Bradford Torrey

“ The rowan trees were never so bright with berries. Here and there one still holds full of green leaves, with the ripe red clusters shining everywhere among them.
After luncheon I must sit for a while in the forest itself. Every breath in the treetops, unfelt at my level, brings down a sprinkling of yellow birch leaves, each with a faint rustle, like a whispered good-by, as it strikes against the twigs in its fall. Every one preaches its sermon, and I know the text,—“We all do fade.” May the rest of us be as happy as the leaves, and fade only when the time is ripe. ”

“ Above the Profile House farm, on the edge of the golf links, where the whole Franconia Valley lies exposed, I seat myself on the wall, inside a natural hedge that borders the highway, to admire the scene: a long verdant meadow, flanked by low hills covered, mile after mile, with vivid reds and yellows; splendor beyond words; a pageant glorious to behold, but happily of brief duration. Human senses would weary of it, though the eye loves color as the palate loves spices and sweets, or, by force of looking at it, would lose all delicacy of perception and taste. ”

“ The sun is getting down, and its level rays flood the whole mountain forest with light.
Into the shadow I go, following the road, and after a turn or two come out at a small clearing and a house. “Rocky Farm,” we might name it; for the land is sprinkled over with huge boulders, as if giants had been at play here. Whoever settled the place first must have chosen the site for its outlook rather than for any hope of its fertility. I sit down on one of the stones and take my fill of the mountain glory: Garfield, Lafayette, Cannon, Kinsman, Moosilauke,—a grand horizonful. ”

“ This is the noblest prospect of the afternoon, and late as the hour is growing I must lean against the fence rail—for there is a house at this point also—and gaze upon it. The green meadow is spread at my feet, flaming maple woods range themselves beyond it, and behind them, close at hand, loom the sombre mountains. I had forgotten that this part of the road was so “viewly,” to borrow a local word, and am thankful to have reached it at so favorable a moment. Now the shadow of the low hills at my back overspreads the valley, while the upper world beyond is aglow with light and color. ”

“ So I came up out of the Gale River woods into the bushy lane—a step or two and a mouthful of berries—and thence into the level grassy field by the grove of pines; a favorite place, with a world of mountains in sight—Moosilauke, Kinsman, Cannon, Lafayette, Haystack, the Twins, and the whole Mount Washington range. A pile of timbers, the bones of an old barn, offered me a seat, and there I rested, facing the mountains, while a company of merry barn swallows, loquacious as ever, went skimming over the grass. ”

“ Half an hour, more or less, of lazy traveling, and I come out upon the railroad at the big sugar-maple grove. This is one of the sights of the country in the bright-leaf season, say the first week of October; something, I have never concluded what, giving to its colors a most remarkable depth and richness. Putting times together, I must have spent hours in admiring it, now from different points on the Butter Hill round, now from Bald Mountain. At present every leaf of it is freshly green, and somewhere within it dwells a wood thrush, for whose golden voice I sit down in the shade to listen. ”

“ As we reach this happy clearing all the mountains stand facing us on the horizon, and below, between us and Lafayette, lies the valley of Franconia, toward which, again through stretches of forest, we rapidly descend. At the bottom of the way Gale River comes dancing to meet us, babbling among its boulders,—more boulders than water at this end of the summer heats,—in its cheerful uphill progress. ”

“ A second bluebird is caroling. Every additional one is cause for thankfulness. Imagine a place where bluebirds should be as thick as English sparrows are in our American cities! Imagine heaven! A crested flycatcher screams, an olive-side calls pip, pip, a robin cackles, an oven-bird recites his piece with schoolboy emphasis, an alder flycatcher queeps, and a vesper sparrow sings. And at the end, as if for good measure, a Maryland yellow-throat adds his witchery, witchery. ”

“ Now it was August—the year no longer young, and the birds no longer a choir. And when birds are neither in tune nor in flocks, it is almost as if they were absent altogether. It seemed to me, when I had walked a mile, that I had never seen Franconia so deserted.
An alder flycatcher was calling from a larch swamp; a white-throated sparrow whistled now and then in the distance; and from still farther away came the leisurely, widely spaced measures of a hermit thrush. When he sings there is no great need of a chorus; the forest has found a tongue ”

“ I remember at this moment how rejoiced I was at coming all unexpectedly upon a little bunch of yellow lady’s-slippers,—nine blossoms, I believe; rare enough and pretty enough to excite the dullest man’s enthusiasm. But the fact remains, if comparisons are to be insisted upon, that a creature like the Cape May warbler has all the beauty of a flower, with the added charm of voice and motion and elusiveness. The lady’s-slippers would wait for me,—unless somebody else picked them,—but the warbler could be trusted to lead me a chase, and give me, as the saying is, a run for my money. ”

“ He has splendid flower gardens, too, and plants them well out upon the wayside for all men to enjoy. Long may it be before his soul is required of him.
By this time I was in the very prettiest of the red-farm woods. Hermit thrushes were there, also, standing upright in the middle of the road, and in the forest hylas were peeping, one of them a real champion for the loudness of his tone. How full of glory the place was, with the sunlight sifting through the bright leaves and flickering upon the shining birch trunks! If I were an artist, I think I would paint wood interiors. ”

“ Sated with the magnificence of autumnal forests, hill after hill splashed with color, the eye loves to withdraw itself now and then to rest upon the perfection of a blossom or a leaf. Wagonloads of tourists come down the Notch road, the usual nightly procession, some silent, some boisterously singing. Among the most distressing of all the noises that human beings make is this vulgar shouting of “sacred music” along the public highway. ”

