After strolling through these woods and along the edge of Sabba Day Brook for an hour we turned towards home, treading in our previous footprints and thus avoiding crashing through the brittle crust of the snow. On reaching the spot where the owl had hooted, I used my metallic bird whistles and drew a crowd of chickadees, kinglets, nuthatches, and blue jays. Then I hooted, the jays scolded noisily, and soon the owl replied. He came nearer by degrees, I hooting occasionally, he frequently. Finally he alighted in a tree just over us, but saw us at once and flew away. I continued hooting and he replied again, and came back within sight. Whenever he moved, the jays pursued him scolding, and they were still watching him when we resumed our march towards home.
CLIMBING BEAR MOUNTAIN IN THE
SNOW.
Monday, December 21. The moon ate up the clouds during the night, and at dawn the only remnants of what the evening before had looked like a storm were the cloud-caps upon Tripyramid and Kancamagus, and a band of mist across Church’s Pond at the western end of the intervale. We were dressing about seven o’clock when our host came to our door, saying, “If you want to see a fox, come quickly.” I ran into the east room and caught a last glimpse of Reynard trotting briskly over the snow towards the rising sun. He seemed to be following a scent which went in a somewhat wavy line across the field. At eight o’clock, just as we were striding up the road to pay a visit to the crossbills, a wild cry rang from the forest and echoed from end to end of the valley. It was the voice of the timber-eater, coming northward by his tortuous path from Upper Bartlett, and calling for his day’s food. The men at the lumber cars near our house bustled a little, and then started down the track to see the engine come in. On its arrival one heavily laden car was attached to it, and the train, thus made up, at once started back. Meanwhile, we had met two tree sparrows by the roadside and seen our crossbills and goldfinches on their favorite trees. They had, apparently, eaten none of the cracked corn sprinkled for them upon the snow. As the train was about to start, we boarded the engine and gained a promise from the engineer to let us out at the foot of Bear Mountain. Crossing Swift River, the train entered the spruce forest and began its winding journey towards Upper Bartlett. With my head out of the left-hand window, I absorbed all the novelty and beauty of the scene. Inside, the engineer sat at his window with his earnest eyes looking up the track, his strong hand upon crank or lever, and his face grave and quiet. The fireman poured oil into the sucking cups above the boiler; then he clanked the chain of the furnace door, peeped into the raging fire within, hurled into it a shovelful of coal dust, rammed it home with the poker, worked the movable lever which dumped ashes, and again poured oil into the sucking, choking cups.
Outside, the spruce forest hemmed us in, but rising above it headland after headland of black rocks, snow-incrusted ledges, and lofty spruces came into view, frowned upon us, and were left behind. A flock of blue jays crossed in front of the engine, a red squirrel whisked along a log by the track. Now the rails sloped up so that the engineer increased his power, then the track fell away so that all power was cut off. Trestle after trestle was crossed, strange piles of bark-covered logs which groaned under our weight as we rolled over them.
After traveling four miles to get ahead less than two, the engineer stopped for us to begin our climb up Bear Mountain. He leaned out of his window, giving us advice and wishing us a fair trip. Then he applied the power, and the great mass moved on through the notch towards Upper Bartlett. This short piece of rough road is operated solely to carry out lumber and logs; but if people wish to ride, they are taken without charge. It is said that if the road refused to take them they could compel it to run passenger trains.
The point at which the kindly engineer had stopped to leave us was the lower end of a series of lumber roads leading to the upper slopes of Bear Mountain. The mountain, once covered with an immense spruce forest, has now been stripped of the greater part of its valuable timber. Beginning at the main road in which we stood, dozens of minor roads held the mountain in their embrace. They reminded me of the tentacles of an enormous devil-fish. Near the focus of all these roads we found a log cabin and stables. The cabin was one of the best I have ever seen. It was about sixty feet long, and contained a room at each end and roofed space in the middle open at front and back. Near the house we heard bird voices, and I at once used my Spanish whistles. The effect was excellent. Four or five red-bellied nuthatches, one white-bellied, and a small flock of pine finches responded. The siskins were very noisy and quite restless. They were feeding on the seeds and buds of a tall birch. Leaving the hut at nine o’clock, we strolled up the snow-covered roads. The voices of birds were ever in our ears. Squirrel and rabbit tracks, with now and then the tracks of a fox, followed or cut the roads. The snow was five or six inches in depth and covered by a thin and brittle crust. In many places numbers of well-filled beechnuts were strewn upon the ground. This is beechnut year, and the squirrels have more than they can pick up. The snow in the road was easy to walk upon, the air was mild, the sun warm, the spruces rich with olive light and brilliantly contrasted with the deep blue sky against which our mountain towered. On each side of the narrow way “top wood” and branches were piled in ramparts. The many roads reaching up the mountain are in places set so closely together that their ramparts of top wood touch each other, forming almost impassable barriers.
