Alone on Chocorua at Night

THE 10th of August ranked, by the family thermometer, as next to the hottest day of the summer. It was a marked day in my calender, — marked long in advance for a night alone on the narrow rock which forms the tip of Chocorua’s peak. It was chosen on account of the display of meteors which, in case of a clear sky, always makes that night attractive for a vigil. On August 10, 1891, I counted two hundred and fifty meteors between sunset and eleven o’clock p. M. As I watched the sky, and saw the great rock of the peak rising sharply into it, I determined that another year I would count my meteors from its summit, and not from the common level of a field.

By four o’clock in the afternoon a breeze had drifted down to us from the mountains, and behind them cloud-heads were rising in the northwest. Fanned by the breeze and undaunted by clouds, I began the ascent of Chocorua by the Hammond path. In the woods the breeze was stifled by the trees, and I was stifled by the still heat which oppressed all nature. For three miles the only bird I heard was a red-eyed vireo, and the only one I saw was a grouse which flew from the path. In the road below and along the trail up the mountain there were dozens of young toads. They were about the size of the Indian’s head on a cent. I wondered how far up the trail I should find them, so I watched closely as the path grew steeper and steeper. The last one seen was about sixteen hundred feet above the sea, and one thousand feet above the Hammond clearing where I first noticed them. There is no still water within a mile of the point where I found the last one. In view of such facts, it is not difficult to account for the popular belief that young toads fall from the clouds with rain.

Clearing the forest, and reaching the open ledges on the crest of the great southeastern ridge of Chocorua, along which the Hammond path runs towards the peak, I saw that a storm was gathering in the west. Piles of thunderheads were rolling up beyond Whiteface and the Sandwich Dome, and tending northward. Chocorua might be too far east to be included in the drenching which was in store. It was not too far away to lose the cool wind which suddenly changed my gasping heat into a shiver. With a quicker pace I pushed towards the foot of the peak.

All but one of the well-marked paths up Chocorua spend too much time in the ravines and woods. It is discouraging to toil mile after mile through uninteresting small growth, without a breath of cool air or a glimpse of distance. The Hammond path cancels nearly half the height of the mountain in the first mile of woodland, and then rewards the climber by successive views which grow more charming as ledge after ledge is passed. While following the top of the slowly rising and scantily wooded ridge the peak is seen coming nearer and nearer, and growing more and more impressive. Range after range of northern mountains rise above the foreground, and the far horizon widens slowly. When the foot of the peak is finally reached, shutting out for a time all that is grandest in the view, the climber feels that he must scale those forbidding cliffs, whatever becomes of him after the final struggle is over. So I felt as, at about half past six, I gained the top of the mountain’s shoulder and looked up at the huge rock which forms its awful head. The eastern side of the peak is so precipitous that few have the temerity even to try to scale it. The southern side is broken into smaller cliffs, between which tufts of spruces grow. In winter this face is quite readily climbed upon the packed snow, but in summer wide sloping ledges polished by ice make the way difficult and dangerous to the novice. Quite a distance to the west, yet still on the southern face of the peak, there is a rift in the cliffs filled with small trees and fragments of rock. This cleft leads straight upwards to a small sandy plateau on the west side of the peak, two thirds of the way to its summit. As I struggled up this almost perpendicular ravine, I heard the steady roar of thunder, and saw above me black clouds surging across the sky. It would have been dark had not the south been filled with silvery light and hazy sunset glory. A black - mouthed cave upon my right offered a refuge. Hedgehogs lived in it, but its outer chamber would be storm-proof. Should I wait? No, storm or no storm, I would gain the peak, and do my part to keep my tryst with the stars.

