During nearly the whole of the forenoon of July 3, 1892, a soft rain had been falling. It had begun in the night to the discomfiture of the whippoorwills, but not to the extinguishment of their voices. It continued until nearly noon, when the wind shifted from east to west, patches of blue sky appeared, and ever and anon gleams of sunlight fell upon the distant forest across the lake, or slid slowly over the tree-tops on the side of Chocorua. Bird voices grew stronger with the promise of fair weather. Hermit thrushes, veeries, red-eyed vireos, and Maryland yellow-throats sang four invitations from as many points of the compass, and I said Yes to the veeries and sought the swamp. A New Hampshire swamp is full of attractions at all seasons. In winter the great northern hares make innumerable paths across its soft snow, and tempt the gunner into the chilly gloom in search of a shot at their phantom forms. In spring a host of migrating warblers makes merry in its tree-tops, and the song of the winter wren is sent from heaven to give joy to its shadows. Summer brings to it many a shy orchid blooming among the ferns, and the fisherman finds the trout in its brook’s placid pools long after they have ceased to bite well in the upper reaches of the stream. There are no venomous serpents hanging from its moss-grown trees, no tigers concealed in its brakes, and no ague lingering in its stagnant pools. It is a safe swamp and kind, yet none the less a swamp.
When I reached its borders, after crossing the meadow, I found wild roses in bloom. It was of these, doubtless, that the veery was singing so bewitchingly. Certainly nothing less fair could have prompted such magic music. Moreover, the veery’s nest, framed in nodding osmundas, is near these beautiful blossoms, with many a pool and thicket between it and hard ground. Passing into the darkness of the swamp, I glanced back at the sky. The north and west were filled with black clouds which were stirred by passionate winds in their midst. A low growl of thunder came through the heavy air. I felt as though forbidden to enter the mysteries of the swamp, as though warned that danger lay within those aisles of twilight. The veery ceased its song. No bird voice broke the stillness of the gloom, and a hush of expectation held every leaf motionless. The branches closed behind me and I stole on between lofty trees with mossy trunks, over fallen logs, and through the dripping jungle of ferns. Upland woods are cleaner, stronger, more symmetrical than swamp growth, but they have not the effect of tropical luxuriance which the swamp forest possesses. The mosses, lichens, ferns of many species, climbing vines, and such large-leaved plants as the veratrum and skunk cabbage, give to the moist land an air of wealth of leaf-growth which is distinctive.
Two species of orchid were conspicuous, rising just above the ferns. They were the purple-fringed, just coming into bloom, and the white, which was abundant. Splashing back and forth through the shallow pools, gathering the spikes of the white orchis, I did not at first notice a distant sound which grew in volume until its sullen vibration could not be ignored. The tree-tops above me gave a sudden, vicious swish. Crows to the westward were cawing wildly. The roar of the storm became unmistakable; the swamp grew darker; a few big drops of rain fell, and then, as though a train were plunging down noisy rails upon the forest, the rain and wind leaped upon the trees, filling the air with deafening sounds, and twisting the branches until it seemed as though the whole structure of the woods was about to collapse in one vast ruin. Then through the tormented tree-tops the floods fell. They were white like snow, and seemed to be a fallen part of a white sky which showed now and then as the forest swayed back and forth in the wind’s arms. Wet as the swamp had been before, its colors became more vivid under this deluge. Every leaf grew greener, and each lichen gave out new tints as it drank in rain. The trunks of the trees assumed more distinctive shades; that of the ash became brown, of the yellow birch almost like saffron, and of the canoe birch glistening white. The rain pelting into my eyes bade me look less at the sky and more at the beauties at my feet. Beauties there surely were at my feet, both of color and form. There were no flowers, but the leaves were enough to satisfy both eye and mind,—large leaves and small, coarse and delicate, strong and feeble, stiff and drooping. Some were long and slender, others deeply cleft, some round, or smoothly oval, others shaped like arrow-heads. Some received the rain submissively and bowed more and more before it, others responded buoyantly as each drop struck them and was tossed off. In some the up-and-down motion communicated by the falling drop was by the formation of the leaf-stalk transformed at once into an odd vibration from side to side, which was like an indignant shaking of the head.
Looking at the marvelous variety in the outlines of these gleaming leaves, I suddenly found my memory tugging me back to the schoolroom where I was first taught botany. I recalled one melancholy morning when my teacher, who knew neither the derivation of botanical terms nor the true beauties of botanical science, ordered me to commit to memory the list of adjectives applied to the various shapes of leaves. The dose prejudiced me against botany for full ten years of my life, yet here in this glistening carpet of the swamp I saw “lanceolate,” “auriculate,” “cordate,” “pinnate,” written, not in letters of gold, but in something equally impressive to the memory, and much more easy for a dull teacher to obtain.
