USA > New Hampshire > To Monadnock; the records of a mountain in New Hampshire through three centuries > Part 9
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TO MONADNOCK
and sound. The spruce twigs were our bed. I observed that, being laid bottom upward in a hot sun, as at the foot of our bed, the leaves turned pale-brown, as if boiled, and fell off very soon. The black spruce is certainly a very wild tree, and loves a primitive soil just made out of distintegrated granite. . .
Spruce was the prevailing tree; blueberry, the berry; S. thyr- soidea, the goldenrod; A. acuminatus, the aster (the only one I saw, and very common) ; Juncus trifidus, the juncus; and Aira flexuosa, the grass, of the mountain-top.
The two cotton-grasses named were very common and con- spicuous in and about the little meadows.
The Juncus trifidus was the common grass (or grass-like plant) of the very highest part of the mountain-the peak and for thirty rods downward-growing on the shelves and espe- cially on the edges of the scars rankly, and on this part of the mountain almost alone had it fruited,-for I think that I saw it occasionally lower and elsewhere on the rocky portion with- out fruit. . .
The birds which I noticed were: robins, chewinks, F. hye- malis, song sparrow, nighthawk, swallow (a few, probably barn swallow, one flying over the extreme summit), crows (some- times flew over, though mostly heard in the woods below), wood thrush (heard from woods below) ; and saw a warbler with a dark-marked breast and yellowish angle to wing and white throat, and heard a note once like a very large and powerful nuthatch. Some small hawks. . .
But, above all, this was an excellent place to observe the habits of the nighthawks. They were heard and seen regularly at sunset-one night it was at 7.10, or exactly at sunset- coming upward from the lower and more shaded portion of the rocky surface below our camp, with their spark, spark soon answered by a companion, for they seemed always to hunt in
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pairs ; yet both would dive and boom and, according to Wilson, only the male utters this sound. They pursued their game thus a short distance apart and some sixty or one hundred feet above the gray rocky surface, in the twilight, and the constant spark, spark seemed to be a sort of call-note to advertise each other of their neighborhood. Suddenly one would hover and flutter more stationarily for a moment, somewhat like a kingfisher, and then dive almost perpendicularly downward with a rush, for fifty feet, frequently within three or four rods of us; and the loud booming sound or rip was made just at the curve, as it ceased to fall, but whether voluntarily or involuntarily I know not. They appeared to be diving for their insect prey. What eyes they must have to be able to discern it beneath them against the rocks in the twilight! As I was walking about the camp, one flew low, within two feet of the surface, about me, and lit on the rock within three rods of me, and uttered a harsh note like c-o-w, c-o-w-hard and gritty and allied to their com- mon notes-which I thought expressive of anxiety, or to alarm me, or for its mate.
I suspect that their booming on a distant part of the mountain was the sound which I heard the first night, which was like very distant thunder, or the fall of a pile of lumber.
They did not fly or boom when there was a cloud or fog, and ceased pretty early in the night. They came up from the same quarter-the shaded rocks below-each night, two of them, and left off booming about 8 o'clock. Whether they then ceased hunting or withdrew to another part of the mountain, I know not. Yet I heard one the first night at 11.30 P. M., but, as it had been a rainy day and did not clear up here till some time late in the night, it may have been compelled to do its hunting then. They began to boom again at 4 A. M. (other birds about 4.30) and ceased about 4.20. By their color they
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are related to the gray rocks over which they flit and circle .*
As for quadrupeds, we saw none on the summit and only one small gray rabbit at the base of the mountain, but we saw the droppings of rabbits all over the mountain, and they must be the prevailing large animal; and we heard the motions probably of a mouse about our camp at night. We also found the skull of a rodent larger than a woodchuck or gray rabbit, and the tail-bones (may be of the same) some half-dozen inches long, and saw a large quantity of dark-brown oval droppings (q.v., preserved). I think that this was a porcupine, and I hear that they are found on the mountain. Mr. Wild saw one recently dead near the spring some sixteen years ago. I saw the ordure of some large quadruped, probably this, on the rocks in the pastures beneath the wood, composed chiefly of raspberry seeds.