Stumbling out of the ravine upon the plateau, I faced the north. A picture was there which made the memory of Doré’s strongest delineations of Dante’s visions seem weak. On my right was an upright wall of black rock, on my left an abyss. Northward, before me lay that wilderness of forests and peaks which forms the White Mountains, thirty miles square of spruce forests, and all of it on edge, — a sierra forbidding at its best, but now made terrible by a tempest. The higher heavens were filled with loose, rounded black clouds with white spaces between them. Below them, impending over a belt of country about ten miles north of me, was a very long but narrow cloud, black as ink, with a clean - cut lower edge as straight as a level. From it forked lightning was playing downward. The outlines of the mountains were singularly clear. I could see, beginning at the right, the Presidential Range, the Crawford Notch, Anderson, Nancy, Lowell, the Carrigain Notch, Carrigain ; and then, partly obscured by rain, the Franconia Mountains and the nearer heights of Tripyramid and its neighbors. Just over Tripyramid, reaching nearly to the zenith, was an opening in the clouds, a narrow space between two storms. It was clear gold within, but hideous black profiles were outlined against it, as though the fiends of one storm were looking across it at their allied hosts in the second bank of clouds now hurrying upward from the southwest.

Turning sharply to the right, I found and climbed the rough path leading up the rocks to the highest point on the peak. Three thousand feet below me, in that peaceful valley by the lake, was my home. I could just see its red roof among the trees. Wind ripples were chasing each other across the lake, marring its white surface. The lake is heartshaped, and my cottage rests at the tip. No storm impended over those whom I had left behind, but the voice of the thunder reminded me of what was passing to the northward.

Under the long level black cloud, from which zigzag lightning darted downward like a snake’s tongue, were three zones of color. . The first, nearest the east, and at the head of the storm as it moved forward, was gray. It was formed of scud. The second was black, and from it shot most of the lightning. The third was snowy white shaded by perpendicular lines. This was the rain. Each belt seemed to be two miles or more in width, and the whole was moving about twenty miles an hour. When I reached the peak, Carrigain Notch was just passing under the scud, and as I watched, Lowell, Anderson, and Nancy were in turn obscured. By the time Mount Nancy was covered Carrigain and its notch were reappearing. Meanwhile, the golden gap in the clouds had closed, and the second storm was approaching. Its course was such as to take in Chocorua, Paugus, and the Swift River intervale which lay just below me on the north. Wild as the first storm made the northern sky, the second one seemed bent upon making the picture even more gloomy. It was the moment of sunset, but the sun was lost in a wilderness of thunderclouds. Suddenly a sound clear and sweet came to me. It was the first sound, save thunder and wind, that I had heard since reaching the peak. A long, pure note, followed by one much higher, repeated several times, formed the song of my companion on the heights. It was the farewell to the day of a white-throated sparrow, that sweetest singer of the mountain peaks. A feeling of forlornness which had been creeping over me was dispelled. Let the storm come ; I was ready for it.

Not many rods below the peak, on the very verge of the eastern crag, stands an enormous detached rock, roughly cubical in shape, and at least twenty feet in each dimension. This rock, which is known as “ the Cow,” rests upon a narrow shelf having a saucer-shaped depression about fifteen feet in diameter in its upper surface. The Cow projects slightly beyond the outer edge of the ledge, but at the point where it projects the concavity of the under granite leaves a space exactly eighteen inches in height and several feet long, which admits light into the hollow beneath the Cow. Years before, I had discovered this strange cave, and had found that a projecting corner of rock gave standing-room near enough to the narrow mouth to allow a man to creep into it. To this shelter I determined to take my luggage for safe - keeping during the rain. As I wound my way down the zigzag path to the cave, a junco flew past me in the gloom and chirped inquiringly. A drop or two of rain fell. Thunder roared in the southwest as well as in the north. The mountains had lost the wonderful dark violet shade which they possessed before the light faded, and were now almost black, those nearest being darkest. As I reached the mouth of the cave, an uncomfortable thought intruded itself upon my mind,—was it possible that bears used the cave? I peered in. The place was empty now, at all events. Pushing in my oilskin coat, jersey, knapsack with lunch, lantern, and star-atlas, I slid in after them. At the deepest part of the depression in the ledge, the space between the rock below and the rock above is thirty inches. I could not sit up straight, but I could recline comfortably at various angles. Lighting my lantern, I unpacked my bag and furnished my lodgings. A watch, matchbox, foot rule, thermometer, pencil, a mirror for signaling, compass, huntingknife, bird whistles, supper, breakfast, and dry underclothing made the cave seem quite homelike. The dry clothing attracted me, for I was wet with perspiration, and my thermometer reminded me that I felt chilly. I listened. Was it raining ? No. Taking my lantern, supper, and dry clothes, I wriggled to the entrance and regained the air. Happy thought: if any bear could get into that cave, it would be a very thin one. Unhappy thought: his thinness would betoken all the greater hunger.

