Part 9
The lumbermen come into the woods with the crossbills, and everywhere is heard the winter music of the ax. It is good music enough, but it has a sinister purport, and the swish and boom of falling trees is a sad refrain. Ancient pines are laid low, singing to the last their brave and beautiful song, which seems to come, not directly from overhead, but remotely from the empyrean, as though it issued from the distant Court of the Winds. Of the pantheon of trees the village elm is the last to hold our homage; we have dethroned our idols. As the sound of the ax breaks the stillness, I find myself instinctively turning in the opposite direction, to escape that which is soon to follow--the swan-song of the forest primeval.
LAUGHING WATERS
There are days when the sea is austere and unapproachable, when its mood is too lofty and severe. But the pond, fringed with alders and button-bushes, smiles in the sunshine and is friendly and inviting. It is more on the level of our every-day thought. Not always are we consoled by the vast and sublime, and we crave even more the companionable and social aspects of Nature. Grim though the surroundings of granite ledge and somber pines, the nestling pond is winsome, notwithstanding. Never forbidding, never altogether distant in its mood, even though frozen, it is a cheerful and alluring personality to which we are drawn from afar.
About a pond as about a mountain there is a kind of magnetism. A new field of discovery, there is ever the hope that from a new scene we shall gain a fresh impression. Every pond holds out this possibility and invites exploration of its shores, as if _there_ were the promised land. But over and above this is that element of personality, a charm purely feminine, and eluding any attempt to hold it.
Peculiarly sensitive to light and air, a pond is susceptible of little moods that do not come to the sea. It is the eye of the landscape. Dawn, high noon and dusk are each reflected there. Its afternoon mood is not like that of the morning any more than is our own. The more passive it is, the more perfectly it reflects the heavens. At all time it draws to itself light from the sky, and when the surrounding woods are swallowed in the advancing darkness, still gleams with a faint opalescence. These pale glimmers illumine the bogs, where a pool has caught and retained the daylight, or rather the spectral light of dawn. One appears to look through this serene and reflecting surface into the heart of some other wood, darkly mysterious and impenetrable, which vanishes when the wind blows, as if the curtain were drawn.
Gently as snowflakes, the leaves detach themselves and settle on the ponds, to sail away like diminutive barks upon those friendly seas. Numberless sails of scarlet and gold softly scud before the breeze, threading the inlets between the button-bushes and crowding the miniature bays; oriental craft these, of rich aspect; caciques and royal barges upon some Golden Horn. Here and there, one more venturesome steers boldly out into the open, carried by favoring winds, and makes some foreign port among the lily-pads. You may become enamored of a winsome pond on October days, a mystical beauty veiled in autumn haze, only to find her mood changed for the reserve and uncommunicativeness of winter.
When the pond freezes over we experience something of that feeling which comes with the first snow, a delightful sense of novelty, briefly entertained each season. The water has suddenly lost its mobility and become passive and expressionless, as one in a hypnotic state. A great calm has settled upon the earth; the winter sleep is in the air and the ponds have succumbed with the woodchuck. Only the chickadees, scolding and gossiping in the pitch-pines, seem to be awake and unaffected by the change. A cold bluish light pervades the leafless woods, reflected from the snow and appearing to emanate from the ground rather than the sky. The earth is wrapped in silence, yet it is not austere nor repellent. One _feels_ this stillness, which appeals to some sixth sense, and is more acceptable at times than any music,--is itself the most heavenly music.
Far across the valley the steam of a passing locomotive rises slowly, and then, like the opening of a flower, unfolds in snow-white voluptuous petals and remains as if carved in the still air. A shaft of light reaches the eye from a distant pool of molten silver at the base of purple hills. All around are little sparkling lights of icicles, flashing their pure rays in the sun. It is the magic water, the protean thing so full of light, laughter and music. Once it was laughter; now in the silence it is light.
All at once the pond is alive with skaters, its solitary aspect transformed by this merry invasion. Boys cutting figure eights suggest whirligigs. Myriad black figures, clear cut in the pale light, move in and out with undulating rhythm, as on a surface of polished steel. The pond, now more companionable than ever, becomes a playground, and we never so much as reflect upon the strangeness of it. Something there is in this unbending on the part of Nature which puts us in a good humor, for certainly people are never more good-natured than on the ice. Their habitual stiffness melts away as readily as ice melts in the sun. They experience a thaw and become democratic.
To skate over meadows and into inaccessible bogs gives one a taste for exploration. It is a new freedom and perhaps the next thing to flying. Seen through the clear "black" ice, familiar objects have an added interest; the pebbles on the bottom, the spagnum, the lily-pads, all give the impression of being severed from our world, though so plainly in view. The skater glides in and out amongst cassandra and andromeda, clethra and black alders--wintry jungles, enlivened only by red winterberries--where in summer is the haunt of the rose pogonia and the white-fringed orchis. Who would imagine now that the swamp was capable of producing anything so exquisite, that it held beneath the ice the seeds of such beauty?
