A night on Mt. Washington.

July 7. 

Wednesday. Having engaged the services of Wentworth to carry up some of our baggage and to keep our camp, we rode onward to the Glen House, eight miles further, sending back our horse and wagon to his house. 

This road passes through what is called the Pinkham Notch, in Pinkham’s Grant, the land, a large tract, having been given away to Pinkham for making the road a good while since. Wentworth has lived here thirty years and is a native. 

Have occasional views of Mt. Washington or a spur of it, etc. 

Get by roadside, in bloom some time, Geum macrophyllum; also, in a damp place, Platanthera dilatata, a narrow White spike. 

Turned off a little to the right to see Glen Ellis Falls. 

Began the ascent by the mountain road at 11.30 A.M.

For about the first three quarters of a mile of steady (winding) ascent the wood was spruce, yellow birch (some, generally the largest, with a very rough, coarse, scaly bark, but other trees equally large had a beautifully smooth bark, and Wentworth called these “silver birch,” it appeared not to depend on age merely), hemlock, beech, canoe birch (according to Willey, “most abundant in the districts formerly burnt”), rock maple, fir, mountain maple (called by Wentworth bastard maple), northern wild cherry, striped maple, etc. 

At about a mile and three quarters spruce prevails, and rock maple, beech, and hemlock, etc., disappear. At three miles, or near the limit of trees, fir (increasing) and spruce chiefly prevail. And near by was the foot of the ledge and limit of trees, only their dead trunks standing, probably fir and spruce, about the shanty where we spent the night with the colliers.

I went on nearly a mile and a half further, and found many new alpine plants and returned to this shanty. A merry collier and his assistant, who had been making coal for the summit and were preparing to leave the next morning, made us welcome to this shanty and entertained us with their talk. We here boiled some of our beef-tongues, a very strong wind pouring in gusts down the funnel and scattering the fire about through the cracked stove. 

This man, named Page, had imported goats on to the mountain, and milked them to supply us with milk for our coffee. The road here ran north and south to get round the ledge. The wind, blowing down the funnel, set fire to a pile of dirty bed quilts when I was out, and came near burning up the building. 

There were many barrels of spoiled beef in the cellar, and he said that a person coming down the mountain some time ago looked into the cellar and saw five wildcats (loups-cerviers) there. Page had heard two fighting like-cats near by a few nights before. 

The wind blowed very strong and in gusts this night, but he said it was nothing to what it was sometimes, when the building rocked four inches.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 7, 1858

When we looked up in the night we saw the stars were bright as in winter.

July 6. 

Tuesday. 5.35 A. M. —Keep on through North Tamworth, and breakfast by shore of one of the Ossipee Lakes. 

July 6, 2018

Chocorua north-northwest. Hear and see loons and see a peetweet’s egg washed up. A shallow-shored pond, too shallow for fishing, with a few breams seen near shore; some pontederia and target weed in it. 

Travelling thus toward the White Mountains, the mountains fairly begin with Red Hill and Ossipee Mountain, but the White Mountain scenery proper on the high hillside road in Madison before entering Conway, where you see Chocorua on the left, Mote Mountain ahead, Doublehead, and some of the White Mountains proper beyond, i. e. a sharp peak. 

We fished in vain in a small clear pond by the road side in Madison. 

Chocorua is as interesting a peak as any to remember. You may be jogging along steadily for a day before you get round it and leave it behind, first seeing it on the north, then northwest, then west, and at last south westerly, ever stern, rugged and inaccessible, and omnipresent. It was seen from Gilmanton to Conway, and from Moultonboro was the ruling feature. 

The scenery in Conway and onward to North Conway is surprisingly grand. You are steadily advancing into an amphitheatre of mountains.

