The Heart of Monadnock/Chapter 1
THE HEART OF
MONADNOCK
I
Monadnock! Stately mountain, solitary sentinel of haunting beauty and intimate and irresistible allurement! Mountain loved of poets and artists; mountain which knew and loved in return the footsteps of Emerson and Thoreau and Thayer.
A strangely individual mass it is in its calm isolation, dominating subtly the entire countryside. It does not rise to great heights as mountains go, but so bold is its long couchant outline, so stern is its splendid solitude, so imposing is its brooding strength that a grandeur lies upon it that many a mightier mountain lacks. Hugely massed to draw the clouds, shaped through the deliberate roll of bewildering centuries, by hammer soft as snow flakes fall, it draws at last the heart from the bosom of its lovers.
"Oh, wise man! hearest thou half it tells?"
High above tree-line it lifts its mighty ridges, now blue, now gray, now darkly purple, now rose-flushed and amethyst and malachite. From the bold peak five vast shoulders, clearly defined, fall away in different directions, and stretching between them are wide, greenclad hollows, sometimes sharp and precipitous, sometimes shallow and broad. These rough, wild shoulders descend, now in stately ledges, now in sheer precipices, till their jagged outlines are lost in the thick mat of spruce which overspreads the steep sides. These undaunted little trees, gnarled and dwarfed by the fierce winter winds and biting New England tempests, cling stoutly with passionate devotion to the mother-rock, sending their tough roots along the surface of the resisting granite, and pouring the smaller rootlets like molten metal into every crack and cranny. Further down the slopes their hard, cold emerald melts into sunny, mellow green of the maples and birches and poplars that flaunt their gay skirts around the mountain's base, like living flounces.
A hundred years ago, or more, report says, these craggy and almost inaccessible ravines, as they were then, were lairs of wild wolf-packs whose prowlings played havoc with the woolly flocks far below. The desperate farmers at last combined to make an end of these trackless, inaccessible lurking grounds and they set fire to the whole vast triangle. A Titanic conflagration! But out of this fierce battle-ground of flame and rock and crouching, murderous tangle, came at last with the healing years, to the vision of mankind, the rocky, treeless heights, with the serene grandeur that is now Monadnock.
How the poets have loved this mountain! How their genius has lifted it to such a position as Mt. Soracte held of old in the heart of the early Romans! Into his haunting epic on Monadnock, the gentle Sage of New England crystallized his profound love for the inscrutable, Sphinx-like Spirit of the mountain—"Well-known, but loving not a name." Eagerly the lonely soul of Thoreau followed the "Climbing Oreads to their arcades." On the hearts of Longfellow, Whittier, Channing, a host of kindred minds, the magnetic touch of the mountain fell and held them in its spell.
"Monadnock, Wise Old Giant, busy with his 'sky affairs,' who makes us sane and sober and free from little things, if we trust him,—this Monadnock came to mean everything in the world that is helping and healing and full of quiet. He never failed us."
Thus came English Kipling under the mystic spell, in his Vermont home, whence he watched day by day, with growing devotion the silent Titan, resting against the distant New Hampshire horizon.
The Wise Old Giant! To all who listen he speaks a varying tongue. Those who have ears may hear him. "Oh, Wise Man! hearest thou the least part?"
There are many approaches to the heart of this Monadnock. Those who climb the rough main trail, merely to look from the peak, do not grasp even the fringe of its mysteries. Even to the dwellers on the spreading plains below, though it may be to them a vision of artistic delight, or as it was to Kipling, a mute Teacher, even to these, manifold as may be the many lessons the granite pile may offer them, but a tithe of its joy is known. They may know and love its ever-changing color and line and beauty; they may delight in its retreat and approach with the shifting whim of the atmosphere; they may see it now in the austere purity and remoteness of its winter garment of ice and snow, sparkling like a million diamonds, or now impalpable, mysterious, dimly vast in a shroud of cloud,—but they may not, cannot, understand what it grows to mean to the mountain lover who dwells close to its shrine and knows it as a lover knows the heart of his mistress. Not only to look out from it, but to look deeply into it, gives us the inexhaustible lore that is hidden in the mountain's mighty heart.
All through the sweeping forests that clothe the climbing, precipitous mountain sides, are innumerable woodland trails sometimes clearly defined, sometimes merely blazed and often almost invisible save to the trained eye; up on the bare, wide cliffs above the tree-line the directions are only marked by tiny cairns—two or three stones placed one on the other. It is not hard for the inexpert to lose his way. Miles of these sun-flecked narrow paths thread through deep, quiet forests, broken constantly by the out-cropping crags, showing how slight is the covering that mother-earth has drawn over the bed-rock; lines of miniature cairns beckon along the calm and sunny cliffs; countless mossy nooks sheltered by overhanging rock and huge tree sentinels invite the loiterer to rest; up above in the sunshine, hundreds of stone-wrought couches upholstered with gray-green moss allure one. Up here one can gaze his fill at the grave, brooding Titan reigning supreme, outlined against the ultramarine sky, giving his majestic salutation alike to distant sea and to encircling plain.
Mute at first may be the Mountain Spirit. It has no words for the vagrant soul whose ears are plugged with earthly things. But to the weary heart which throws itself into those tender arms; to the inquiring and the puzzled; to the wistful and the sorrowful; to the eager and searching; and above all to the passionately loving,—to all such, and soon, "Speaking or mute its silence hath a tongue." To the mountain-lover the mystic spirit comes like an invisible presence, _-_plate_02.png)
ENFOLDED IS THIS QUAINT HOSTELRY BY LOVING MOUNTAIN-ARMS
against the irregular cliffs that rise behind it, the straggling little mountain-house suns itself, sheltering season by season, the lovers of Monadnock. From this tiny plateau start nearly all the trails that wind up through forest and ravine. Closely enfolded is this quaint hostelry by loving mountain-arms of descending green which enfold it as the slopes decline gently to the south and west, so that the setting of the house resembles a wide green harbor.
Up the road leading from the main thoroughfare which is more than a mile and a half away, come the casual visitors day by day; those who will scramble up the mountain by the main trail, rejoicing if they accomplish the ascent in record-time. But record-time and the Mountain Spirit have no common denominator. For most of these scrambling tourists the mountain is but a rough mass to be surmounted; stony paths to be trodden upon; a peak to be looked off from; a plateau to be eaten upon; crags to be descended from. But among these now and then are those who even if they come but for the single trip, would fain listen and look and who catch dim glimpses of a mystic world just out of sight. For these the mountain has its own whispered word; a revival of the heart; a scarcely understood, elusive something that lives like a clearly etched memory, with almost a wonder at its vividness.
But only to those who linger here week by week and year by year, held by the growing and enchanting spell of the Wise Old Giant is given the Open Sesame to his garnered wisdom and strength. But one may stay at the little hostelry for many weeks and not be able to explore every threadlike path with all the twisting links and visit every nook he loves; for when the fall day comes when he must sighingly descend to ordinary life again, something has always been left to next year.
But through the winter days that follow, there remains within the heart, all through the swirl of city life, with its hammering claims and its tangled experiences and its smiting sorrows, an inner shrine—a sort of Sabbath of the soul, whither the mountain-lover may retreat as to an unassailable refuge. The wild clamor of the world, it is true, may shut out for weeks at a time the memory of that peaceful altar; his tired ears may become sealed to the echo of that mystic voice that brought to him marvellous things; and then suddenly almost without volition on his part, in some desperate moment he finds himself once more encompassed by the strange peace of that inner sanctuary. Again he learns that the strength of the mountain is indeed part of his very soul; that the whispers of the Wise Old Giant were no dream but a divine reality.