# The Heart of Monadnock/Chapter 4

IV
Today the Mountain-Lover came loitering again in this direction. With sandwiches in his pocket, he had the day before him—which he loved. As always when his feet took this now familiar course that first day returned to his mind with fresh vigor. How many perplexities it had helped him through! How often since that day,—remembering those slighted little mossy stones that lay at the critical place where the path seemed to vanish—he had taken confidently that next step in life although he had seen nothing beyond. But when he had taken it, the next lay open to his view,—and then the next. Perhaps for some distance only one visible at a time, although he so longed to see the whole way! It needed faith. It ​was not always easy to go on, just feeling the way with his feet, so to speak. "Perge, qua via ducat." But the necessary thing was to go on—go on. The next cairn. It is there. Have a free mind. Find it. Be unprejudiced. Try anything that looks like a cairn on the road of life. Have the main goal clearly in one's vision. The great definite end. Then keep an unprejudiced attitude towards the route itself. Sometimes it is just a question of what Carlyle wrote: "Do the duty that lies nearest thee; the next will already have become clearer." All the Masters had perceived this elemental truth. The only trouble is that it is all so plain,—this law—that one does not always perceive it—like the famous one who could not see the forest for the trees.
The walker stopped at the Sweet Water Spring to drink from its little rocky cup. Who could ever pass it? Then again to the left—a way he was much more apt to take than the more direct path to the right—for few take this one and he loved it. On again ​in the winding way, diagonally upward till the deciduous trees gave way grudgingly to the evergreens, and he came out well up on the steep expanse. He never took any special route across this face of the little peak; he scaled little steepnesses as they opposed themselves to his course, or twisted around between them, delighting in every step of the way.
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; cushioned with gray rock moss, with blueberry bushes crowding closely, ​their bluish-lavender clusters begging to be consumed. One could stretch out here at full length with head supported by clasped hands, looking northward into the cool blue light.
The Mountain-Lover sank down into this dear spot with a sigh of joy. As he lay there, the morning sun was well behind him and the color-values to the north were perfect. Long and deeply he gazed into the vivid, liquid blue of the New Hampshire sky with its unfathomable depths, distance behind distance. Battalions of tremendous, snowy masses of cloud marched across the southwest, stirring the pulse with their grandeur. Thunder-storms they betokened in the Catskills far to the west. Possibly here, later. One could not tell yet. At the base of the mountain to his left, over Bigelow Hill, the land undulated in ravishing lights and shadows, tier on tier, till it melted in faint heliotrope into distant Stratton and Couching Lion and Mansfield and all their ​sister-peaks. In its cup of green to the northwest lay Keene, bathed in sunshine.
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 lower flanks are unbelievably pink with the contrast. That passes; the light shifts every instant, bringing out new shapes, new recesses, new slopes. Infinite variety of aspects has the stately Giant!
The mind of the Mountain-Lover was still on the cairns, as his eyes followed the quiet little guides of the Marlborough-ravine trail, for many were visible from where he sat. He spoke the words out loud to the eagle which swooped nearer him. He could see its white head. His eyes followed it as it lifted itself high once more.
Recent shattering experiences of the war, with all the bewilderment they brought to nearly everyone in their newness to human life; the loss of all familiar landmarks; the sweeping-away of former standards; the puzzlement of former beliefs torn from their roots; lives slashed straight across—it all made readjustment of soul and body necessary in the new, sharp-cornered world in which one found oneself. The Mountain-Lover like most others, had been holding his mind with both hands to keep himself steady, for he could not always tell whether it was he himself that was whirling ​around in this mad dance of circumstance, or whether it were the outside world. Or both. His soul ached inconceivably with mere bewilderment of it all—to say nothing of the horror induced by this savage strife. Somewhere, one must find strength to go on. Could he find it sitting at the feet of the Giant? He fixed his eyes yearningly on the calm, unshakable Titan above him with his garnered wisdom of the centuries. Will he give him of his wisdom? . . .
No wonder, pondered the Mountain-Lover as often enough before, that the oldest similies of life and literature are those drawn from the heights. No wonder that the mightiest gods abode on Olympus . . . His memory lingered on the rose-flushed, barren, desolate, low-rolling mountains of Palestine as he had once seen them; ridges that David, poet king, had so passionately loved. How the intimate knowledge of them, etched on eye and mind and heart throughout those long, solitary, boyhood days of the princely lad, when he tended ​his father's flocks on remote steeps, had inflamed his poetry with its intense and Oriental beauty! The "Shadow of a Mighty Rock in a thirsty land!" who could fully understand the simple imagery and all it meant, save one who had stood on treeless stretches under a burning sun, set in a copper sky? "My strong Rock, my Fortress, and my Defence!" No refuge from the blazing, deadly light anywhere but in the indigo shadows. Defence and refuge for heart and soul, as well as for the panting body. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help!" Ancient words, millions of times repealed, yet with a new message to every torn human heart, in its own time of need.