I do not know exactly how long we had seen one of the highest peaks before us in the extreme northwest, with snow on its side just below the summit, but a little beyond Conway a boy called it Mt. Washington. I think it was visible just before entering Conway village. If Mt. Washington, the snow must have been in Tuckerman’s Ravine, which, methinks, is rather too low. Perhaps it was that we afterward saw on Mt. Adams. There was the regular dark pyramid of Kearsarge at first in front, then, as you proceed to North Conway, on our right, with its deserted hotel on the summit, and Mote Mountain accompanies you on the left, and high, bare rocky precipices at last on the same side. 

The road, which is for the most part level, winds along the Saco through groves of maples, etc., on the level intervals, with so little of rugged New Hampshire under your feet, often soft and sandy road. The scenery is remarkable for this contrast of level interval with soft and shady groves, with mountain grandeur and ruggedness. Often from the midst of level maple groves, which remind you only of classic lowlands, you look out through a vista to the most New Hampshire generally, quite unexpected by me, and suggests a superior culture. 

We at length crossed the Saco from the left to the, right side of the valley, going over or through three channels. After leaving North Conway, the higher White Mountains were less seen, if at all. They had not appeared in pinnacles, as sometimes described, but broad and massive. 

Only one of the higher peaks or summits (called by the boy Mt. Washington) was conspicuous. The snow near the top was conspicuous here thirty miles off. The summit appeared dark, the rocks just beneath pale-brown (forenoon) (not flesh-colored like Chocorua), and below, green, wooded. 

The road to-day from Tamworth almost to the base of Mt. Washington was better on the whole, less hilly, than through Gilmanton to Tamworth; i. e., the hills were not so long and tedious. 

At Bartlett Corner we turned up the Ellis River and took our nooning on the bank of the river, by the bridge just this side of Jackson Centre, in a rock maple grove. Saw snow on Mt. Carter (?) from this road. There are but few narrow intervals on this road, — two or three only after passing Jackson, — and each is improved by a settler. We see the handsome Malva sylvestris, an introduced flower, by roadside, apparently in prime, and also in Conway, and hear the night warbler all along thus far. 

Saw the bones of a bear at Wentworth’s house, and camped, rather late, on right-hand side of road just beyond, or a little more than four miles from Jackson. The wood was canoe birch and some yellow (see little of the small white birch as far as to the neighborhood of the mountains), rock maple, spruce, fir, Populus tremuliformis, and one grandidentata, etc. 

In this deep vale between the mountains, the sun set very early to us, but we saw it on the mountains long after. Heard at evening the wood thrush, veery, white-throated sparrow, etc., and I found a fresh nest in a fir, made of hemlock twigs, etc., when I was getting twigs for a bed. The mosquitoes troubled us in the evening and just before dawn, but not seriously in the middle of the night. This, I find, is the way with them generally. 

Wentworth said he was much troubled by the bears. They killed his sheep and calves and destroyed his corn when in the milk, close by his house. He has trapped and killed many of them and brought home and reared the young. 

When we looked up in the night we saw that the stars were bright as in winter, owing to the clear cold air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1858

When we looked up in

the night we saw the stars were

bright as in winter

Ossipee Mountain

July 5. 

July 5, 2018

Monday. Continue on through Senter Harbor and ascend Red Hill in Moultonboro. 

On this ascent I notice the Erigercm annuus, which we have not, me thinks, i. e. purple fleabane (for it is commonly purplish), hairy with thin leaves and broader than the strigosus. Notice the Comandra umbellata, with leaves in three very regular spiral lines. 

Dr. Jackson says that Red Hill is so called from the uva-ursi on it turning red in the fall. 

On the top we boil a dipper of tea for our dinner and spend some hours, having carried up water the last half-mile. Enjoyed the famous view of Winnepiseogee and its islands southeasterly and Squam Lake on the west, but I was as much attracted at this hour by the wild mountain view on the northward. 

Chocorua and the Sandwich Mountains a dozen miles off seemed the boundary of cultivation on that side, as indeed they are. They are, as it were, the impassable southern barrier of the mountain region, themselves lofty and bare, and filling the whole northerly horizon, with the broad vale or valley of Sandwich between you and them; and over their ridges, in one or two places, you detected a narrow, blue edging or a peak of the loftier White Mountains proper (or so called). 