The most friendly voice in Nature is the song of the brook. Not the wind in the pines, not the voice of the sea, can compare with this for true sociability. These are always somewhat remote, somewhat mystical in our ears, but the song of the brook is cheerfulness itself. Its _bonhomie_ is irresistible. It gradually prevails over any whim and wins us to a sociable and contented mood. Though the world may seem discordant enough, there is always this wholesome note.
No two brooks are alike. As the result of the character of the country through which they flow, they impress one as having strongly defined personalities. A creek flowing sluggishly through the alluvial districts of the South is insipid compared to a mountain stream in New England. Your mountain brook is a strong, salient personality which dominates the landscape. It sweeps in bold curves about the base of cliffs, and contracts into a mere mill race cut in the distorted schist and gneiss. Its suggestion is wholly of savage strength, a rude, forceful thing of the wilderness; its song a masterful strain, a triumphant chant of power. Again, there are merry little streams tinkling in the sunlight.
In cutting down its channel, the brook may reach a stratum seemingly richer than any above, so that in April its banks become a garden. While scarcely a flower is to be seen on the hillsides, the fertile floor of the ravine is carpeted with spurred violets, groundnut and spring beauties.
One such as this falls into a glen over a little precipice, spreading itself out like a fine veil which ceaselessly undulates in the breeze, and now and again floats away in mist ere it can reach the pool below. Under the overhanging rock, Alpine woodsia and cliff-brake thickly cluster, while on narrow shelves are hanging gardens of dicentra, and in the crannies, little patches of mountain saxifrage.
Below is a golden sheen where the spicebush is in flower, and a shimmer of pale green about the early willows. From the glen comes the song of the ruby kinglet, bubbling up and dying away. Incomparably wild, it seems to express the abandon of a spirit ever free. All the while the companionable brook gurgles and tinkles its reposeful melody, and the white veil of the waterfall undulates softly in its dark cavern. The air is full of that indescribable suggestion of spring, which is like hashish, and casts a glamor over the world. Gradually one is imbued with a sylvan consciousness and attains to a rapt and intimate point of view.
It is curious, as one follows down the ravine, to hear the different voices. The brook seems as if inhabited by a number of spirits throughout its length, some whispering, some laughing, others singing. Not only are the voices pitched in various keys, but the quality of tone differs essentially. Some are loud and portentous; others, melodious, liquid gurgles. In one place the voice implies an intimate and confidential mood, so gentle, so exquisite, that the full import of the musical conversation is felt only in midstream,--whispers and murmurs which have almost a ventriloquial effect.
Countless bubbles glide down the current and vanish one by one. Sunbeams dance over the rapids and out upon the pool, and then, as the sun goes under a cloud, the stream as quickly takes on a somber mood. Presently comes the melodious patter of rain-drops on the ground, an even, sustained note, very different from any voice of the brook as it dimples and answers the rain, one soft voice replying to the other. Already little pools form in hollows of the rock and reflect light, so that the face of Nature is perceptibly brighter.
Considering this aspect of the streams, it is easy to see how the primitive mind came to personify them, since the brooks have motion, voice and expression, ripple and laugh in the sunshine and are responsive to the wind and the sky. They are still divinities to the fisherman with whom he comes into an ever closer affiliation, as gentle and poetic as he may be qualified to enjoy. The murmuring waters, the whispering trees, the silver and cupreous gleams of trout are the facts with which he becomes enamored, while he loses affinity with the world, which slips into the background.
THE MOUNTAINS
He knew the mountains, who said, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help"; knew them in some intimate, spiritual way, for his words imply a noble association and companionship. Wordsworth understood them in this way, but not as the mountaineer knows them. They are ethereal dream-mountains the poet sees, rather than actual rock and soil.
On the horizon the mountains wrap themselves in mysterious light and color and seem invested with certain qualities which they lose near at hand,--as a cloud, so beautiful an object floating in the heavens, is but a fog bank once we are enveloped in it. Distance does actually lend enchantment. The range beyond has always some attraction this one lacks. In truth, mountains are illusory objects, and, to the most matter-of-fact point of view, are something more than rock. That marvelous purple of the distant hills, assumed as an imperial robe, slips away as we approach, and we find them dressed in plain brown homespun. Never do we as much as touch the hem of that royal mantle.
A symbol of the unchangeable, they are none the less marvelously sensitive to the play of light, and thus appear to vary with the conditions of the atmosphere. There are days when they seem to approach, and times again when they recede and become distant and nebulous. This magic-play of light proceeded from their birth, and goes on forever, the unceasing illusion, the beautiful witchery.