But this mountain-training of David, the shepherd lad, with its environment of constant difficulty, constant danger, enforcing alertness against the creeping, prowling things that would attack and destroy his helpless flocks, its training in resource of mind as well as in strength of body, bestow​ing readiness of eye and brain, and instant decision—how all these later entered into his passionately eager, virile life, whether as shepherd or musician, lover or father, prophet or priest, exile or king. The difficulties, transmuted by the strength of the hills, had been his stern teachers.
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. 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. 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. "Why does that lad attempt that? Well—just life! Characteristic. An illustration."
But tackling those difficulties of the climb makes sure the muscles and trains the eye to take advantage of every opportunity and teaches the foot to respond almost before the conscious brain has given its command to take this step or to avoid that loose stone, till at last one moves with an ease and sureness and precision that is bewildering for the untried to watch. The Mountain-Lover recalled a sentence that he had heard William James say over and over: "Into our instant decisions go all our past selves; ​every new decision gathers to itself every former one that was ever made." As true in life as on the mountain.
He watched the distant black speck that was an ambitious boy slowly worm his way up the rock, poise himself an instant on the lip of a crag and wave his hands to the world at large in exultation at his achievement; then he disappeared on the further side, to reappear a moment later silhouetted in triumph against the sky.
The Mountain-Lover smiled in keen sympathy. He knew well, not only on this but on far greater heights the
That had been the delight of his own adventurous boyhood—as it had been David's. Now, though his delight was different—and perhaps even deeper—he had those imperishable memories that had gone to the shap​ing of his life. They were woven into the warp of his later years and made an integral part of it. Without them, indeed, could he know his present satisfying joy? How vitally the strength of the hills had passed into every fibre! . . . He shut his eyes for a moment as the familiar consciousness of power began to surge slowly through him. Curious! this sense of limitless strength flowing into every cranny of his being, from the very soul of the Wise Old Giant into his! Here, alone with the sky and the clouds and the crags, the blue and the gray and the gold, the incoming tide of new power filled him as completely and quietly as the sea rises in serene pools back of sand dunes on the coast; protected as they are, there is no visible incoming of the tides; the water simply wells up and up till the pools are filled to their sedgy brims . . .
Infinite help! infinite resource! Infinite because the thought and planning of eternity had gone into the shaping and the ruggedness of mountain-ranges . . . It might ​have been minutes or hours that the thinker lay there against the sun-warmed rock, with his eyes now closed, feeling new life in every relaxed nerve. After a time he was on longer thinking; he was floating out on a sea of peace.
He opened his eyes slowly at last and drew a long breath as of one made over. So still had he lain that the annoyed junco fluttering in and out of the dwarfed spruce near by had at last concluded he was but a long stone and had ceased scolding. The thinker whistled to the downy-breasted little creature that cocked a startled head at him and flew chattering away. He stretched himself and stood up, eyeing the almost unused trail that lay across from Monte Rosa to the long, gradual descent of the Marlborough shoulder, that here formed his horizon line to the north. This trail wanders along, rising and falling into one little ravine after another; so little-used that last summer he ​had found that almost every vestige of it had disappeared and he had cut his way through the tangled underbrush of the bottoms where the growth was dense and had reblazed trees and had replaced cairns. He had brought today his heavy knife in its case, for further pruning where necessary—in case he decided to go across that way. It was one of the delights of the days to let the trail and the inclination of the moment call him. Or was it the inclination of the moment? Or did he unconsciously follow the beckoning of his craggy monitor up there?
He was never quite sure. At any rate when he set forth any vague intentions he had in mind were always ready for editing or for complete revision. But here he was—and the wild little trail beckoned.
He dropped down the first descent marked by a chunk of glittering quartz. Down below there was a succession of little moss-covered steps over which the water flowed. He remembered a bit like that in the marvellous gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli. Just ​the same effect He went up the opposite bank where grows a rare cluster of white pines—seldom seen at this altitude. He took the first high ascent and a new view showed itself; it was amazing how a difference in height of merely twenty feet, perhaps, or but a short distance to right or left brought out new aspects. The bunchberries which when he first arrived had been in blossom bad now shed their petals and were already gathering together the red bunches of beauty that make every open glade glow with scarlet. Blueberries were ripening fast and were a riot of exquisite color in their various stages—pure pink, pinky-blue, misty, bloom-covered blue, hints of lavender,—or almost indigo; what ravishing color! Too fascinating to eat, these luscious little globes! What utterly different things they are up here revelling in the sunshine and warmth, from the products that appear in little china dishes on the supper table or as prosaic little black dots in culinary compounds! The climber sat down by a pecu​liarly delectable patch and ate everything in sight; he felt like a vandal,—but they were satisfying.