Ossipee Mountain is on the east, near by; Chocorua (which the inhabitants pronounce She-corway or Corway), in some respects the wildest and most imposing of all the White Mountain peaks, north of northeast, bare rocks, slightly flesh-colored; some large mountains, perhaps the Franconia, far north westerly; Ragged (??) Mountain, south of west; Kearsarge, southwest; Monadnock (?), dim and distant blue, and some other mountains as distant, more easterly; Suncook Mountain, south—southeast, and, beyond the lake, south of southeast, Copple-Crown Mountain (?). 

Then I looked at the near Ossipee Mountain (and some others), I saw first smooth pastures around the base or extending part way up, then the light green of deciduous trees (probably oak, birch, maple, etc.), looking dense and shrubby, and above all the rest, looking like permanent shadows, dark saddles of spruce or fir or both on the summits. 

Jackson says larch, spruce, and birch reach to the summit of Ossipee Mountain. The landscape is spotted, like a leopard-skin, with large squarish patches of light-green and darker forests and blue lakes, etc., etc. 

On the top I found Potentilla tridentaia, out a good while, choke-berry, red lily, dwarfish red oaks, Caren: N owe-Anglia? (?), and a carex scoparia-like. Apparently the common Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, and just below, in the shrubbery, the Vaccinium Canadense was the prevailing one. Just below top, a clematis, and, as you descended, the red oak, growing larger, canoe birch, some small white birch, red maple, rock maple, Populus tremuliformis, diervilla (very common), etc., etc.

Heard the chewink on the summit, and saw an ant hill there, within six rods of apex, about seven by six feet in diameter and sixteen inches high, with grass growing on all sides of it. This reminded me of the great ant-hills I saw on Chesterfield Mountain, opposite Brattleboro. 

Descended, and rode along the west and northwest side of Ossipee Mountain. Sandwich, in a large level space surrounded by mountains, lay on our left. Here first, in Moultonboro, I heard the tea-lee of the white throated sparrow. We were all the afternoon riding along under Ossipee Mountain, which would not be left behind, unexpectedly large still, louring over your path. 

Crossed Bearcamp River, a shallow but  unexpectedly sluggish stream, which empties into Ossipee Lake. Have new and memorable views of Chocorua, as we get round it eastward. 

Stop at Tamworth village for the night. We are now near the edge of a wild and unsettlable mountain region, lying northwest, apparently including parts of Albany and Waterville. The landlord said that bears were plenty in it; that there was a little interval on Swift River that might be occupied, and that was all. Norcross gets his lumber in that region, on Mad and Swift Rivers, as I understood; and on Swift River, as near as I could learn, was the only road leading into it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 5, 1858

Heard the chewink on the summit. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chewink (Rufous-sided Towhee)

It is far more independent to travel on foot

July 4. 

July 4, 2021

Sunday. A. M. — Clears up after a rainy night. 

Get our breakfast apparently in the northern part of Loudon, where we find, in a beech and maple wood, Panax quinquefolium, apparently not quite out, Osmorrhiza brevistylis (or hairy uraspermum), gone to seed, which Bigelow refers to woods on Concord Turn pike, i. e. hairy sweet cicely. Also ternate polypody (?). Saw a chestnut tree in Loudon.

Leaving Loudon Ridge on the right we continued on by the Hollow Road — a long way through the forest without houses — through a part of Canterbury into Gilmanton Factory village. 

I see the Ribes prostratum, or fetid currant, by roadside, already red, as also the red elder-berries, ripe or red. Strawberries were abundant by the roadside and in the grass on hillsides everywhere, with the seeds conspicuous, sunk in pits on the surface. (Vide a leaf of same kind pressed.) 

The Merrimack at Merrimack, where I walked, -— half a mile or more below my last camp on it in ’39, — had gone down two or three feet within a few days, and the muddy and slimy shore was covered with the tracks of many small animals, apparently three-toed sand pipers, minks, turtles, squirrels, perhaps mice, and some much larger quadrupeds. 

