My homeward path followed the crest of the great eastern ridge of Chocorua as it descends towards the basin of Chocorua ponds. The ridge is narrow and mainly open, save for a few stunted spruces. In every direction far-reaching and beautiful views charmed me and tempted me to linger. From the last of the open ledges, the top of what is called Bald Mountain, I saw the sun set just behind the peak. Then with quickened pace I entered the forest and ran through the gathering gloom down the rough path to the pastures a mile below.
A LONELY LAKE.
Six witheringly hot days had been followed by one so cool and clear, so full of rushing Arctic air, that all nature sparkled as on an autumn morning. About sunset on the evening of this cool day,—July 17,—the pale blue sky in the north was suddenly barred by ascending rays of quivering white light. Chocorua, lying dark and still against the cold sky, seemed to be the centre of the aurora. As it grew dark I watched to see the heavens glow with the electric flame, but hour after hour passed with only an occasional gleam of light. Shortly before sunrise, however, the promised illumination came. I awoke to find my chamber as bright as though day had come, for from the southeast moonlight streamed across the floor, while from the north the glow of the aurora flooded the room. An immense arch of throbbing white light crowned the northern sky, and within it a smaller coronet rested above the inky blackness of Chocorua. Between the two hung the Great Dipper, and from one to the other occasional pulsating rays passed. The eastern end of the upper and larger belt of light made a sharp bend inward a few degrees above the horizon, and to a less defined extent the smaller arch was similarly shaped. The effect of this curve at the base of the two bows was very remarkable, for it destroyed the image of an arch and created the impression that one was looking into the inner curve of a ring which surrounded the earth, just as the rings of Saturn encircle that planet. Gradually the lower ring faded, the upper one settled down closer and closer to Chocorua; masses of electric energy seemed to dart across the eastern sky, where Sirius and the fair Pleiades gleamed, to the moon and Mars sailing serenely on their westward way. Behind Pequawket the lowest line of sky grew white. The dawn was coming, and, as though to avoid it, the hurrying beams and flashing waves of aurora moved faster and faster until in their dimness they could scarce be seen. Snowy mists raised their phantom forms from the lake and floated eastward to meet the sun. A whippoorwill sang his last song to the night, and as the glow of day grew more real a hermit thrush told in its heartfelt music the joy of life at the birth of a new period of labor.
CHOCORUA FROM HERON POND
A scrap of mist which trailed over the forest just at the foot of one of the ridges of Chocorua was the spirit of a lonely lake rising to do homage to the day-star. This lake is a rendezvous for all that is wildest and freest in the animal life of the region. It is sufficient unto itself, and yields no tribute save to its lord the sun. Around it, high glacial walls stand, crowned with ancient oaks and graceful birches. No stream flows from it, or into it, unless threads of ice-cold water coming from springs in its banks are called streams. Its waters are deep, the fisherman, so they say, finding places in its centre where long lines reach no bottom. Seen from the peak of Chocorua, this lake, even in November, is as green as an emerald, and when one floats upon its surface and gazes far down into its depths, rich green water-weeds are seen stretching their tremulous fingers towards him, and crowding each other for standing-room on its muddy floor.
Many are the days I have spent at this lonely lake learning the secrets of its tenants, and this morning, soon after the auroral beauties had faded from the sky, I came to it while the dew sparkled on the ferns. Drifting with the wind on the water, or stretched on the soft mosses which flourish under the birches, I stayed by the lake until evening. If an observer keeps still, it matters little whether he sits hidden under the spreading branches of a great oak on the shore, or lies upon a raft anchored in the lake, he is sure to see something interesting in either case. One morning, as I leaned against the oak’s wide trunk, watching a bittern on the opposite shore, I noticed that the bird showed signs of uneasiness, paying more heed to the bushes than to its fishing. Suddenly the cause of its unrest became apparent. The bushes just behind it were slowly poked apart and the head of a fox appeared. With a guttural note of alarm the bittern rose and flew across the lake, above the trees on the opposite bank, and out of sight. Reynard, graceful and alert, stood upon the mossy shore for a moment, looking after his lost opportunity; then turned abruptly and vanished in the underbrush. Another morning, while I was under the same tree, a big blue heron came softly stepping along the beach towards me. He was a comical figure, with his attenuated legs, wasted to the semblance of rushes; his extensible neck, expressive of centuries of hungry reaching after the partly attainable; and his long beak as cruel as a pair of shears. His dull eyes told of terror when he saw me. For a moment I felt their worried glare, and then the quaint machinery of the bird was put in motion and he flapped off out of sight.