From the violet shadows of their bases they rise through a stratum of ethereal blue to emerge glistening white. Now they are savage and defiant in their somber shadows, ramparts and battlements; again, opalescent, lying like cumulous clouds on the horizon. What a vast bulk is yonder spur, massy and ponderous in this light, but tomorrow it may appear immaterial as thistle-down and to hang suspended in the ambient air. In the morning the crags and cliffs stand out naked and dazzling on the great rock mass of the peak; yet before night every detail may be obliterated and the mountain appear a lowering mass, dull and grim.
It is with mountains somewhat as it is with people--there must be perspective if they are to appear all serene and beautiful. In the distant chain the details are lost, and we receive a single distinct impression of serenity, as though they stood there a type of the fixed and eternal. But in among them there are everywhere signs of convulsion, everywhere evidence of change and decay. It is in the distance, then, that the poet loves them best, as a beautiful vision, which lures and beckons him. It is to these he lifts his eyes, from these he receives his inspiration, for they are ethereal and opalescent and play upon his fancy, provoking him to subtle thoughts of the Ideal, rose-colored as themselves.
They who do not live where they can see the mountains miss somewhat in their lives, as do they who never hear the sea. It would seem as though one or the other were essential to a normal human environment, providing that changeful beauty which forever stimulates the imagination. We necessarily lift up our eyes to the mountains with some corresponding elevation of thought. Again, from those desolate heaps of granite we receive the suggestion of something immutable and permanent--delusion though it may be. Whatever convulsions they may have known were birth throes and growing pains. Venerable beyond human conception, their life is measured, not in years, nor yet in centuries, but in epochs and eons of time; and out of this inconceivable antiquity, with its tumultuous youth, has come repose at last--a serene old age.
One readily understands in the mountains how the old myths of the gods and giants arose. Why should not the gods have dwelt on Olympus--and here in the Rockies as well? What place more fitting? A setting, stern and heroic, and not altogether hospitable to the puny race of man. There are places of such sublimity and desolation, you feel you have looked in upon Olympus when the gods were away, and that any moment they may return with their thunderbolts. Wandering alone in these regions is like an excursion into legendary lore--and one would better wander alone, for in our deepest moments the mountains are company enough.
One companion you may have--should have, in the mountains--a horse, a kindly and sociable animal, who knows your foibles as you know his, and is willing to humor them. He must be a trail-horse, sure-footed and not finicky about fording mountain streams. If you do not come into some renewed sense of freedom, if the solitude does not speak to you, if you do not become better acquainted with yourself, it is because you really have not surrendered to the genius of the hills but have come preoccupied with other and lesser things. Thoreau did not so greatly exaggerate when he said one must make his will and settle his affairs before he was ready to walk.
One does not tire of sauntering through the mountains. They seem always to invite. Mystery lurks in the ravines. There is no sound but the distant tinkle of a cow-bell, which is pleasant music. Over the ranges and the velvet folds of the _mesa_ the lights and shadows play like a passing smile.
Though the ideal eludes on a nearer view, we nevertheless derive some larger sense of freedom from personal contact with the range. The foot must know the trail; and this association yields that which no road can ever give--a good understanding with the mountain itself. As far as the eye can see, neither fence, nor house, nor road; only the somber forest, the naked ledge. While this tramping over trails hardens the muscles, it toughens also the sinews of the mind. One has mountain thoughts as well as mountain air. The single drop of aboriginal blood tingles in the veins, while the tendency is strong to revert to the wild and to a more rude and savage life. There is experienced some furtive desire, as of a wild animal, to scurry away into these grim ravines, or to leap from crag to crag with the bighorn,--presumably a sort of mountain madness, which is dispelled on the descent to the village.
Who can hear the wild song of the ouzel and not feel an answering thrill? Perched upon a rock in the midst of the rapids, he is the incarnation of all that is untamed, a wild spirit of the mountain stream, as free as a rain-drop or a sunbeam. How solitary he is, a lone little bird, flitting from rock to rock through the desolate gorge, like some spirit in a Stygian world. Yet he sings continually as he takes his solitary way along the stream, and bursts of melody, so eery and sylvan as to fire the imagination, come to the ear, sounding above the roar of the torrent. Like Orpheus, he seeks in the nether world of that wild gorge for his Eurydice, now dashing through the rapids, now peering into some pool, as if to discover her fond image in its depths, and calling ever to lure her thence from that dark retreat up into the world of light and love. This bird, more than all others, embodies the wild. In him the spirit of the mountain finds a voice.