The Solidago lanceolata, not out, was common along the shore. Wool-grass without black sheaths, and a very slender variety with it; also Carex crinita. 

We continue along through Gilmanton to Meredith Bridge, passing the Suncook Mountain on our right, a long, barren rocky range overlooking Lake Winnepiseogee. Turn down a lane five or six miles beyond the bridge and spend the midday near a bay of the lake. 

Polygonum cilinode, apparently not long. I hear song sparrows there among the rocks, with a totally new strain, ending whit whit, whit whit, whit whit whit. They had also the common strain. 

We had begun to see from Gilmanton, from high hills in the road, the sharp rocky peak of Chocorua in the north, to the right of the lower Red Hill. It was of a pale-butt color, with apparently the Sandwich Mountains west of it and Ossipee Mountain on the right. 

The goldfinch was more common than at home, and the fragrant fern was perceived oftener. The evergreen-forest note frequently heard. 

It is far more independent to travel on foot. You have to sacrifice so much to the horse. You cannot choose the most agreeable places in which to spend the noon, commanding the finest views, because commonly there is no water there, or you cannot get there with your horse. 

New Hampshire being a more hilly and newer State than Massachusetts, it is very difficult to find a suitable place to camp near the road, affording Water, a good prospect, and retirement. We several times rode on as much as ten miles with a tired horse, looking in vain for such a spot. and then almost invariably camped in some low, unpleasant spot. 

There are very few, scarcely any, lanes, or even paths and bars along the road. Having got beyond the range of the chestnut, the few bars that might be taken down are long and heavy planks or slabs, intended to confine sheep, and there is no passable road behind. And beside, when you have chosen a place one must stay be hind to watch your effects, while the other looks about. 

I frequently envied the independence of the walker, who can spend the midday hours and take his lunch in the most agreeable spot on his route. The only alternative is to spend your noon at some trivial inn, pestered by flies and tavern loungers. 

Camped within a mile south of Senter Harbor, in a birch wood on the right near the lake. Heard in the night a loon, screech owl, and cuckoo, and our horse, tied to a slender birch close by, restlessly pawing the ground all night and whinnering to us whenever we showed ourselves, asking for something more than meat to fill his belly with. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 4, 1858

Continuing toward White Mountains in a private carriage with Edward Hoar

July 3.

Continued along in a slight rain through Bedford, crossing to Manchester, and driving by a brook in Hookset just above Pinnacle. Then through Allenstown and Pembroke, with its long street, to Loudon, leaving Concord on the left.

Along the sandy roadside in a pitch pine wood in Loudon, much apparent Calystegia spithamaza in bloom, but I think with reddish flowers. Probably same with my New Bedford plant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 3, 1858

Start for White Mountains

July 2. 

A. M. —Start for White Mountains in a private carriage with Edward Hoar. 

Notice in a shallow pool on a rock on a hilltop, in road in North Chelmsford, a rather peculiar-looking Alisma Plantago, with long reddish petioles, just budded. 

Spent the noon close by the old Dunstable graveyard, by a small stream north of it. Red lilies were abundantly in bloom in the burying-ground and by the river. Mr. Weld’s monument is a large, thick, naturally flat rock, lying flat over the grave. Noticed the monument of Josiah Willard, Esq., “Captain of Fort Dummer.” Died 1750, aged 58. 

Walked to and along the river and bathed in it. There were harebells, well out, and much Apocynum cannabinum, well out, apparently like ours, prevailing along the steep sandy and stony shore. A marked peculiarity in this species is that the upper branches rise above the flowers. Also get the A. androsoemifolium, quite downy beneath. 

The Smilacina stellata going to seed, quite common in the copse on top of the bank. 