The path went up and down like a waving string, dipping into rough little ravines, across tangled bottoms, along which tiny streams usually rippled, up the opposite, steeply-dropping rocks, or around huge boulders rolled in ages past down from the mountain's wild sides. The trail led out at lost on the western edge of a transverse bluff heading the wildest part of the whole great hollow that lies between the Marlborough Ridge and Monte Rosa, where far below the cliff on which he stood, the heavy tangle is practically impassible. On the little plateau on the top of the cliff, lie springs of crystal water, icy under over-hanging rocks; from them go dancing, scampering little rills importantly hurrying on their far way to the Connecticut. Here the clefts and rents in the mountain are jagged and deep and frequently one has to climb around the heads ​of many baby ravines. The explorer loved its roughness.
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. With sandwiches and chocolate to consume, and nectar to drink and heart-clutching beauty all round—what more could even royalty desire? Contentment was in his heart. Perplexities were locked up in that remote dungeon where he left them when be climbed; when he had to take them out of durance later, he would have forged new weapons up here with which to meet them and have ​gained a new strength with which to contend. But that would be tomorrow. This was today!
The eagle again. The strange, high, swooping flight as if keeping time to some vast organ-harmony of the universe, too deep for his senses to perceive. That high, circling flight—what was its motor power? Now the great bird swept nearer; it was almost over Marlborough Ridge. Now it took a curve nearer his own head and he could plainly see the enormous sweep of the motionless wings. It was so near that he suddenly called to it in a great shout and on his word the eagle jumped! It took a swift, almost right-angled swoop upward. The observer had not realized that anything could disturb that stately flight.
He ate and drank and was satisfied; drenched with content He watched a col​ony of scrambling ants on a level bit of sand near him; what errands of frantic uselessness, as far as a mere ignorant human observer could see! They ran hurriedly in every direction and got nowhere. One portly ant raced with desperate speed as fast as it could go, picked up a small log—in proportion to himself—tugged it along, came to a mountain of pebble, toiled and perspired over its top (though he could have gone around in one half second), dropped his log, forgot where he mislaid it, turned right about face and pelted back to his starting place, disappearing into a hole in the ground, doubtless there to discourse to his wife on the high speed of living. But all his fellows were doing the same thing. The observer watched them curiously. Not one apparently was doing anything useful. Amusing themselves, then, as even ants have a right to do, surely? Was it to them a sort of football game in its essence? No teamwork if it were. What useless things they picked up and struggled off with! He won​dered in watching their aimless expeditions if it was in satire that Solomon recommended man to watch their ways and be wise. He knew all the stories the naturalists told, of slaves and cows and other evidences of ordered prosperity, but to his untrained eye everything seemed chaotic. To him they resembled much more the rich man of the Psalmist's observation who gathereth up riches—in the way of useless stubble and unusable things—and disquieteth himself in vain. Or was it all just the wild joy of living, for them as for him?
The onward path again. Curious how the farther one walked the more rested one became! His way now rose gradually, lifting itself shelf on shelf, leading up to the watershed of the Marlborough Ridge. He gained its crest and looked down upon the gem-like lake of Dublin spread in its fair beauty before him; in this light, a deep cold green. ​What deep green lake did he recall vaguely like this one, but more intimately girt with close-set hills sloping to it? A lake so green, so intensely green, so profoundly emerald! where was it? Oh, Nemi! Nestled in those enchanting Alban hills somewhere near Frascati! Marvellous gem it was! everything green in that deep cup! green sides of waving trees, unspeakably green water and with no hint in it of the sky of Italian azure bending over its still depths.
He stood drinking in all the intimate detail of the northern foreground which he now faced. A broad green valley lay between the Marlborough Ridge, on which he stood, and the Dublin shoulder with its trend to the northeast, lifting itself in bold, jutting peaks and sharp salients against the sky. His eyes followed it until it dipped at last in a long slant and melted into the lower levels where Dublin nestled at its foot. Straight to the north he could see Kearsarge and Gunstock and the Franconias and dim on the furthest horizon lay Mt. Washington ​itself. But what difference did it make what they were, those illusive, almost transparent outlines? He knew them in some detail; he was well acquainted with those tremendous ravines, such as King's Ravine and Tuckerman's. He knew them with their wide-flung rocks and gigantic boulders, tumbling monsters torn from the mother-mountains, and strewn about as if the places were wild battle-grounds of Titans. . . He knew the subterranean passages beneath those piled-up masses with huge and fearsome cracks yawning across the path. He knew it all, and had exulted in it. . . . Nevertheless this little mountain was the one he loved.
