Winthrop Packard

“ The morning of the pearl broke after light rains in the valley below, the air so clear that the city of Portland lifted its spires on the eastern horizon just before sunrise and the blue water of Casco Bay flashed beyond it. Yet the nearer valleys were shrouded in the white mists that were mother-of-pearl, a matrix that gradually rose and blotted out the green and gray of granite hilltops below till the summit was a great ship, rock-laden, ploughing through a white tumultuous sea whose billows were fluffy clouds like those on which Jupiter of old sat and dispensed judgment on mankind. ”

“ While the storm wraps the world in the illusions of romance the half-gods of Greek myth stalk the mist-entangled meadows and shout in the winding valleys, across - 78 - the mountain streams. As the storm breaks, the clouds pass, and the sun floods the thin air with his gold, these mayhap, like the pixie dreams, will vanish. The half-gods go, but the gods arrive. The eye lifts with the clouds to wider and wider spaces and greater and greater heights, up stepping-stones of glistening cliffs, along rugged ranges to where the peaks sit enthroned in splendor, the great gods themselves. ”

“ It was as if God withdrew the mountain for the night into the sky, leaving the watcher on that great ledge-laden ship which is the very summit, plunging on over dark billows with the winds of space singing wild songs in the rigging. Beneath is the blue-black sea of tumultuous mountain waves that ride out from beneath the prow and on into the weltering spindrift haze of distance where sea and sky are one. In the full night the winds increase and find a harp-string or a throat in every projection of the pinnacle ledges whence to voice their lone chanteys of illimitable space. ”

“ All about are bold, bare cliffs showing through the green, but their bareness is that of nature, and the deep green around them grows, forgetful of the axe, which for many long years has not been laid at their roots, perhaps never will be again. Southerly the Pemigewasset Valley opened far to the villages of Woodstock and on to Plymouth, but even as I looked the pale blue haze blotted them out and swept on up the valley. The south wind was getting into a passion, bringing clouds behind and above the haze, putting out the sun and growling in gray gusts about the summit. ”

“ But the little lake mirrors many a bird wing nevertheless, mainly those of the eave swallows that nest in a long row under the eaves of a Jackson barn. These know that man loves them, and the things that he has made, whether barn roofs or little lakes, are to be adopted and used without fear. So they swoop over the fir tops and skim the surface of the unruffled waters, dipping to touch their own reflections and twittering mightily about it as they sweep the dust of tiny insects out of the shimmering air. Nor does the lake mirror lack for the reflection of many even more beautiful wings. ”

“ Far up a thousand slopes the white-throated sparrows joined with their thin, sweet whistle, and higher yet the juncos warbled cheerily, but no voice of bird reaches the high summit. The only song there is that of the wind chanting still the thrumming runes of ancient times, sung first when rocks emerged out of chaos and touched with rough fingers the harp strings of the air. To such music the light of day descends from above, and the shadows of night withdraw and hide in the caves and under the black growth in the bottoms of ravines and gulfs. ”

“ As the light grows the castellated ridge of Boott's Spur shows - 106 - fantastic shapes against the sky, and the pinnacle of the Lion's Head which looms so high above Hermit Lake glooms sternly with grotesque rock faces which are carved like gargoyles along its ravineward margin. Beauty wreathes the cliffs in this wildest of spots, but goblins grow in the rock itself and peer from the wreaths to make their friendliness more complete by gruesome contrast. One wakes shivering and longs for the sun of midsummer to come out of the northeast over the slope of Mount Moriah and warm him. ”

“ Far away in these directions they begin and pinnacle and retreat, range beyond range, till they fade into the dim blue haze of the farthest horizon. Southeast lie one silver lake after another, till the eye finds Sebago, and beyond that the thin rim of the world which is Casco Bay and the sea.
Much cool water must well up from the heart of Kearsarge to its summit, for grass grows long there in the hollows of the granite, and many alders, hung with powdery curls of staminate bloom and green with many leaves in mid-June. ”