There was a lull in the storm, for although everything above was black, the wind seemed to have died away and the thunder to be very distant. On the narrow ledge between the towering pinnacle and the black abyss below the Cow, I discarded my damp clothes and put on the dry ones. The change was comforting. I was glad when it was accomplished, for I had no inclination to fight a bear in the costume of Mulvaney at the taking of Lungtungpen.

Step by step I crept back up the cliff to the summit. There was wind enough on top, and my lantern had to be thrust into a crack in the rock on the lee side to keep it not only from blowing out, but from blowing away. The top of Chocorua is about the shape and size of a large, wide dining-table. On the south other levels lead up to it gradually ; but west, north, and east this highest rock is bounded by abrupt sides, from which a fall in the night would he a serious matter. Lying down on this dizzy platform, I ate my supper with savage relish, and took new account of the night and its pictures. Except when lightning illumined some part of the horizon, the only things visible to me were the long black ridge of Paugus, the hump of Passaconaway over Paugus, fragments of white ledges on the northern spurs of Chocorua, and lakes in the valley. Even Ossipee Lake, fifteen miles or more away, was plainly distinguishable as a white spot in the surrounding gloom. Lights shone from many of the cottages near Chocorua Lake, and from Birch intervale, Albany intervale, and Conway. They were the connecting link between me and the rest of mankind. In the sky there was absolute blackness, curiously broken once by the sudden appearance of the red planet for the space of a single minute. Sometimes a few drops of rain fell, but the second storm seemed to be reserving most of its Strength for a region further east. It was now nine o’clock, and the first storm had passed far over into Maine, its lightning playing with rapid flashes behind Mount Pequawket. At every flash the sky just behind the pyramidal peak assumed the color of dead gold, while the mountain was embossed upon it like an emblem on a shield. Occasionally the second storm produced lightning, and when it did so the effects were startling, so near was the heavenly fire. One flash was from side to side across a low cloud which hung near Chocorua on the east. It was very vivid, and so complex with its many delicate lines and loops of light that a fiery sentence appeared to have been written on the sky. Another bolt was broad and straight, and went down into the forest like an arrow. It was so near and so brilliant that for almost a minute I could see nothing. The thunder which followed it began in the zenith, and rolled away, booming and crashing, in three directions, lasting so long that I wished I had timed it to see for how many seconds its terrific echoes refused to subside. As many of its rumblings and mutterings resounded from the ravines and hillsides below me, the effect of this great peal was unlike any I had ever before heard.

While I was listening to the sighing of the wind-tossed forest in the hollows eastward of the mountain, another sound reached my ears, and made me concentrate my senses in an effort to determine its nature. At the moment I heard it I was somewhat below the peak, leaning against a wall of rock facing the south. The sound seemed to come from above. It resembled that made by a thin stick or shingle when whirled rapidly in the air. At the same time there was a creaking, and sounds almost like wailing and groaning. A moment later, a slender column of white cloud, a hundred feet or more in height, but proportioned like a human figure, glided past the mountain over the black abyss below the eastern cliffs. That I was interested in these phenomena goes without saying. I was much more than interested ; and the fact that I was absolutely alone, in the dark, miles away from home, with a storm howling around me, was brought clearly to my mind. The legends of Chocorua, the Indian for whom this mountain was named, of his curse upon the whites, and of his melancholy death near these eastern cliffs, rose, for some illogical reason, into my memory.

The sounds in the air continued, and at one time made me wonder whether electric waves passing through the lowhanging clouds above me could produce them. There being no light accompanying the sounds, I dismissed this hypothesis as unsatisfactory. Once I thought that something was scratching and grinding down the side of a sloping ledge. As rain began falling thick and fast at the same moment, I seized my lantern and beat a retreat to the cave. As I gained the dizzy rock at the mouth of the cave, the heavens again spoke, and mist-forms swept past in front of me. The next moment I was at the bottom of the cave, wondering whether a temperature of 60°, which my thermometer recorded, justified wholly the gooseflesh that crept over me.

