Elizabeth Weston Timlow

“ Overhead, wheeling in majestic flight, swam the eagle in the sapphire ocean of space without a stroke of his spreading wings—swinging high, now disappearing over Keene, now back again, now floating to the southwest. Intoxicating business! to float soundlessly like that in that far expanse!
To the right, etched clearly against those depths of melting blue, looms high Monadnock's mighty purple majesty. How intensely blue is the sky as seen behind it! It is sheer cliff from this point of vision; deep indigo shadows rest for a moment on its summit as a cloud-mass for an instant obscures the sun ”

“ The huge and rosy thunder-caps that had lain all the morning to the southwest in their thrilling beauty were creeping somewhat higher in the ineffable blue and were drifting slowly north. It was high noon, and the climber now threw himself down for prosaic luncheon purposes near the brink of the precipice where grew a green bit of mountain-grass against a rock, with a storm-battered spruce cuddled close against it By him lay a clear and icy little pool with a sandy bed—the water blue as the sky above and amber in the shadows. ”

“ There are many approaches to the heart of this Monadnock. Those who climb the rough main trail, merely to look from the peak, do not grasp even the fringe of its mysteries. Even to the dwellers on the spreading plains below, though it may be to them a vision of artistic delight, or as it was to Kipling, a mute Teacher, even to these, manifold as may be the many lessons the granite pile may offer them, but a tithe of its joy is known. ”

“ They may know and love its ever-changing color and line and beauty; they may delight in its retreat and approach with the shifting whim of the atmosphere; they may see it now in the austere purity and remoteness of its winter garment of ice and snow, sparkling like a million diamonds, or now impalpable, mysterious, dimly vast in a shroud of cloud,—but they may not, cannot, understand what it grows to mean to the mountain lover who dwells close to its shrine and knows it as a lover knows the heart of his mistress. ”

“ Long the Mountain-Lover lay back against the rock, facing the calm breadth of the summit, gazing at it with love welling up in his heart and listening once more with freshly attuned ears to what the grave, mighty pile had to tell him. Wordless are its impressions as yet; but an indefinable calm slowly smooths out tangles in his tired brain and unties knotted mental muscles. He dreams—and is at rest. When he rises at last from the crisp moss, and stretches himself with lazy delight he feels years younger. ”

“ In imagination the climber can see the needle-strewn way striking up some steep pitch, beside the frolicking stream, pausing now to take a loop and find the Spring that Will Hyde found, then sturdily again attacking the abrupt heights, up and up and up, the red cross steadily pointing out the way. Many a time has the climber taken that path and he retraces it in memory, looking down at the sunny, smiling valley below. ”

“ The Mountain-Lover began to think more and more concretely. He soon came to the Sweet Water Spring and knelt to drink of the tiny icy pool, protected by the loving care of other mountain-lovers. He went on his way to the left, still slowly winding around Monte Rosa, following the dim little path as it twisted around the out-jutting cliffs and through the woods till the maples and birches gave way as ever to the stunted and gnarled little spruces, leading with the usual suddenness out on the broad open rocks to the west. ”

“ The storm was over. What matter if it came again? It would pass again. Some things are to be fought, but some must be endured. So one cannot fight storms; one lives through them. Shall one rage in bitterness against the tempests of life? With that bitterness and resentment which crumbles all our power to dust? Do not the hard things we bear go as completely to the fashioning of man as the hard things we do? If the muscles of the soul demand conflict to strengthen them, the lungs of the soul require the steady intake of the breath of endurance. ”

“ I wonder if there is ever a real No Thoroughfare if one faithfully keeps to the path as he sees it through life? Is it that one, going with dulled eyes, fixed only on some preconceived notion of where he thinks the path should go at some given point, simply misses the clue? Which may be there if he could see it? Take the next step—no matter if for the moment it seems to lead nowhere. ”

