long day in Smugglers' Notch, a famous botanical resort between Mount Mansfield and Mount Sterling, which I had for years been desirous of visiting.
I would gladly have stayed longer on the heights, but it was pleasant also to be once more in the lowlands; to walk out after supper and look up instead of down, while the [chimney swifts] darted hither and thither with their merry, breathless cacklings. How welcome, too, were the hearty music of the robin and the carol of the [grass finch]! After all, I thought, home is in the valley; but the whistle of the [white-throat] reminded me that I was not yet back in Massachusetts.