My lantern cast a clear, steady light into all parts of the cave. Now and then a flash of lightning showed where the entrance faced the east, and where one or two other cracks were open between the Cow and its rocky foundation. I lay perfectly motionless, pondering upon the strange sounds I had heard. My eyes rested upon several stones lying in the narrow space beyond my feet where the two rocks neared each other. Something moved there. A body had passed from the shelter of one stone to that of another. I held my breath, and watched. Again a brownish thing flashed past an opening, came nearer, darted forward into the light, vanished, reappeared, came clearly into view, shot back, and finally sped across a broad, well-lighted face of rock, and revealed itself as a large short-tailed mouse, — perhaps an Eastern Phenacomys as yet unknown to collectors. Although I did not move for a long time, he failed to reappear, and my only companion was a gauzy-winged fly which sat upon my knee and contemplated the flame of the lantern.

The rain continuing, I sang and whistled until after ten o’clock, when I crawled to the mouth of my cave and looked down into the depths beneath. A stone thrown far out, so as to clear the first few ledges, might fall eight hundred feet before it struck the rocks below. As I stared into the darkness, I found that much which had been invisible an hour earlier was now dimly outlined in black and white. The sky, too, showed gaps in its curtain, and the white lakes in the distant valleys were more silvery than before. The storm was over, the moon was at work eating the clouds, and soon, I hoped, the stars would keep their tryst. Lantern in hand, I crept up the rocks, and settled myself once more on the peak. All my friendly lights in the valley had gone out, and I was now alone in the sky.

Paugus, Passaconaway, and Whiteface were quite clearly outlined against each other and the sky. They seemed very near, however, so that it was easier for me to imagine myself on a lonely rock in the ocean, with huge waves about to overwhelm me, than to make those combing waves stand back three, eight, twelve miles and become spruce-covered mountains. Gradually other mountain outlines became discernible, and the cloud-curtain above showed folds and wrinkles, which in time wore out under the moon’s chafing, and let through a glimpse of Mars or Vega marvelously far away in that serene ether. Half an hour before midnight the pale disk of the moon appeared through the thin clouds, and at the witching hour she sailed out proudly into a little space of clear blue-black heaven. The wind came in fresher puffs, a snowy cloud-cap rested on the head of Paugus, and the air was so much colder that I was glad to put on both jersey and oilskin jacket. A dozen lakes and twenty-five mountain peaks were visible at half past twelve, and Mars had worked a place for his red eye so that it could look down through the breaking clouds without interruption. Drowsiness now overtook me, and in order to keep awake I was forced to walk rapidly up and down the small area of the top, or to jump about over the ledges farther south. About one o’clock a light flashed brightly from a point near the Maine line; perhaps in Fryeburg. At first I thought it might be a fire which would gather strength and size; then, as it appeared to move and come nearer, it looked more like the headlight of a locomotive. My glass made it seem smaller, and the motion was so slow and irregular that I thought the gleam might be from a doctor’s buggy, as the man of sickness took his way through the night.

My own light was now growing dim, so I extinguished it in order to save the remaining oil for emergencies. Immediately afterwards a bat flew against the lantern, and then perched upon a lichen - hung rock near by, to recover his composure. The moon slowly made way with the clouds, and by two o’clock a quarter part of the sky was clear. The mercury had dropped to 52°, and the moisture hurled against the mountain by the wind was condensed and sent boiling and seething up the sides of the peak. Tongues of fog lapped around me with the same spasmodic motion which flames display in rising from a plate of burning alcohol. At first they scarcely reached the peak; then they came to my feet, and swept past me around both sides of my platform; finally they flung themselves higher and higher, hiding not only the black valley from which they came, but Paugus and more distant peaks, the sky, the moon, and the glimmering stars. Suddenly from the fog-filled air came once more the gruesome sound which I had heard earlier in the night. Its cause was nearer to me now, and I felt sure that it was some creature of the air, and consequently nothing which could cause me inconvenience. I strained my eyes to see the creature as it passed, but in vain, until in its flight it chanced to cross the face of the moon. Then the mystery was solved. I saw that it was either a night-hawk or a bird of similar size.