“ The next day, October 1, was no less delightful: mild, still, and cloudless; so that it was pleasant to lounge upon the piazza in the early morning, looking at Lafayette,—good business of itself,—and listening to the warble of a bluebird, the soft chirps of myrtle warblers, or the distant gobbling of a turkey down at one of the river farms; while now and then a farmer drove past from his [52] morning errand at the creamery, with one or two tall milk-cans standing behind him in the open, one-seated carriage. ”

“ Life is good. I feel it so now. Fair are the white-birch stems; fair are the gray-green poplars. This is my third day, and my spirit is getting in tune.
In the white-pine grove, where a few small birds are stirring noiselessly among the upper branches, my attention is taken by clusters of the ghostly, colorless plant which men know as the Indian pipe (its real name, of necessity, is quite beyond human ken) ; the flowers, every head bowed, [233] just breaking through a bed of last year’s needles, while a bumblebee, a capable economic botanist, visits them one by one. ”

“ I begin to believe, in fact, that things will turn the other way; [64] that curiosity will rather lose its edge, and the power of beauty strike deeper and deeper home. So may it be! Then we shall not be dead while we live. Sure I am that the glory of mountains, the splendor of autumnal forests, the sweetness of valley prospects, were never more rapturously felt by me than during the season just ended. And still, as I started just now to say, I had special joy this year in a new specimen, an additional bird for my memory and notebook. ”

“ As I came out upon the piazza before breakfast and looked up at Lafayette, a solitary vireo was phrasing sweetly from the bushes on one side of the house, and two or three vesper sparrows were remembering the summer from the open fields on the other side. It was the 22d of September, and by this time the birds knew how to appreciate a day of brightness and warmth.
Seeing them in such a mood, I determined to spend the forenoon in their society. I would take the road to Sinclair’s Mills,—a woodsy jaunt, yet not too much in the forest, always birdy from one end to the other.
“This is living!” ”

“ The climb is short, though the upper half of it is steep enough to merit the name, and the “mountain” (it will pardon me the quotation marks) is no more than a point of rocks, an outlying spur of Lafayette. Its attractiveness is due not to its altitude, but to the exceptional felicity of its situation; commanding the lake and the Notch, and the broad Franconia Valley, together with a splendid panorama of broken country and mountain forest; and over all, close at hand, the solemn, bare peak of Lafayette. ”

“ If you have seen an unexpected, long-expected warbler, or a chimney-top duck, or a skyward soaring lark, you may talk of it without fear, with no restraint upon your feelings or your phrases. Here things are seen as they are; truth is cleared of false lights, and Wisdom is justified of her children. Happy Franconia! ”

“ It was the staccato whistle of an olive-backed thrush, a sweet familiarity, over which I should have supposed it impossible for either of us to be puzzled.
The star of the flock, as some readers will not need to be told, having marked the unexpected name in the foregoing list, was the Philadelphia vireo. What a bright minute it is in a man’s vacation when such a stranger suddenly hops upon a branch before his eyes! ”

“ Several of the species were in good force, and doubtless some species eluded me altogether. No man can look all ways at once; and in autumn the eyes must do not only their own work, but that of the ears as well.
All the while the birds hastened on, flitting from tree to tree, feeding a minute and then away, following the stream. I was especially glad of the baybreasts, of which there were two at least, both very distinctly marked, though in nothing like their spring plumage. I saw only one other specimen this fall, but the name is usually in my autumnal Franconia list. ”

“ Alder rows mark the winding course of the river, and on the farther side, close against the forest, runs a road, though the eye, of itself, would hardly know it.
Across the valley are the glorious newly [209] clad woods, more beautiful than words can begin to tell; and beyond them rise the mountains: Moosilauke, far enough away to be blue; the shapely Kinsman range, at whose long green slopes no man need tire of looking; rocky Lafayette, directly in front of me; Haystack, with its leaning knob; the sombre Twins and the more Alpine-looking Washington, Jefferson, and Adams. ”

“ Now a chickadee lisps, or a nuthatch calls to his fellow. Out of the tangled, round-leaved hobble-bushes underneath an occasional robin may start with a quick note of surprise, or a [14] flock of white-throats or snowbirds will fly up one by one to gaze at the intruder. In one place I hear the faint smooth-voiced signals of a group of Swainson thrushes and the chuck of a hermit. A few siskins (rarer than usual this year, it seems to me) pass overhead, sounding their curious, long-drawn whistle, as if they were blowing through a fine-toothed comb. ”

“ Down the valley road goes an open carriage. In it are a man and a woman, the woman with a parasol over her head. A song sparrow sings his little tune, and the bluebird gives himself up to warbling. [211] Few voices can surpass his for sweetness and expressiveness. The grouse drums again (let every bird be happy in his own way) , a myrtle warbler trills (a talker to himself) , and a passing goldfinch drops a melodious measure. All the chokecherry bushes are now in white. ”

“ He breaks out of the dense wood behind me, perches for half a minute in an open maple, where I can see that he has prey of some kind in his talons, and then, taking wing, ascends in circles into the sky, and so disappears. That is locomotion of a sort to make a man and his umbrella envious.
A rose-breasted grosbeak, invisible (but I can see him) , is warbling not far off. He has taken the tanager’s tune—which is the robin’s as well—and smoothed it and smoothed it, and sweetened it and sweetened it, till it is smoother than oil and sweeter than honey. ”

“ Whether men see it or not, the landscape takes no heed. There it stretches as I turn to look, spaces of level green valley, with mountains and hills round about—mountains and valleys each made perfect by the [237] other. I sit down once more in a favorable spot, where every line of the picture falls true, and drink my fill of its loveliness, while a hermit thrush out of the hill woods yonder blesses my ears with music. ”