As for insects : There were countless ants, large and middle- sized, which ran over our bed and inside our clothes. They swarmed all over the mountain. Had young in the dead spruce which we burned. Saw but half a dozen mosquitoes. Saw two or three common yellow butterflies and some larger red-brown ones, and moths. There were great flies, as big as horse-flies, with shining black abdomens and buff-colored bases to their wings. Disturbed a swarm of bees in a dead spruce on the ground, but they disappeared before I ascertained what kind they were. On the summit one noon, i.e. on the very apex, I was pestered by great swarms of small black wasps or winged ants about a quarter of an inch long, which fluttered about and settled on my head and face. Heard a fine (in the sod) cricket, a dog-day locust once or twice, and a creaking grasshopper.
Saw two or three frogs,-one large Rana fontinalis in that rocky pool on the southwest side, where I saw the large spawn
*[For Thoreau's notes of 1858 on the night hawks, see pages 130 and 139.]
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which I supposed to be bullfrog spawn two years ago, but now think must have been R. fontinalis spawn ; and there was a dark pollywog one inch long. This frog had a raised line on each side of back and was as large as a common bullfrog. I also heard the note once of some familiar large frog. The one or two smaller frogs which I saw elsewhere were perhaps the same.
There were a great many visitors to the summit, both by the south and north, i.e. the Jaffrey and Dublin paths, but they did not turn off from the beaten track. One noon, when I was on the top, I counted forty men, women and children around me, and more were constantly arriving while others were going. Certainly more than one hundred ascended in a day. When you got within thirty rods you saw them seated in a row along the gray parapets, like the inhabitants of a castle on a gala-day ; and when you behold Monadnock's blue summit fifty miles off in the horizon, you may imagine it covered with men, women and children in dresses of all colors, like an observatory on a muster-field. They appeared to be chiefly mechanics and farm- ers' boys and girls from the neighboring towns. The young men sat in rows with their legs dangling over the precipice, squinting through spy-glasses and shouting and hallooing to each new party that issued from the woods below. Some were playing cards; others were trying to see their house or their neighbor's. Children were running about and playing as usual. Indeed, this peak in pleasant weather is the most trivial place in New England. There are probably more arrivals daily than at any of the White Mountain houses. Several were busily engraving their names on the rocks with cold-chisels, whose incessant clink you heard, and they had but little leisure to look off. The mountain was not free of them from sunrise to sunset, though most of them left about 5 P. M.
The rocky area or summit of the mountain above the forest,
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which I am describing, is of an irregular form from a mile and a half to two miles long, north and south, by three-quarters to a mile wide at the widest part, in proportion as you descend lower on the rocks.
There are three main spurs, viz. the northeast or chief one, toward Monadnock Pond and the village of Dublin; the south- erly, to Mann's [?]; and the northerly, over which the Dublin path runs. These afford the three longest walks. The first is the longest, wildest and least-frequented, and rises to the great- est height at a distance from the central peak. The second affords the broadest and smoothest walk. The third is the highest of all at first, but falls off directly. There are also two lesser and lower spurs, on the westerly side,-one quite short, towards Troy, by which you might come up from that side, the other yet lower, but longer, from north 75°, west. But above all, for walking, there is an elevated rocky plateau, so to call it, extending to half a mile east of the summit, or about a hundred rods east of the ravine. This slopes gently toward the south and east by successive terraces of rock, and affords the most amusing walking of any part of the mountain. The most in- teresting precipices are on the south side of the peak. The greatest abruptness of descent (from top to bottom) is on the west side between the two lesser ravines. . .
The basis of my map was the distance from the summit to the second camp, measured very rudely by casting a stone be- fore. Pacing the distance of an easy cast, I found it about ten rods, and thirteen such stone's throws, or one hundred and thirty rods, carried me to the camp. As I had the course, from the summit and from the camp, of the principal points, I could tell the rest nearly enough. It was about fifty rods from the summit to the ravine and eighty more to the camp. . .
