The next morning I awoke at six o’clock and at once opened my blinds and raised my shades so that I could see the mountains both to the north and to the west. Not a cloud or a suspicion of haze marred the perfect blueness of the sky or the distinctness of the outlines of hills, trees, and boulders. The moon was still nearly three hours from her time of setting, and her light, almost as much as that of the unrisen sun, contributed to the serene glow which filled the sky and fell softly upon the sleeping earth.
There is nothing in nature any whiter than snow, and as the peak and bare upper ledges of Chocorua were covered by an almost unbroken envelope of snow, no alpine horn ever gleamed with a fairer light than that which shone from Chocorua’s summit. Paugus, Passaconaway, and Whiteface are usually dark by contrast to Chocorua, even in midwinter. To my surprise they were almost as white as the marble lion itself. Their spruces were coated with snow, which had frozen in masses to the needles, effectually covering the dark green by a gleaming surface of white.
As the sun neared the horizon, a faint rosy glow came into the western sky. Then it touched the snowy peaks, leaving them pale salmon color. Finally it crept down the mountain slopes, changing the silvery gray of the leafless forest masses into ashes-of-rose color, delightful to the eye.
It was a winter landscape, yet as the sun climbed higher into the cloudless sky, the soft still air was caressing in its warm touch upon the cheek. I looked curiously at the thermometer, not knowing whether it would say 25° or 60°. It stood at 30°, a temperature which, with a Boston east wind and a rainstorm, is quite capable of freezing the love of life out of one’s vitals. Feeling as buoyant as a cork, I dashed off after breakfast in search of something high to climb. An overcoat was unbearable, and my jersey was dispensed with by ten o’clock, leaving me comfortable in ordinary indoor costume. The air seemed full of life-giving quality, joy, health, hope. So thought the titmice, robins, tree sparrows, juncos, and kinglets, all of which were noisy and full of motion.
Speeding past the lakes, I stopped for a moment in my own orchard to lament the death of an osprey which I found at the foot of an apple-tree, where some hunters had left him. It is fortunate that all animals have not man’s propensity for killing merely for the sake of killing. Here was a bird of beautiful plumage, wonderful powers of sight and flight, measuring only five inches less than six feet from wing tip to wing tip, practically harmless, and by no means common in these mountains, yet after being shot merely for love of murder, his body was left where it fell, to feed skunks and foxes. Small wonder that creation seems out of joint wherever man’s influence extends.
My next stopping-place was the lonely lake, now more lonely than ever, for not a bird flew among its trees, and not a fin stirred in its green waters. Upon its mossy bank, marvelous to relate, I found three fresh blossoms of the houstonia. Like the sweet peas at my cottage, the witch-hazel by the brook, and the tiny sprig of goldenrod picked in the pasture, these frail flowers had endured frosts by the dozen and a recent fall of snow which must have buried them several inches deep. Over them a red maple was doing its best to keep them company, for its crimson buds seemed as plump and full of color as they ought to be next March. A flower of another kind bloomed in profusion upon the sand close to the lake’s rim. It was like frosted silver in sheen, and the sunbeams loved to play in its beautiful petals. How it grows I know not, but it comes up from the sand in a single night, rank by rank and cluster by cluster, often lifting up great masses of sand upon its spearheads. This flower is the ice flower, whose wonderful armies of needle-like crystals sprout under the influence of the frost from every damp mass of sand or gravel, ready to be crunched under foot in the morning as horse and man pass over the uplifted roads.
In the first brook which I passed beyond the pond I saw two small trout, the longer of the two being not over an inch and a half from snout to tail. They seemed to me to be a little sluggish, or rather a trifle less instantaneous than in warm months. Two or three green locusts were also evidently depressed by the cool weather, and they played their tunes rarely and without much spirit. Listening to them and to the sounds which the wind made in a bunch of dry brakes, I fancied that I saw in what quarter the first grasshopper took his music lessons. The rubbing together of the parts of the withered fronds produced sounds almost exactly like the locust’s strident playing.
Taking the Hammond path, I ascended the eastern spur of Chocorua. The side of the mountain was one vast bed of loosely scattered leaves. Next spring each leaf will be pressed so closely upon its neighbor that the veining of one will be imprinted upon the face of the other. Now they are still free to drift with wind eddies, and to rustle noisily around the feet of the passer-by. The smell of oak leaves, newly fallen, is very powerful, and, except as a reminder of autumn walks, too much like ink to be pleasant. Among the fallen leaves the bright green of checkerberry, club mosses, and wintergreen showed now and then, while the dark liver-colored leaves of a goldenrod contrasted with the brown of the beech leaves.
I must have climbed fully eight hundred feet from the level of the pastures before snow began to appear along the path, and it was not until the line of low spruces was gained that the snow was continuous or at all deep. No sooner had I struck the snow area than I began to find evidence of the passing along and across the path of the creatures of the woods. In five or six places a fox had followed the path for several rods. Rabbits had crossed it over and over again, and mice even had recognized it as a thoroughfare and taken laborious journeys in its drifts.
A few minutes past noon I reached the top of Ball Mountain, or, as it is generally called, Bald Mountain. Here the snow lay four to eight inches deep upon everything except the bare ledges, which were dry and warm. As I gained the crest, a hawk sailed over me and out into that sea of space above the valley. What joy it must be to fly, and especially to soar and float, in high ether, with scarce a muscle moving! Suddenly a plaintive note fell upon my ear, and, turning, I saw a bird about the size of a robin flying northward. It soon vanished in the distance, I meanwhile striving to recall when, where, and from what bird I had heard that sad cry before. Hoping to see more birds, and seeking an uninterrupted view of the peak, I climbed to the top of the ledges intermediate between Bald Mountain and the foot of the peak, and there, upon a broad, dry face of granite, on the edge of the steep incline which reaches far down into the eastern hollow of Chocorua, I rested and drew strength from the perfect peace of my surroundings.