“ One wonders if the pioneer did not have an eye for mountain scenery as well as for strong, rich land, for from the very doorstone of the old house the glance sweeps a quarter of the horizon, scores of miles from one blue peak to another. At one's feet lies Jackson as if in a well among the hills, Eagle Mountain and Spruce and the ridges beyond dividing the valley of the Wildcat from the glen of Ellis River, yet not rising high enough to hide the peak of Wildcat Mountain, up between Carter and Pinkham notches. ”

“ Yet to him who stays long on the summit of Chocorua thus early in the spring is apt to come a certain sense of sadness, following the exaltation of spirits, sadness for the inevitable passing of this inspiring pinnacle. The work of alternating heat and cold, of sun and rain, are everywhere visible, beating the granite dome to flinders and carrying it down into the valley below. The bare granite shows the sledgehammer blows of the frost as if a giant had been at work on it making repoussé work with the weapon of Thor. ”

“ It will remain for long years to come a sunny footprint of civilization, dented deep in the surrounding green of the wilderness.
Down one gladed terrace after another, from one farm to the next, the old road goes, and the path, which seems to linger at the first doorstone, slips finally away and follows between the ancient ruts. Through gaps in the investing forest I look far down the Rocky Branch Valley to the blue of Moat Mountain, a color so soft that it makes the great mass but a haze of unreality to the perceiving senses. ”

“ From the cairn which mountaineers have built of its loose rocks the eye has a wide sweep of the mountain world in every direction. To the south the land fades into shadowy mountains far down the Ossipee Valley, mountains that seem to float there in a soft, violet haze as if they were but massed bloom of the Gulf Stream that flows and gives off its wondrous colors half a thousand miles farther on. East the tossing sea is dappled with green and blue as the cloud shadows follow one another over the forest growth. ”

“ High as these tiny mirrors of the sky are, by actual measurement 5053 feet above the sea level, the highest lakes east of the Rocky Mountains, - 182 - the tree line creeps up to them, and firs, dwarfed but beautiful in their courage, set spires along portions of their borders, dark, straight lashes for clear blue eyes. In other spots along their margin the ground is bluish early in the season with the leaves of the dwarf bilberry, pink-sprayed with their tiny, cylindrical petals of deciduous bloom, and, now that August is here, blue in very truth with the berries themselves. ”

“ The houstonia grows bravely its little white, four-pointed stars with their yellowish centre, and cornel and even Trientalis, the American star-flower, grow from the tundra moss and make a brave show in that bleak spot. Boldest of all is the great, rank-growing Indian poke, with its erect stem of big green leaves and its topping spike of greenish bloom. High up to the angles of the rock jumble of the cone, wherever the water comes down into the Alpine Garden, this climbs with a bold assurance that no other lowland plant equals. ”

“ To tramp the levels along the water-courses or climb the lower slopes beneath deciduous trees is to see more, and to learn that the autumn tints come by other routes than a descent upon the summits. For weeks in the cool seclusion of the forest aisles the ways have been lighted by yellow flares of birch or elm leaves and red flashes of the swamp maple. Day by day now these increase in number, and once in a mile the whole tree seems to have caught all the sunshine of the summer in itself and to begin to let it glow forth in the half-dusk of the woodland shadows. ”

“ The pasture ferns climb too, and the pasture birds love the wooded summit as well as they do the slopes far below the pioneer's farm. The June delight which echoes in the bobolink music in the meadows so far below sweeps up the mountain-side in scent and song and color till it blossoms from the Puritan spruces on the very top of Thorn. There one glimpses the rare outpouring of joy that comes from reticent natures. They are in love, these prim black spruces, and they cannot wholly hide it however hard they try. ”

“ On the very ledges themselves neither of these advance, yet wherever the frosts of winter have split the rock the slender lints of strange lettering are green with - 55 - mountain cranberry vines, and the creeping snowberry has followed and holds rose-white blooms up to lure the mountain bees. The lichens have painted these ledges, of which the upper part of Bartlett Mountain is built, with wonderful soft colors of mingled grays and greens, and the spruces spire, black and beautiful, all over the summit, making one hunt for open spaces from which to view the world stretched out beneath. ”

“ The myrtle warblers of the spiring spruces, the magnolias, Blackburnians, mourning, Canadian and Wilson's, are flecked with it, and the forest shadows that touch them too only seem to bring it out the more clearly. But these are birds of the wood or its edges. In the trees that stand clear of the forest the goldfinches sing as if they were canaries, caged within the limits of the farm, their gold the brightest of all that which the birds show, the black of their wings densest, the color of night in the bottom of the glen, under evergreens. ”