He dropped on the lower branches of a spruce that carpeted the ground in its curious fashion, making an elastic seat, and gazed over the beloved details. He faced to the northeast, and at his right, half behind now, loomed his own Giant, with again a different aspect. . . He let his mind rove over many matters in desultory fashion. ​New vistas in his plans opened before him in an odd way that often happened after a day on the heights. He saw clearly without effort through a dozen puzzles. Not because he was searching consciously, but because the clues seemed suddenly to lie open to his grasp.
He rose at last to return. He looked from the west to the east.
Should he continue around the peak itself and take the trail on the east side down? No, not today. He had a fancy to keep on the west side and take his way back by the Monte Rosa trail from the summit; this trail roughly paralleled the one he had taken coming up in the morning, but it lay much higher, crossing the heads of the various little ravines, up and down whose sides the lower track led. Having decided this, the climber came up slowly from the north side where he had been sitting, and approached the pile of stone that made the ​dividing cairn where his way branched from the main trail. As he swung over the crest and faced south, he noted with surprise the changed aspect in that direction. Seeing only to the clear north and northeast as he had been doing the last two hours or so, with the wall of Monadnock lifting itself behind him, he had not noticed how the heavens to the west and south had utterly changed. He paused with an exclamation at the marvellous lights and shadows over the landscape. Three distinct thunder-storms were visible, with blue sky between them; over Stratton, the rain was already a deluge and that horizon was blotted out; further south he could see the little village of Troy, over which were already gathered deep indigo shadows and heavy storm clouds massed magnificently above. Directly south, over Fitzwilliam, the third storm was pouring out its flood and he could see the lightning rend the clouds. Yet Monadnock and all its near foreground was still embraced by a strangely golden light in which ​every minutest object was miraculously clear in entrancing contrast with the angry purples of the advancing storms which were surging from the far background.
The three summer tempests were racing for Monadnock, always a storm-lure. The observer cast an experienced eye at the wild contestants in the mad race and then he considered his own downward path. Impossible to reach shelter. The storm would be on him in—say ten minutes. In any event he infinitely preferred the open rocks to the woods. He went down on the Monte Rosa trail for perhaps an hundred feet or so and chose for his reserved seat in the spectacle a great mass of rock that faced southwest, and the other side of which by an acute angle faced east so that when the storm broke he could find on that side some shelter from the cutting west wind that brought the rain. What the force of that wind could be, he knew quite well.
He pulled his soft hat well over on his head and sat down on a little natural seat ​of stone at the base of his rock, and awaited the oncoming storms. He watched their courses appraisingly.
"I bet on the Stratton one," he said. "I give it five minutes."
The strange light grew more and more eerie. Sunshine overhead for the sun still rode in the last unclouded bit of blue. The atmosphere became more deeply, malevolently purple. The whole sweep of the horizon was now lost in the blurring torrents of rain that came marching forward, with their vans still distinctly marked. The side of each storm was cut as if with a sharp knife. The immediate foreground still caught and flung defiantly the sunshine against the encroaching violet The air was deathly quiet with the hushed, affrighted silence of nature in the face of a storm; every small winged thing had vanished; not even a blade of mountain grass so much as stirred. Then suddenly up from the gorge north of Monte Rosa a slight motion just agitated the forest leaves which had been ​presenting white, frightened under-surfaces to the sky. Involuntarily the spectator held his breath. For a moment there seemed to be nothing to breathe.
He looked eagerly from the direction of Stratton, southward; little Troy now engulfed in the rain, was as if it did not exist. Gap Mountain was hidden. The rushing clouds at last caught the sunlight from overhead and instantly dun gray settled over all the world; nearer and nearer with a last devouring dash came the march of the rain from the direct west. He could see the downpour, still with a clean edge, come on like a consuming monster, swallowing everything in its path. The thunder was now continuous, muttering, rattling. A deep convulsive sigh came up the gorge as if Nature cried, "At last!" Now came the curious slight scampering patter of the advance guard of drops on the quivering mat of leaves far below; a strange icy gust of wind cleft its way to the peak; a deluging rush up the rocky sides—and the storm was upon ​him. Stratton had beaten, but Troy and Fitzwilliam were barely a second behind. The world was blotted out.