“ It was a point of vantage that Thoreau loved, on the east side of the unsuspected, high-nestled little mountain meadow, in the middle of the small plateau which lies under the east flank of the summit. He found his sheltering nook; a pew-like ledge with blueberries creeping close to his hand along the crevice between seat and back, and at his feet a little charming carpet of cranberries, matted and close and clean-cut, with glowing little globes of scarlet still yellow on the underside, hiding their unimagined spiciness in their firm polished plumpness. ”

“ Blinding glare would show a sky of rent, fierce, tumultuous clouds in layer after layer. If only he could more easily keep his rain-blinded eyes open, to see those incredible effects of the cloud-masses when the lightning tore them apart! Such marvels of shapes and depths and unearthly colors in them! And also such tremendous gradations of sound in the rolling thunder as it reverberated from every side at once, now near, now far, crashing against the cliffs above, and tumbling its gigantic echoes back on his own head. Mad revelry of the storm-gods! ”

“ One thought of this law of the trail would have saved me. Rotten branches indeed! Why should I do in life among important crises what I should not dream of doing up on the mountain? Loose stones! Decayed wood! Dead branches! And unseeing eyes!"
He had come out beyond the Coffee Pot Camp and the calm stretch of the mountain was before him. He looked up musingly at broad reaches of cliff and bluff and precipice above the green, ribbon-like cleft through which the Paradise Valley way takes its shadowy length. ”

“ The Heights, crowned by a Cross draw all men unto them. The green pastures below are the sunny camping-places of the soul, for a night's stay on the march of life, to refresh the straining muscles, but the business of life—is the March.
"'Difficulties are God's errands.' Didn't Beecher used to say that?" The man watched a distant solitary climber, who had turned himself away from the rough main trail, in an attempt to scale up an almost sheer cliff. ”

“ Ground out of the rasping contacts of life, how all the grit of idle words and pettinesses, the jealousies and bits of malice and cruel slander choke the heart! How the crash of competition deafens the ears! You human beings grow to take these for granted, hardly realizing that you are being slowly stifled with the gross air in which so much of life must be passed, and that you are hearing only the mad din of the commonplace. ”

“ Strange as it is trite, mused the Mountain-Lover, that all that is highest in unspoiled man compels him to choose the hard; not the flower-strewn way, but the flinty paths that end in a cross-crowned summit, summon his imperatively, even while his lower, ease-loving nature would pull him down to a life of soft places. ”

“ Monadnock! Stately mountain, solitary sentinel of haunting beauty and intimate and irresistible allurement! Mountain loved of poets and artists; mountain which knew and loved in return the footsteps of Emerson and Thoreau and Thayer.
A strangely individual mass it is in its calm isolation, dominating subtly the entire countryside. It does not rise to great heights as mountains go, but so bold is its long couchant outline, so stern is its splendid solitude, so imposing is its brooding strength that a grandeur lies upon it that many a mightier mountain lacks. ”

“ Down in the world below Sunday might be a hurrying, bustling day, where one turned but from one set of activities to another, but up here in this remoteness he thought that all the flitting birds and chattering squirrels, the velvet blueberries and the scarlet cranberries, the cushiony moss and the rock-ferns and the ruby bunchberries making their violent carpet of flame and green, and every dancing leaf and every shiny needle and brown-scaled cone—all knew and shouted out the Day. ”

“ The climber took his own leisurely way upwards again as they parted. He left the Hedgehog trail where the little emerald rug of the Green Carpet trail spreads itself under the ice-worn heights of the great ridge above him, and went across its green delights. His thoughts were on the boy and the broken branch.
"What mishaps of life come through lack of this seeing eye!" he mused. "Having eyes they see not and hearing they do not understand! Unproven statements camouflage as sense. Unchallenged assertions carry specious conviction with them. Untried advisers are accepted at their own valuation. ”

“ But through the winter days that follow, there remains within the heart, all through the swirl of city life, with its hammering claims and its tangled experiences and its smiting sorrows, an inner shrine—a sort of Sabbath of the soul, whither the mountain-lover may retreat as to an unassailable refuge. ”