They who simply climb to the peak of Monadnock have seen
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but little of the mountain. I came not to look off from it, but to look at it. The view of the pinnacle itself from the plateau below surpasses any view which you get from the summit. It is indispensable to see the top itself and the sierra of its outline from one side. The great charm is not to look off from a height but to walk over this novel and wonderful rocky surface. Moreover, if you would enjoy the prospect, it is, methinks, most interesting when you look from the edge of the plateau imme- diately down into the valleys, or where the edge of the lichen- clad rocks, only two or three rods from you, is seen as the lower frame of a picture of green fields, lakes and woods, suggesting a more stupendous precipice than exists. There are much more surprising effects of this nature along the edge of the plateau than on the summit. It is remarkable what haste the visitors make to get to the top of the mountain and then look away from it. ..
But what a study for rocks does this mountain-top afford! The rocks of the pinnacle have many regular nearly right- angled slants to the southeast, covered with the dark-brown (or olivaceous) umbilicaria. The rocks which you walk over are often not only worn smooth and slippery, but grooved out, as if with some huge rounded tool, or they are much oftener convex. You see huge buttresses or walls put up by Titans, with true joints, only recently loosened by an earthquake as if ready to topple down. Some of the lichen-clad rocks are of a rude brick-loaf form or small cottage form. You see large boulders, left just on the edge of the steep descent of the plateau, commonly resting on a few small stones, as if the Titans were in the very act of transporting them when they were inter- rupted ; some left standing on their ends, and almost the only convenient rocks in whose shade you can sit sometimes. Often you come to a long, thin rock, two or three rods long, which
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has the appearance of having just been split into underpinning- stone,-perfectly straight-edged and parallel pieces and lying as it fell, ready for use, just as the mason leaves it. Post-stones, door-stones, etc. There were evidences of recent motion as well as ancient. I saw on the flat sloping surface of rock a fresher white space exactly the size and form of a rock which was lying by it and which had lately covered it. What had upset it? There were many of these whitish marks where the dead spruce had lain but was now decayed or gone.
The rocks were not only coarsely grooved but finely scratched from northwest to southeast, commonly about S. 10° E. (but between 5° and 20°, east, or, by the true meridian, more yet). I could have steered myself in a fog by them. . .
The rocks are very commonly in terraces with a smooth rounded edge to each. The most remarkable of these terraces that I noticed was between the second camp and the summit, say some forty rods from the camp. These terraces were some six rods long and six to ten feet wide, but the top slanting con- siderably back into the mountain, and they were about four or five feet high each. There were four such in succession here, running S. 30° E. The edges of these terraces, here and com- monly, were rounded and grooved like the rocks at a waterfall, as if water and gravel had long washed over them. . .
There were all over the rocky summit peculiar yellowish gravelly spots which I called scars, commonly of an oval form, not in low but elevated places, and looking as if a little mound had been cut off there. The edges of these, on the very pinnacle of the mountain, were formed of the Juncus trifidus, now gone to seed. If they had been in hollows, you would have said that they were the bottom of little pools, now dried up, where the gravel and stones had been washed bare. I am not certain about their origin. They suggested some force which had sud-
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denly cut off and washed or blown away the surface there, like a thunder-spout, or lightning, or a hurricane. Such spots were very numerous, and had the appearance of a fresh scar. . .
Though there is little or no soil upon the rocks, owing appar- ently to the coolness, if not moisture, you have rather the vege- tation of a swamp than that of the sterile rocky ground below. For example, of the six prevailing trees and shrubs-low blue- berry, black spruce, lambkill, black choke-berry, wild holly, and Viburnum nudum-all but the first are characteristic of swampy and low ground, to say nothing of the commonness of wet mosses, the two species of cotton-grass, and some other plants of the swamp and meadow. Little meadows and swamps are scat- tered all over the mountain upon and amid the rocks. You are continually struck with the proximity of gray and lichen-clad rock and mossy bog. You tread alternately on wet moss, into which you sink, and dry, lichen-covered rocks. You will be surprised to see the vegetation of a swamp on a little shelf only a foot or two over,-a bog a foot wide with cotton-grass waving over it,-in the midst of cladonia lichens so dry as to burn like tinder. The edges of the little swamps-if not their middle- are commonly white with cotton-grass. The Arenaria Græn- landica often belies its name here, growing in wet places as often as in dry ones, together with eriophorum. . .