It was in one of these tangles that I discovered two small woodpeckers at work tapping upon the trunks of two unhealthy spruces spared by the axe. I saw at a glance that the birds were unfamiliar in coloring, and I crawled in among the top wood to examine them more closely. To whistles, hooting, and squeaks they paid no attention, but kept on hammering the trees until small flakes of loose bark flew at every blow. My crashing through snow and branches startled one bird, but the other stood his ground until I got within about fifteen feet of him. My glass brought out every detail of his plumage. Upon his head was a yellow cap, his throat was snowy white, his sides were finely, delicately barred with black and white, his back was largely black, but down his spine ran a belt of black and white cross-lining. Instead of having four toes like the downy and other common woodpeckers, this stranger from the north had but three toes. He was the ladder-backed woodpecker of the great northern forests. During the twenty minutes that I watched him he made no vocal sound, but worked incessantly, tearing away bark, and drilling into the trunk of the spruce. When he had inspected the tree to its highest part he flew several rods to rejoin his mate.
At last the roads ended and we entered the remnant of dark forest which crowns the mountain. There was a chill in the gloomy shades. The snow was softer and deeper here. It covered innumerable boulders closely wedged together between the stems of the spruces. On the sides of these rocks we could see delicate mosses imprisoned in the ice and snow. At frequent intervals we encountered masses of fallen timber wrecked by hurricanes. Another obstacle to our ascent was the dense growth of young spruces which in places made walking almost impossible. In the edge of an open space in this forest we called together the birds by means of my whistle. A flock of juncos appeared in a pile of top wood; red-bellied nuthatches came and clung head downwards on the nearest trunks and quanked at us, kinglets bustled in, peeped at us, and bustled out, a dozen or more red crossbills alighted close above us and to our satisfaction made the note which had so puzzled us yesterday and which sounds like the robin’s alarm-note. Best of all, a flock of sixty pine siskins came into the nearest trees, and one or two of them came down to the level of our heads and questioned us plaintively. The body of sweet sound made in a conversational way by these gentle, cheerful little birds, was amazing.
We reached the summit at about noon, and were fully repaid for the three hours’ climb. During the ascent, charming views of Passaconaway, Tripyramid, Kancamagus, and the dazzlingly white fields of the intervale had greeted us whenever we stopped to rest. Now were added Chocorua, Moat, Pequawket, Mount Washington and his supporting mountains, the Franconia group, Carrigain, and the Bartlett valley. Moat and Chocorua are much alike from this point of view. They are both comparatively treeless mountains and were consequently snowy white. Their outlines suggest combing breakers. Chocorua, being under the low-hanging sun, was reflecting light from every crusted snowbank and ice-wrapped boulder. It was like a mountain of cut glass. Mount Washington was unobscured, and in the noonday sun as colorless as summer clouds. This snowy whiteness of its upper mass wound in streams down its sides, as soft frosting pours in grooves down the sides of a birthday cake. Between these streams of whiteness ran upward long fingers of dark forest. Most of the other mountains in sight were wooded to their summits, and so contrasted sharply in their sombre colorings with their snowy rivals.
The narrow ridge which forms the top of Bear Mountain is blockaded by fallen timber. Squirming through the tangle, we saw all the views and then sat down in the sun on piles of spruce branches and ate our lunch. Having no water, we quenched our thirst by mingling snow with our bread and eating them together. As we ate and rested, looking across a wooded valley toward Carrigain and the Franconias, a flock of white-winged crossbills alighted above our heads and talked to us. Several were rosy males in the perfection of plumage. Many more siskins came and went, and so did a flock of four red nuthatches and several kinglets.