Here we make the acquaintance of the rocks as no where else. One discovers their individuality and comes to feel that even they may be companionable. They have much to say if only one can hear it; but like the aged, their conversation is all of the past. The foibles of their youth are still to be traced in faulting and non-conformity. How tumultuous was that youth; how serene their old age! Stratified or volcanic, each tells its own story. The sandstone cliffs speak of the sea, which preceded them, and of which they are the sediment merely. Upon that shore no human eye ever looked, and yet it is registered here, as the ruins of Mitla record a race unknown to history. The cliff is a chapter in a biography written before the advent of man. Long after the sea had disappeared, some convulsions upheaved the strata and threw them on end. Here and there in the cañons glimpses are to be had of the granite or porphyry which underlies the sandstone--the very corner-stone of the hills. It is as though one had come upon the most ancient papyrus of the world or unearthed the first Babylonian inscription.
It seems incredible the stream should have sawed its way through so many feet of rock and produced the cañon. Day and night it eats its way inward, like a saw cutting to the heart of a forest tree. But see what the rain will do--so gentle a thing as the falling rain. Together they have hewn the cliffs, which are like vast rock tombs with their Egyptian massiveness. A filmy cloud floats down the gorge, trailing along the edge of the precipices, an intangible and shadowy form, spiritlike and ethereal, receiving the rays of the setting sun and becoming golden and then rose-colored, and dissolving away at last into the invisible. This fugitive, shadowy thing, this bit of mist, is the mountain sculptor.
The rocks were the prototype of the temple, as was the forest of the Gothic cathedral, the date-palm of the Byzantine dome. But there worships here only the cañon-wren. He is the high priest who lifts up his voice in these rock temples--a sweet utterance delivered with the usual abandon of the wrens.
Above the cliffs, on the precipitous slopes, is the impress of still another agent. The ledge, smoothed as by a plane, and the scattered boulders amidst the dead timber and small aspens, give it an appearance of extreme desolation. Here, where now the Indian paint-brush glows in summer, the glacier crept snail-like down the mountain, from its cradle in some _cirque_ above the forest. Timber-line is the frontier, the boundary between the verdant world and the land of snow and ice.
It was the glaciers which in the days of their strength chiseled the lake basins every one, and began the great cañons on which the streams have been at work ever since. At the same time they laid out the _moraines_, like so many parks, where the pines and the spruce have planted themselves. They did the rough work and prepared the great rock masses for the finer work of the rain and frost and wind--as the stone-cutter precedes the sculptor.
These lakes in many cases became the glacial meadows of today, which are like jewels set in the vast matrix of rock. Out of elemental changes, terrible in their immensity, came some of the most charming of all wild gardens,--as a rainbow follows a thunder-storm. These serene and altogether beautiful aspects of Nature were the outcome of tumult and passion--earthquakes, avalanches, lava-flows, glaciers, and now these idyllic meadows, beloved of bees and blossoms.
There is a certain cañon hereabout which is closed abruptly at one end by a precipice, over which descends a considerable stream. This fall is a thing of beauty, and so holds the eye that few think of scaling the cliffs to see what may be beyond. But, as it happens, there lies above, and sundered from the world beneath, one of the most delightful little valleys in the Rockies--a long, narrow defile, flanked by perpendicular cliffs of pink and red and buff sandstone.
All day the black-headed grosbeak sings in the aspens, dropping from one reverie into another. You may hear the voice of the green-tailed towhee, and the cañon-wren singing from his rock temple. The stream winds along the floor of the little valley, which is some eight thousand feet above the sea, now through quaking aspens and now under spruce, and its voice is as the murmuring of pines. This is the haunt of the shooting-star and the Alpine mertensia, delicate and exquisite blossoms, wooed by fugitive sunbeams and by the floating mist; which dwell in a subdued and tempered light amidst the Alpine silence, as in some floral cloister. Such are the rare and beautiful places of earth, which the mountain barriers defend and the clouds veil, as if they cherished here the last vestige of the fading youth and innocence of the old world.
There are days when the clouds shut down upon the little valley, veiling it from mortal eyes. The cliffs and buttes seem to float in air; the trail becomes a path to the clouds. You have only to go up on some ridge, and the pinnacles, looming in the fog, appear to be forlorn rocks in mid-ocean. It is the isolation again of the sea and of the desert.
At such times one receives impressions from the mountains which bring to mind the ocean, as if these retained memories--as they still bear traces--of the waters which gave them birth. This relation, once so intimate, is now sundered and only to be inferred. Where is the ancient sea which mothered the Rockies? The desert is its vast bed, now unoccupied. It vanished forever, leaving its impress upon the mountains. And now this sea-child is in its dotage, and it too dwindles and wanes century by century. But the fog still recalls the mother-sea, and out of the forgotten past conjures up little waves to dance upon a primordial beach.
THE FOREST
One who is accustomed only to our eastern woods can have little idea of the true forest as it occurs in the Sierra Nevada, which is a world of itself, as distinct from any idea of the "woods" as the snow peaks, the colossal granite domes and the great cañons of the Sierra are different from the mild topography of the Berkshires.