The spectator crept quickly to the left side of his sheltering rock where the icy wind was somewhat tempered. In one half moment he was drenched to the skin, and he would have been wet to the bones, he reflected, if skin were not waterproof. He was now enveloped in a world of rain and cloud so dense that he could not see three inches beyond his face. The artilleries of the rival storms, now united at the peak, were incessant Flash! crash! bang! Flash! crack! BANG! fireworks on a celestial scale darted and coruscated, and tore apart the clouds like golden rivers. The rain was not in drops but in curtains. In another two minutes torrents of water were boiling down the rocks in cataracts; what had been a tiny rivulet beyond him, was incredibly a foot deep. The climber got up on the next shelf to keep his feet out of the icy pool ​that surged around them. Innumerable needles of rain smote his face and blinded his eyes.
Flash! crack! BANG! came the great guns above. 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! Bang! BANG! Bang! BANG!
Minutes passed. The storm-gods paused to breathe. The fascinated spectator got his own breath. Then it was all on again, rain and blast and pyrotechnics and water spouts. Another pause. A longer one. An​other onslaught. The spectator knew that now the force of the wild summer-tempest was broken. Minutes passed again. . . No longer were the flashes and crashes simultaneous. Sullenly the storms withdrew in a solid phalanx on their way to the Atlantic, but the clouds still hung heavily around the summit and stretched down the sides. A glimmery effect as of phosphorescence shone through the clinging mist and he knew that beyond to the west the sun was again shining in clean-washed blue, though he could see nothing but vague and towering shapes of cliffs close to him. A few last spattering drops of rain were now and then squeezed out of the thinning clouds—but the storm was over. And it was only twenty minutes since he had topped the crest. The speed of these mountain storms is incredible!
The Mountain-Lover, in breathless and very wet delight stepped down into the pool at the base of the rock. It was nearly up to his knees. He pulled off his hat and ​ SLOWLY THE MIST LIFTED
​squeezed it as dry as possible, and took off his sweater to wring out what water he could get rid of. He stepped forward a little, waiting for the mist to lift somewhat, for it was impossible to get much sense of direction while it was still thick. But he watched with rapture the fairy scene when this happened; it was like being shut into a tiny, pearly gray theatre with diaphanous draperies flirting their drifting, gauzy folds mischievously all about, lifting them now here, now there, in tantalizing fashion, showing distracting glimpses of elfin beauty. . . . Or it was like swarms of trooping Oreads dancing from point to point, now flinging long veils of opalescent gauziness gaily across his very eyes, now whirling back in impish laughter, while glimmering sunlight filtered down from the blue beyond. . . . The cloudy nymphs were having a mad frolic around the head of old Monadnock today. But slowly the sunlight routed the misty, pearly revellers. Wider ​became the circle of vision minute by minute. Muffled laughter floated back as if they called, "We go—but we come again!"
Now what had seemed like a huge spruce on some distant rock, showed as the mist lifted, to be a little ragged tree on a nearby rock. Now the mist settled again in a soft white blanket blurring out the world in a trice. Then it was swept away by a gust of fresh breeze. Clearer spaces thus came and went Then only soft wraiths of fluffy white remained, creeping from tiny spruce to tiny spruce and clinging lovingly in their branches. Now he could see distinctly down the crags, but he made his way along slowly on account of the pools and baby torrents through which he went They filled every cleft and every hollow. The mountain was overflowing with lovely sparkling water, gay with its sojourn above in the clouds. The water-music was everywhere, gurgling, bubbling, chattering, singing, shouting, as the myriad drops tried to tell the rocks what they had seen in their ​recent skimming in the upper blue. A limpid orchestra.
Now Cranberry Crag detached itself as the walker approached it, with its picturesque Japanesey little trees on its romantic little height. Up this he went and then down on the hither side, but he descended it on his back as his feet slipped in the sopping, treacherous moss and mountain grass. On and on down; he reached the high swampy spot where the cotton-grass grows—now a veritable little lake. He skirted its rippling surface. He turned to his left and presently passed Lot's Wife, shiny and sparkling from her recent bath. A little further and he was at tree-line, and he passed under the swaying, dripping branches from which every baby-breeze sent showers of drops teasingly all over him. But what a storm! How glorious it had been! The magnificent lordly crash of the thunder yet rang reverberatingly in his ears. What a storm! And he was of it!
"Well, no," returned the climber, deprecatingly. He knew they all thought him a little queer. "You see, I felt safer in the open."