Water stands in shallow pools on almost every rocky shelf. The largest pool of open water which I found was on the south- west side of the summit, and was four rods long by fifteen to twenty feet in width and a foot deep. Wool- and cotton-grass grew around it, and there was a dark green moss and some mud at the bottom. There was a smoother similar pool on the next shelf above it. These were about the same size in June and in August, and apparently never dry up. There was also the one in which I bathed, near the northeast little meadow. I had
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a delicious bath there, though the water was warm, but there was a pleasant strong and drying wind blowing over the ridge, and when I had bathed, the rock felt like plush to my feet.
The cladonia lichens were so dry at midday, even the day after rain, that they served as tinder to kindle our fire-indeed, we were somewhat troubled to prevent the fire from spreading amid them-yet at night, even before sundown, and morning, when we got our supper and breakfast, they would not burn thus, having absorbed moisture. They had then a cool and slightly damp feeling.
Every evening, excepting, perhaps, the Sunday evening after the rain of the day before, we saw not long after sundown a slight scud or mist begin to strike the summit above us, though it was perfectly fair weather generally and there were no clouds over the lower country.
First, perhaps, looking up, we would see a small scud not more than a rod in diameter drifting just over the apex of the mountain. In a few minutes more a somewhat larger one would suddenly make its appearance, and perhaps strike the topmost rocks and invest them for a moment, but as rapidly drift off northeast and disappear. Looking into the southwest sky, which was clear, we would see all at once a small cloud or scud a rod in diameter beginning to form half a mile from the summit, and as it came on, it rapidly grew in a mysterious manner till it was fifty rods or more in diameter, and draped and concealed for a few moments all the summit above us, and then passed off and disappeared northeastward just as it had come on. So that it appeared as if the clouds had been attracted by the sum- mit. They also seemed to rise a little as they approached it, and endeavor to go over without striking. I gave this account of it to myself. They were not attracted to the summit, but simply generated there and not elsewhere. There would be a
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warm southwest wind blowing, which was full of moisture, alike over the mountain and all the rest of the country. The summit of the mountain being cool, this warm air began to feel its influence at half a mile distance, and its moisture was rapidly condensed into a small cloud, which expanded as it advanced, and evaporated again as it left the summit. This would go on, apparently, as the coolness of the mountain in- creased, and generally the cloud or mist reached down as low as our camp from time to time, in the night.
One evening, as I was watching these small clouds forming and dissolving about the summit of our mountain, the sun hav- ing just set, I cast my eyes toward the dim bluish outline of the Green Mountains in the clear red evening sky, and, to my delight, I detected exactly over the summit of Saddleback Mountain, some sixty miles distant, its own little cloud, shaped like a parasol and answering to that which capped our mountain, though in this case it did not rest on the mountain, but was considerably above it, and all the rest of the west horizon for forty miles was cloudless. I was convinced that it was the local cloud of that mountain because it was directly over the summit, was of small size and of umbrella form answering to the summit, and there was no other cloud to be seen in that horizon. It was a beautiful and serene object, a sort of for- tunate isle-like any other cloud in the sunset sky.
That the summit of this mountain is cool appears from the fact that the days which we spent there were remarkably warm ones in the country below, and were the common subject of conversation when we came down, yet we had known nothing about it, and went warmly clad with comfort all the while, as we had not done immediately before and did not after we de- scended. We immediately perceived the difference as we de- scended. It was warm enough for us on the summit, and often,
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in the sheltered southeast hollows, too warm, as we happened to be clad, but on the summits and ridges it chanced that there was always wind, and in this wind it was commonly cooler than we liked. Also our water, which was evidently rain-water caught in the rocks and retained by the moss, was cool enough if it were only in a little crevice under the shelter of a rock, i.e. out of the sun.
Yet, though it was thus cool, and there was this scud or mist on the top more or less every night, there was, as we should say, no dew on the summit any morning. The lichens, blue- berry bushes, etc., did not feel wet, nor did they wet you in the least, however early you walked in them. I rose to observe the sunrise and picked blueberries every morning before sunrise, and saw no dew, only once some minute dewdrops on some low grass-tips, and that was amid the wet moss of a little bog, but the lambkill and blueberry bushes above it were not wet. Yet the Thursday when we left, we found that though there was no dew on the summit there was a very heavy dew in the pas- tures below, and our feet and clothes were completely wet with it, as much as if we had stood in water.
