In a hundred years those slopes will not again bear forests; indeed, I doubt if they ever will. Nor is this to be said in any scorn of the lumberman. Pulp and lumber we must have. He bought the woods and is using them now for the purpose for which he spent his money. The scorn should rather be for a people who once knew no better and who, now that their eyes are opened, still allow this priceless heritage of ancient forest to be swept away forever.
It is good to shift the eye and the thought from these bare patches to the still remaining black growth. Fortunately some steeps still defy the keenest logging-gang and some spruce will remain on these after another ten years has swept the valley clean. On the high northern slopes, well up toward the peaks, where the deer yard in winter, the trees are too dwarf to tempt even the pulp men, who take timber that is scorned by the sawmill folk. On the summit of Carrigain trees a hundred years old and rapidly passing to death through the senile decay of usnea moss and gray-green lichens are scarcely a dozen feet tall. Yet as these pass the youngsters crowd thickly in to take their places and grow cones and scatter seed, often when only a few feet high. In these one sees a faint hope for the reforestation of the valley in the distant future. There, after the clean sweep, we may allow fifty years for blueberries and bird-cherries, a hundred more for beech, birch and maple to grow and supply mould of the proper consistency from their falling leaves in which spruce and fir seedlings will take root. After that, if all works well, another hundred will see such a forest of black growth as is going down the Pemigewasset daily now on the flat cars of the logging railroad.
Carrigain's peculiar birds seem to be the yellow-rumped warblers, at least at this season of the year. They flitted continually through and above the dwarf trees of the summits. There they had nested and brought up their young, and now the whole families were coming together in flocks and beginning to move about uneasily as the migration impulse grows in them. All along the trail up Carrigain and back I found this same spirit of movement in the birds. Two weeks ago they were moulting and silent. Hardly a wing would be seen or a chirp heard in the lonesome woods. Now all is motion in the bird world once more and flashes of warbler colors light up the dark places with living light. Among these black spruces the redstart seems to me loveliest of all. No wonder the Cubans call him "candelita" when he comes to flit the winter away beneath their palm trees. His black is so vivid that it stands clearly defined in the deepest shadows and foiled upon it his rich salmon-red flames like a wind-blown torch as he slips rapidly from limb to limb, flaring his way through the densest and deepest wood. The myrtle warblers were the birds of the summit, but the redstarts gave sudden beauty to the slopes all along the lower portions of the trail.
The sun was setting the deep turquoise blue of the Franconia Range in flaming gold bands as I left the mountain top. The peak of Lafayette was a point of fire. Garfield, just over the shoulder of Bond, was another, and it seemed as if the two were heliographing one to another from golden mirrors. But along the knife edge of Signal Ridge lay the shadow of Carrigain summit and the dwarfed growth down the two miles of steep descent was black indeed. Hardly could the sunlight touch me again, for the trail lies in the eastward-cast shadow of Carrigain all the way to Sawyer's River. The evening coolness brought out all the rich scents of the forest, for here to the east of Carrigain the deciduous growth makes forest still. From the heights the rich aroma of the firs descended with me, picking up more subtle scents on the way. Not far below the crest of Signal Ridge the mountain goldenrod begins to glow beside the trail. Scattered with it is the lanceolate-leaved, flutter-petalled Aster radula. These two lent to the aromatic air the subtle, delicate pungency of the compositæ, and far below, in the swampy spots at the foot of the declivity, the lovely, violet-purple Aster novæ-angliæ added to it. Here in open spots beside the trail this beautiful aster starred the gloom for rods, but yet it was not more numerous than the rosy-tipped, white, podlike blooms of the turtle-head that in the rich dusk glowed nebulously among them. Nowhere in the world do I remember having seen so many turtle-head blooms at one time as in the marshy spots along the trail leading toward Livermore and Sawyer's River from the base of Signal Ridge. Their soft, delicate perfume began to ride the fir aroma there, mingling curiously with the scent of asters and goldenrod. Often I looked back for a glimpse of the lofty peak I had left, but Carrigain is indeed a hermit mountain. It had withdrawn into the heart of the hills which are its home, and nothing westward showed save the rose-gold of the sunset sky which hung from the zenith down into the gloom of the woods, a marvellous background for the tracery of its topmost leaves.
XVI
UP THE GIANT'S STAIRS
The Back Stairs Route up this Curious Mountain
My way to the Giant's Stairs lay over the high shoulder of Iron Mountain, where the road shows you all the kingdoms of the mountain world spread out below, bids you take them and worship it, which perforce you do. Then it swings you down by a long drop curve into a veritable forest of Arden, through which you tramp between great boles of birch and beech for miles. Here long ago Orlando carved his initials with those of Rosalind on the smooth bark of great beech trees and, I doubt not, hung beside them love verses which made those pointed buds open in spring before their time. Here came Rosalind to find and read them, and carry them off treasured in her bodice, wherefore one finds no traces of them at the present day.
"My way to the Giant's Stairs lay over the high shoulder of Iron Mountain, where the road shows you all the kingdoms of the mountain world spread out below"
Yet the carven initials remain, as anyone who treads the road beneath these ancient greenwood trees may see. Little underbrush is here and no growth of spruce or fir, and one may look far down arcades of green gloom where the flicker of sunlight through leaves may make him think he sees glints of Rosalind's hair as she dances through the wood in search of more poems. The long forest aisles bring snatches of joyous song to the ear, nor may the listener say surely that this is Rosalind and that a wood warbler, for both are in the forest, one as visible as the other. The whole place glows with the golden glamour of romance, and he who passes through it, bound for the Giant's Stairs, thrills with the glow and knows that his path leads to a land of enchantments.