When one is in the deep woods and a flash of lightning comes, the eye seems to see a narrow horizontal belt of light play swiftly across the foliage immediately in the line of vision. If I looked at the ground I caught it there; if my eyes were fixed on the low branches at a distance, the flash was there. Each flash was promptly followed by the glorious mountain thunder which is so much more impressive than that in level regions. At first heaven was rent by the sound; then mountain after mountain seemed to fall in noisy ruin, the great ledges tumbling in upon each other with deafening shocks; then the sound rolled away through the sky, striking here and there upon some cloudy promontory and giving out a softened boom or waning rumble.
For full twenty minutes the trees writhed in the wind, the rain fell, the leaves nodded and shivered under the drops, and the rhythmic roar of the rain was broken irregularly by the thunder. As time passed, the shower slackened, the thunder followed the lightning at longer and longer intervals, the wind seemed to take deeper and less nervous breaths, and I listened to discover what creature of the swamp would first raise its voice above the subsiding storm. A mosquito hovered before me, dodging the drops in its vibratory flight. If it was buzzing I could not hear it. Suddenly a single call from a blue jay came, in a lull of the wind, from a thicket of spruces. “Yoly-’oly,” it said, and was silent again. I took a few steps forward, and the shrill alarm-note of a chipmunk sounded through the gloom. I strolled slowly through the drenched and dripping woods fragrant with the perfume of moss and mould. It was more like wading than walking, for every leaf had a drop of cold water ready to give away to whatever first touched it. A ray of sunlight dodged through the lifting clouds and fell into the swamp. The song of a parula warbler, distilled by it, floated back skyward. As the west grew golden and blue, bird-songs sounded from every quarter. The merry chickadees, conversational vireos, and querulous wood pewees vied with each other and the tree-toads in replacing the orchestral passion of the storm by the simple music of their solos.
Leaving the swamp, I climbed the terrace marking the ancient border of the lake, which once included the swamp in its area, and passed through a grove of slender birches and poplars. Their stems, streaming with rain, were as bright as polished marble, and their foliage, illuminated by the clear sunlight, was marvelously green against the deep blue of the sky. Presently a vista opened northward, and at its end rose the dark peak of Chocorua. After a rain this towering rock presents a noticeably different appearance from its normal coloring. Most of its surface is covered by lichens, one species of which, when dry, resembles burnt paper. When rain falls upon these lichens they alter their tints, and the burnt paper species in particular becomes so green that a wonderful change takes place in the whole coloring of the mountain. Looked upon through the birch vista, the air being clear and clean, and the colors of the mountain uncommonly bright, the peak seemed near at hand, and even grander than usual. There are few things in New England as truly picturesque as this horn of Chocorua. Three thousand feet above its lake and the level of the Saco, the great rock lifts itself with bold and naked outline into the midst of the sky. No foot seems able to creep up its precipitous slopes to its dizzy tip, and even the sturdy spruce can cling only to the deep clefts in its storm-swept ledges. There was a time when the forest reached to its crest, and when the cold rocks, now naked, were covered deep in soil and mosses. Passaconaway, close by, shows how this could have been, and how Chocorua must have looked draped in evergreens. Fire and hurricane destroyed the trees; the parched soil was washed away from the rocks; and now the only trace of the old forest growth is an occasional bleached stump or log hidden in a cleft in the ledges.
As I strolled homewards I passed a spot where the linnæa has covered several square yards of ground in a birch wood. The tiny bells had rung out their elfin music for the year. By dint of laborious search on hands and knees I found eight of the flowers, still wonderfully fragrant though somewhat faded. All the rest of the chime had fallen. Not far away a growth of dogbane fringed the path. I picked some of its blossoms and held the two sets of bells side by side in my hand. The comparison made me feel sorry for the dogbane.
THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN
Floating upon the clear waters of Chocorua Lake in the latter part of a warm July afternoon, and looking northward, I see the coolness of night beginning to grow in the heart of the mountain. At first there is but a slender dark line marking a deep ravine, through which a brook flows; then the shadow widens until a great hollow in the mountain’s side is filled with shade. As the sun sinks the shadow reaches higher and higher upon the wooded flanks of the two spurs which hold the hollow between them, until at last only the vast rock of the peak, resting upon its forest-clad shoulders, is left warm in the sun’s rays. The point where the shadow begins to form is more than a thousand feet above the level of the lake. From it, reaching upwards, two folds in the forest drapery extend towards the foot of the peak. One marks a brook coming from the upper part of the right-hand ridge, the other a brook which rises at the very head of the left-hand, or west ridge. The heart of the mountain is the wild ravine where these two streams mingle in perpetual coolness and shadow. No path leads to it and few are the feet which have found a way to its beauties. There is a peculiar charm in a spot unknown to the many. Its loneliness endears it to the mind, and gives its associations a rarer flavor. If besides being unfrequented it is singularly beautiful in itself, it becomes a shrine, a place sacred to one’s best thoughts. To me the heart of Chocorua is a shrine, all the more valued because of the weariness of flesh required to attain to it.