I should say that there were no true springs (?) on the sum- mit, but simply rain-water caught in the hollows of the rocks or retained by the moss. I observed that the well which we made for washing-by digging up the moss with our hands-half dried up in the sun by day, but filled up again at night.
The principal stream on the summit-if not the only one-in the rocky portion described, was on the southeast side, between our two camps, though it did not distinctly show itself at present except a little below our elevation. For the most part you could only see that water had flowed there between and under the rocks. . .
I saw what I took to be a thistle-down going low over the summit, and might have caught it, though I saw no thistle on
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the mountain-top nor any other plant from which this could have come. (I have no doubt it was a thistle by its appearance and its season.) It had evidently come up from the country below. This shows that it may carry its seeds to higher regions than it inhabits, and it suggests how the seeds of some mountain plants, as the Solidago thyrsoidea, may be conveyed from moun- tain to mountain, also other solidagos, asters, epilobiums, wil- lows, etc.
The descent through the woods from our first camp to the site of the shanty is from a third to half a mile. You then come to the raspberry and fern-scented region. There were some raspberries still left, but they were fast dropping off.
There was a good view of the mountain from just above the pond, some two miles from Troy. The varying outline of a mountain is due to the crest of different spurs, as seen from different sides. Even a small spur, if you are near, may conceal a much larger one and give its own outline to the mountain, and at the same time one which extends directly toward you is not noticed at all, however important, though, as you travel round the mountain, this may gradually come into view and finally its crest may be one-half or more of the outline presented. It may partly account for the peaked or pyramidal form of mountains that one crest may be seen through the gaps of another and so fill up the line. . .
I carried on this excursion the following articles (beside what I wore), viz .:
One shirt. One pair socks. Two pocket-handkerchiefs. One thick waistcoat.
One flannel shirt (had no occasion to use it). India-rubber coat. Three bosoms. Towel and soap. Pins, needle, thread.
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A blanket (would have been more convenient if stitched up in the form of a bag).
Cap for the night.
Map and compass.
Spy-glass and microscope and tape.
Saw and hatchet.
Plant-book and blotting paper.
Paper and stamps.
Botany.
Insect and lichen boxes.
Jack-knife.
Matches.
Waste paper and twine.
Iron spoon and pint dipper with handle. All in a knapsack. Umbrella.
N. B. Add to the above next time a small bag, which may be stuffed with moss or the like for a pillow.
For provision for one, six days, carried :-
21/2 lbs. of salt beef and tongue. Take only salt beef next time, 2 to 3 lbs.
18 hard-boiled eggs.
Omit eggs.
21/2 lbs. sugar and a little salt. About 1/4 lb. of tea.
2 lbs. of sugar would have done. 2/3 as much would have done.
2 lbs. hard-bread.
1/2 loaf home-made bread and a piece of cake.
The right amount of bread, but might have taken more home- made and more solid sweet cake.
N. B. carry salt (or some of it) in a wafer-box. Also some sugar in a small box.
N. B. Observe next time: the source of the stream which crosses the path; what species of swallow flies over the moun- tain; what the grass which gives the pastures a yellowish color seen from the summit. [But Thoreau died in May, 1862, be- fore again visiting the mountain.]
That area is literally a chaos, an example of what the earth was before it was finished.
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II
Later notes from Thoreau's Journal, by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company.
Aug. 28 [1860]. There was no prolonged melody of birds on the summit of Monadnock. They for the most part emitted sounds there more in harmony with the silent rocks-a faint chipping or chinking-often somewhat as of two stones struck together.
Sept. 1 [1860]. We could not judge correctly of distances on the mountain, but greatly exaggerated them. That surface was so novel-suggested so many thoughts-and also so uneven, a few steps sufficing to conceal the least ground as if it were half a mile away, that we would have an impression as if we had traveled a mile when we had come only forty rods. We no longer thought and reasoned as in the plain.
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