The speed at which it was flying was wonderful. When it tacked or veered, it produced the extraordinary sounds which, with their echoes from the rocks, had so puzzled me at first. Once or twice during the night I had heard night-hawks squawking, and from this time on their harsh voices were heard at intervals mingled with the booming which, for some unexplained reason, they make by night as well as by day; after as well as during the breeding season.

A few minutes after two o’clock, a large meteor shot across a small patch of clear sky near the constellation Andromeda, and was quenched in the fog. From time to time other smaller ones flashed in brief glory in the same quarter of the heavens, and one brilliant fragment burned its way past Jupiter, as though measuring its passing glory with the light of the planet. The wind was falling, the temperature rising, and, following these two influences, the fog decreased, until its only remnants clung to the ponds and rivers far below. Two thirds of the sky were clear by three o’clock. In the east the Pleiades sparkled in mysterious consultation ; farther north Capella flashed her colored lights, and Venus, radiant with a lustre second only to Selene’s own, threw off the clouds which for an hour had concealed her loveliness, and claimed from Mars the foremost place in the triumph of the night. Her reign was short. At a quarter after three I noticed that the cloudbank which lay along the eastern and northern horizon was becoming more sharply defined by the gradual growth of a white band above it. A greater orb than Venus was undermining her power in the east. The white line imperceptibly turned to a delicate green, and extended its area to left and right and upward. The clouds in the high sky took on harder outlines and rounder shapes. Shadows were being cast among them, and a light was stealing through them from something brighter even than the yellow moon. The pale green band had changed to blue, the blue was deepening to violet, and through this violet sky the brightest meteor of the night passed slowly down until it met the hills. High in the sky the stars were growing dim, and the spaces between the clouds, which looked for all the world like a badly painted picture, were growing blue, deep real blue. The line of brightest light above the eastern clouds showed a margin of orange. Venus in the violet sky was still dazzling, but her glory was no longer of the night, but of the twilight. She was wonderful, in spite of the stronger light which was slowly overpowering her. Mars burned like a red coal low down in the west, unaffected thus far by the sun’s rays, while Jupiter, supreme among the high stars, was paling fast as the light of day rolled towards him.

The eastern sky looked strangely flat. Its colors were like a pastel drawing. Small very black clouds with hard outlines lay unrelieved against the violet, silver, and orange. A full hour had sped by since I first noted the coming of the day, and still the earth below slept on. Hark! up from the deep valley below the Cow comes a single birdvoice, but scarcely are its notes sprinkled upon the cool, clear air when a dozen, yes, fifty singers join their voices in a medley of morning music. The first songster was a white-throat, and the bulk of the chorus was made up of juncos and white-throats, the stronger song of Swainson’s and hermit thrushes coming in clearly now and then from points more distant from the peak. There was ecstasy in those matins. No sleepy choir of mortal men or women ever raised such honest, buoyant music in honor of the day’s coming. The birds love the day, and they love life for all that each day brings. They labor singing, and they sing their vespers, as they sing their matins, with hearts overflowing with joy and thanksgiving.

There is something inexpressibly touching and inspiring in the combination of fading night, with its planets still glowing, and the bird’s song of welcome to the day. Night is more eloquent than day in telling of the wonders of the vast creation. Day tells less of distance, more of detail; less of peace, more of contest; less of immortality, move of the perishable. The sun, with its dazzling light and burning beat, hides from us the stars, and those still depths as yet without stars. It narrows our limit of vision, and at the same time hurries us and worries us with our own tasks which we will not take cheerfully, and the tasks of others which are done so ill. Night tells not only of repose on earth, but of life in that far heaven where every star is a thing of motion and a creation full of mystery. Men who live only in great cities may be pitied for being atheists, for they see little beyond the impurity of man; but it seems incredible that a being with thoughts above appetite and imagination above lust should live through a night in the wilderness, with the stars to tell him of space, the dark depths of the sky to tell him of infinity, and his own mind to tell him of individuality, and yet doubt that some Being more powerful and less fickle than himself is in this universe. The bird-music coming before the night is ended combines the purest and most joyous element of the day with the deep meaning of the night. The birds bear witness to the ability of life to love its surroundings and to be happy. The night bears witness to the eternity of life and to the harmony of its laws.

Frank Bolles.