One still, cloudy afternoon in August, I lay upon a raft of weather-beaten logs and mossy boards, watching the fitful sky and listening to an occasional bird-note, when suddenly my eyes were drawn to the north shore of the lake by seeing a branch of green leaves swimming, apparently unaided, along the surface of the water. After progressing for forty or fifty feet it disappeared under the ripples. A mystery, truly. A few moments later a muskrat’s head rose above the water, and the creature swam back to the point from which the leaves had started. Leaving the lake cautiously, the rat crawled clumsily up the bank into the bushes. After a minute or two it came waddling out bearing a second branch of ash, and this, too, floated along the placid surface of the lake until abruptly drawn down into the rat’s burrow in the submerged bank. Later in the afternoon I noticed a V-shaped ripple plowing across the lake from the southern shore. On it came, a small, dark object being at its point, parting the water steadily. As it drew near the raft I saw that the dark spot was the head of another muskrat, whose course was shaped straight for the hole into which his mate had been carrying ash branches. He passed quite close to me without alarm, and a minute or two later the ripple ceased as the rat sank below the water a few yards from the mouth of the hole.
The same still, cloudy day, a brownish black creature appeared on the southern shore of the lake and ambled along the edge of the water. At first glance it looked like a black kitten, but a plainer view showed it to be twice the length of a kitten, although no larger round than a man’s wrist. Its progress at times was almost snake-like, so undulatory was it. Its head and fore-quarters would be gliding down one side of a log before its black tail and hind feet had quite reached the log on the other side. The edge of the pond was lined with tadpoles clinging to logs and stones, with their heads towards the shore. The black creature seemed to be attempting to catch these fish-like batrachians, for every few yards he pounced at something, and, if successful, cantered out of sight, into the weeds and bushes, where he remained until, so I surmised, he had eaten his adolescent frog. Although the raft was only about a hundred feet from the western shore of the pond, the mink kept his course past me, apparently without a thought of anything beyond the wary polywogs. He went as far as the mouth of the muskrat hole and then turned and retraced his cantering until I lost sight of him on the farther southern shore. Several times, in his eagerness to catch a tadpole, he plunged wholly beneath the water and pursued his prey as though he had been a pickerel.
At the northeastern corner of the lake there is a grove of oaks, the largest of which doubtless stood there before this part of New England was settled by white men. Squirrels hold this grove as frisky tenants-in-common with woodchucks and raccoons; a family of porcupines having a right of way across it by virtue of unopposed use running back till the memory of rodents knoweth nothing to the contrary. I have never been so fortunate as to find ’coons in the grove, although some of my household have found them, but I have seen their footprints in the April snow. They are strange footprints, which one can never mistake for any other. If the dearest, plumpest baby in New England patted the soft snow with its dimpled hands, it could not make daintier images of its little palms than this wild creature of the forest makes with its feet, as it hurries over the new-fallen snow. The most conspicuous squirrels by the pond are the great bushy-tailed grays; the most retiring are the refined little flying-squirrels, which live in a deserted woodpecker’s hole in a dead tree. The grays climb after acorns to the highest limbs and branchlets of the oaks, frequently breaking off leafy twigs, and dropping acorns to the ground. Below, watching for and improving their opportunities, are striped chipmunks, which gather up a portion of the harvest and conceal it in their burrows. Chickaree, too, is there, nervous, petulant, and noisy, but he is more likely to be found in the pines, or near the butternuts. In winter, especially, the pine woods are alive with red squirrels. I recall seeing twenty red squirrels in a single midwinter day. Chipmunks may be seen late in December, and by the end of February, if it is warm, and the mouths of their holes are not covered by snow, they are ready to take a peep at the sky. They store enormous quantities of food, and the heat and moisture of their nests is such that they can eat corn sprouts and acorn shoots in midwinter while poor Chickaree is scratching about in the cold snow for an unnibbled pine cone. The gray squirrels are fond of the high-bush blueberries, which grow in abundance on the margins of the pond. They come down from the oaks to the great fallen trees lying half on the shore and half in the lake, and bask in the sunlight, drink of the water, and run up and down the logs with tails arched and waving behind them.