“ Now that the storm had passed, Monadnock rose again against the blue, "busy with its sky affairs," absolutely undisturbed, absolutely peaceful. What mattered the might of wind and driving storm? They had passed. So had they always passed. All was as if they had not been. To the watcher
ON THE SUMMIT DEEP CRYSTAL POOLS REFLECT THE SKY
on the stone seat words floated into his consciousness.
"The storms can endure but for a night. Peace comes with the morning. Oh, soul! tarry thou the Lord's leisure! Be strong and He shall comfort thine heart!" ”

“ Only those that have eyes may see.
The loiterer rose and glancing around, slowly headed his way towards the Black Precipice and the Amphitheatre trail. . . In one of the little hollows he saw ahead of him what looked like a moving bunch of brownish leaves. It was a porcupine, waddling unconcernedly along with its whitish-brown quills folded down peaceably. The observer had never seen one so far up here before and he followed its ungainly course for a little distance with much interest, till quite undisturbed by his proximity it finished its daily exercise and retired to its rock fastness. ”

“ The Spirit that brooded near seemed to smile upon him as if waiting for the conceptions it was breathing to his inner being to rise through his consciousness and clothe themselves with words.
"Joy it is, son that loves me, to come from the dust and restlessness of the lower world! There the unceasing business of daily concerns sets the dust of the highway of life awhirl and all this fills the lungs and blurs the vision. ”

“ The Mountain-Lover as he lay full length upon his water-worn cradle of rock, put his hand caressingly on its garnet-flecked sides, fancying that the now purpling masses above him—how the lights quivered and changed every moment!—delighted in the wooing sunlight that crept along its crest and that it loved the dappled shadows that played endearingly with its crannies and recesses. ”

“ Any normal cataract, big or little, prefers to leap down in its own daring fashion in one swift plunge . . . Frisky, tantalizing little sprites! But it is something to be sure they are there, even if they refuse to reveal themselves to mortal vision.
This morning is a day radiant with concentrated essence of June and sunshine and brown needles and young ferns and freshly wet earth and pungent woodsy smells and the sheer joy of living. Today it shall be—say the Sidefoot path as far as the Noble trail, then up by that to the ridge, then along the crest to Pulpit Rock ”

“ Strange! the strength of the Divine in him—what else can it be?—that drives man away from the effortless plains, urging him to use the last ounce of human energy if need be, to gain the height by that sharp-edged way that cuts and tears the feet in their blood-marked trail—up and ever up. ”

“ Shall he go first on the well-worn trail to Point Surprise just to make perfectly sure that every dear stone is still out-cropping in the same place? Humming in unmusical tenor, just in the sheer joy of living, the Mountain-Lover springs up the rocky staircase upwards to the right. First he must swerve to see if the Iron Spring is functioning properly. Yes, the spring is as active as ever. Up the rising ascent obliquely to the ridge he goes until the path turns sharply to the east where rising in front of one is seen a break in the trees and a wall of rock against the sky line. ”

“ And well the watcher knew that such color, such piercing beauty must have had tempest preceding them.
The Wise Old Giant spoke softly to his listener.
"So the storm passes. Suppose trouble and disaster and crushing disappointment and shattering disillusion sweep over your soul. Suppose they even strip you bare as my riven sides were stripped bare by fire and flood long years ago. What matter? It all passes. You can only lose what was not truly yours. New beauty, new hopes, new development will come. Keep your feet steady; your head above the clouds. ”

“ He stopped at last at a little lair that he dearly loved, well around the peak of Monte Rosa as one rounded the northwestern shoulder; from this point the little-used trail across the ravine to the Marlborough ridge takes its beginning, dipping down into a sharp declivity and rising to the edge of the first little ravine beyond. Further on and above it, a big white stone on the lip of the next ravine, was a clear landmark. The climber dropped into his lair—one of the thousand little spots at the base of a sloping rock with just the right slant for the back ”

“ The explorer peered more intently around. It was not particularly important, yet he was set on finding that trail. There was that ledge just above at the level of his head, the first step so to speak on the ascent; was that a tiny cairn on it? No, mere accident. Two moss-covered stones casually lying against each other. But this mark by which he stood was surely a blaze? Oh, yes, though the rough lips had nearly grown together. ”