“ It is too young to be adopted by the water birds that have known the region long. The sand-pipers that move leisurely north up Ellis River, feeding and teetering as they go, do not light in on the borders of the new-born lake, and though the loons have no doubt seen it as they fly over, they, too, go by. I have never yet seen a loon plunge over the ridge to ripple its waters with his splash or set the goblin echoes of the forest laughing with his eerie cry. ”

“ It stands, not only in the rock but in the imagination of the onlooker, once he has found the dignity and grandeur of the highest summit, for authority. Dignity and grandeur are the impressions which come to one from the north through the crystal clear, thin air out of the cool, snow-samite which still stands in the deep ravines even on the southerly slope of the master mountain, just as illusion and romance dwell in the violet haze which veils all the south in pleasing mystery. ”

“ It is as if in the bright September sun they came back with silvery hair and white kerchiefs and caps, for one more stroll in the pleasant fields and one more look at the beautiful valley below, a landscape than which none in New England is more beautiful.
The nasal twittering of red-breasted nuthatches led me up the hill above the highest cleared terrace into the forest that from its multiplicity of fascinating wood roads gives evidence of having always been the farm wood-lot. The pioneer should certainly have loved this hill. ”

“ The Spur is itself no mean mountain, rising with precipitous abruptness from between Tuckerman Ravine and the Gulf of Slides, bounding in rounding, thousand-foot ledges from Pinkham Notch to a height of more than 5500 feet; it lifts the persistent climber to a veritable mizzen-top whence he looks still upward to the main truck of the summit, with the wonderful rock rift of Tuckerman Ravine between, dropping out of sight behind sheer cliffs at his feet. On such an autumn day there is a mighty exhilaration in thus floating in blue sky on such a pinnacle. ”

“ But in these forest shades if every stone may not bear wilful Miss Polypody upon its breast none goes without decoration of beauty. Without the mosses and lichens the ferns would find little chance for life in any forest, and here they cover all things with a beauty that is as profuse as it is delicate. No rock nor stump nor growing trunk of forest tree but has these, so wonderfully blended in their grays and greens, their olives and browns, that the eye accepts them as a whole and, in such perfect harmony is their adornment, half the time fails to note that they are there at all. ”

“ Rarely have I found these plants or this insect south of the northern boundary of Massachusetts. The white admirals flip their blue-black wings with the broad white epaulettes up and down the road in numbers. Butterflies of the shady spots, they find this highway where the trees arch in and often meet above peculiarly to their taste. Yet the meadow-loving fritillaries outnumber the admirals ten to one. Not even among the richly scented clover of the flats below, not even in the full roadside sun on the milkweed blooms which all butterflies so love, are they so plentiful. ”

“ As the sunshine blossoms from the mountain meadows, as it flits and sings in the forest margins and in the goldfinch-haunted trees of the open farm, so it is born even from the twigs in the deeper wood, far up above the highest farm on the way to the summit of Iron Mountain. Great yellow butterflies, tiger swallowtails, flutter in the dapple of light and shadow, their gold the sunlight that flows across them as they sail by. A few days ago not one of these soaring beauties was in all the woodland ”

“ Man comes to the summit at all hours and by many paths. Often in that darkest time which precedes the dawn one may see firefly lights approaching from the northeast, bobbing along in curious zigzags. These will-o'-the-wisps are pedestrians, climbing by the carriage road to greet the first dawn on the summit and watch the sun rise, carrying lanterns meanwhile lest they lose the broad, well-kept road and fall from the Cape Horn bend into the solemn black silence of the Great Gulf. ”

“ These linger long in the memory after the climb. But longer perhaps even than the hopes the summit gives will linger in the memory of him who climbs Thorn Mountain in early June the recollection of two things, one at least not of the summit. The first is the joy of June in the bobolink meadows far down toward Jackson Falls, the celestial melodies that the bobolinks echo as they flutter upward in the vivid sunshine and sing again to mingle their white and gold with that of the flowers that bloom the meadow through. ”