The time was early afternoon of one of the longest days of the year, and the sun sent a cloudburst of gold a thousand feet down the perpendicular cliffs of Wildcat Mountain and flooded the highest source of Wildcat River with it. The north wind poured its wine over the ridge and set the surface of the little lake to dancing with silver lights such as had greeted me in the river far below, in the boulders along the way, and in the spangles of the thousands of fritillary wings that had fluttered and folded as I passed. Here is the crucible for the making of these fairy gems, and I dare say the wise old toads from the shadows on the side of Wildcat just above are the sorcerers whence the tinkering trolls learned the trick of their manufacture.
I had to wait but a little while, however, to know the difference. Stretched on the slope on the farther shore of the flashing lake, I watched the sun swing in behind the high pinnacle of a wildcat cliff that leaps from the water's edge almost a thousand feet in air, its sheer sides embroidered by the green of young birch leaves. I had left the full tide of early summer in the Jackson meadows. Here it was early spring. There the strawberries were over ripe, here the blossoms were but opening their white petals, and the mountain moosewood and mountain ash, there long gone to seed, were here just in the height of bloom. By the lake side the Labrador tea offers its felt-slipper leaves for the refreshment of weary travellers who may thus drink from fairy shoon; nor need one go to the trouble of steeping, for the round heads of delicate white bloom send forth a styptic, aromatic fragrance that is as tonic as the air on which it floats. A drone of wild bees was in this air, and looking up the cliff toward the sun a million wings of tiny, fluttering insects made a glittering mist.
But even then the shadow of the pinnacle of the great cliff fell on the western margin of the pool and, as I lay and watched it, moved majestically out across the waters. It wiped the golden glow and the fluttering sheen of insects from the air, the glitter from the surface of the lake, and spread a cool mystery of twilight over all things which it touched. A chill walked the waters from the base of the cliff, whose rough rock brows frowned where the birches but an hour before had smiled, and all the hobgoblins of the wild Notch showed themselves in the advancing shadows. Rock sphinxes and dead-tree dragons suddenly appeared, and as the afternoon advanced so did the shadows of Wildcat Mountain, sweeping across the narrow defile and bringing forth all its weird and sinister aspects.
The way to the light of day lies down the stream southerly. But there is no stream. The waters of the upper lake flow to the other one beneath a great jumble of broken ledges, and then go on to form the stream farther down under a titanic rock barrier of shattered cliff and interspersed caverns. Gnarled and dwarfed spruces climb all over this great barrier, and so may a man if he have patience and will step carefully on the arctic moss which clothes the rocks and gives roothold to the spruces, watchful lest it slip from under him and drop him into the caverns of unknown depth below. It is a region of wild beauty of desolation even with the sun on it, and after the shadow of Wildcat has climbed it, its rough loneliness has something almost sinister about it. Only when its topmost rock is surmounted and the valley below shows down the Notch, still bathed in sunshine and peaceful in its green beauty and its rim of blue mountains far beyond, may one forget the weird spell which the shadows have cast on him in the very heart of the chasm. Here is the scintillant world of the Wildcat River valley once more, still bathed in sunshine, though the shadows of the range to westward creep rapidly toward its centre. I had seen the heart of its beginnings at the moment when the toiling trolls were at their work. I had seen the weirder spirits cast their mantle over the place, and far down the Notch I could hear the little river calling me to come down to it again as I scrambled off this giant's causeway to the friendly leading of the path and went on down through the region of great gray toads to the slope of a thousand porcupines, and on to where the footpath way enters the road. The smile of sunshine had gone from the face of the valley and the night shadows of Wildcat and its spurs were drawn across it, but only for a little was it sombre. With the darkness came a million scintillations of firefly lights in all its grasses, and out of the clear blue of the sky above twinkled back the answering stars.
VII
UP TUCKERMAN'S RAVINE
Day and Night Along the Short Trail to Mount Washington Summit
The snow arch at the head of Tuckerman's Ravine holds winter in its heart all summer long. In the sweltering heat of the early July weather it is an unborn glacier, a solid mass of compacted snow and ice, two hundred feet in vertical diameter and spreading fan-fashion across the whole head of the ravine. Out from under it rumbles a stream of ice water, and it still makes danger for the mountain climber on the upper part of the path which climbs the head wall of the ravine and goes on, up to the summit of Mount Washington. All winter long the north wind sweeps the snow over the round ridge between the summit cone and Boott's Spur and drifts it down the perpendicular face of rock which stands above the beginning of the ravine. There are summers when the heat of the sun, beating directly upon this glacial mass, melts it away. There are others when it lingers till the snows of autumn come to build upon it again.
"The snow arch at the head of Tuckerman's Ravine holds winter in its heart all summer long"
He who would do much mountain climbing in a comparatively short distance will do well to go up Mount Washington by the Tuckerman Ravine. A good motor road leads from Jackson to Gorham, and on, and the trail leaves this nine miles above Jackson. A. M. C. signs and the feet of thousands of mountain lovers have made the path's progress plain, but for a further sign the wilderness sends the swish of Cutler River, flashing over its boulders, to the ear all the way up to the snow arch, and it serves free ice water for the refreshment of travellers. Only in rare spots does this tiny torrent find time to make placid pools. All the rest of the way it leaps boulders, shelters trout in clear, bubbling depths, and makes its longest, maddest plunges at the cliffs down which foam the Crystal Cascades. Here, at the end of your first half-mile of ascent, you may lie in the shadow of maple and white birch on the brink of a narrow gulf, see the white joy of the river as it makes its swiftest plunge toward the sea, and listen to the myriad voices in which it tells the lore of the lonely ravine which the waters have traversed from the very summit of the head wall. No water comes down the Crystal Cascade that is not beaten into a foam as white as the quartz vein in which it has its very beginnings, high up the cone of the summit. It is as if this quartz were here turned to liquid life which spurts in a million joyous arches from the black rock which it touches and leaves more nimbly than the feet of fleeing mountain sheep. There are wonderfully beautiful pink flushes in this white quartz and you may see them as you go up the path to the summit above the alpine gardens of the plateau. But you do not have to climb that far to see them. The same colors of dawn are in the cascade when the sun filters through the leaves and touches those curves of beauty in which the river laughs down to its wedding with the Ellis in the heart of the Pinkham Notch.