What a relief and expansion of my thoughts when I come out from that inland position by the graveyard to this broad river’s shore! This vista was incredible there. Suddenly I see a broad reach of blue beneath, with its curves and headlands, liberating me from the. more terrene earth. What a difference it makes whether I spend my four hours’ nooning between the hills by yonder roadside, or on the brink of this fair river, within a quarter of a mile of that! Here the earth is fluid to my thought, the sky is reflected from beneath, and around yonder cape is the highway to other continents. This current allies me to all the world. Be careful to sit in an elevating and inspiring place. There my thoughts were confined and trivial, and I hid myself from the gaze of travellers. Here they are expanded and elevated, and I am charmed by the beautiful river reach. It is equal to a different season and country and creates a different mood. 

As you travel northward from Concord, probably the reaches of the Merrimack River, looking up or down them from the bank, will be the first inspiring sight. There is something in the scenery of a broad river equivalent to culture and civilization. Its channel conducts our thoughts as well as bodies to classic and famous ports, and allies us to all that is fair and great. I like to remember that at the end of half a day’s walk I can stand on the bank of the Merrimack. It is just wide enough to interrupt the land and lead my eye and thoughts down its channel to the sea. 

A river is superior to a lake in its liberating influence. It has motion and indefinite length. A river touching the back of a town is like a wing, it may be unused as yet, but ready to waft it over the world. With its rapid current it is a slightly fluttering wing. River towns are winged towns. 

I returned through the grass up the winding channel of our little brook to the camp again. Along the brook, in the rank grass and weeds, grew abundantly a slender umbelliferous plant mostly just out of bloom, one and a half to four feet high.

Either Thaspium aureum or Cryptotoenia Canadensis (Sison).

Saw also the scouring-rush, apparently just beginning to bloom! 

In the southern part of Merrimack, passed a singular “Horseshoe Pond” between the road and the river on the interval. Belknap says in his History, speaking of the changes in river-courses, “In some places these ancient channels are converted into ponds, which, from their curved form, are called horseshoe ponds.” 

Put up at tavern in Merrimack, some miles after passing over a pretty high, flat-topped hill in road, whence we saw the mountains (with a steep descent to the interval on right). 

7 P. M. — I walked by a path through the wood north east to the Merrimack, crossing two branches of Babboosuck Brook, on which were handsome rocky falls in the woods. 

The wood thrush sings almost wherever I go, eternally reconsecrating the world, morning and evening, for us. And again it seems habitable and more than habitable to us.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1858

Noticed the monument of Josiah Willard, Esq., “Captain of Fort Dummer.” The headstone reads:

"Here lyes interred ye body of Josiah Willard, Captain of Fort Dummer, formerly of Lancaster, Lunenburg, and Winchester, and Colonel of Regiment of foot, who died here December ye 8, Anno Domini, 1750, in ye 58 year of his age."  

~ Findagrave. See also Brattleboro Reformer, The three commanding 'Willards' of Fort Dummer (Feb 9, 2024)

Apocynum cannabinum, well out, apparently like ours, prevailing along the steep sandy and stony shore. See July 11, 1857 ("Apocynum cannabinum, with its small white flowers and narrow sepals")\ and note to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unaccountable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on it, aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it.")


The wood thrush sings almost wherever I go, eternally reconsecrating the world, morning and evening, for us. See  August 12, 1851 ( "The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods.") See also May 10, 1858 ("Toward night wood thrush ennobles the wood and the world with his strain."); May 17, 1853 ("The wood thrush . . . touches a depth in me which no other bird's song does.."); June 22, 1853 ("I hear the wood thrush singing his evening lay. This is the only bird whose note affects me like music, affects the flow and tenor of my thought, my fancy and imagination."); July 5, 1852 ("The wood thrush's . . is not so much the composition as the strain, the tone, — cool bars of melody from the atmosphere of everlasting morning or evening").

A great pea-green emperor moth.

July 1.

I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal. 

July 1, 2013

Saw one of those great pea-green emperor moths, like a bird, fluttering over the top of the woods this forenoon, 10 a. m., near Beck Stow's. 

Gathered the early red blackberry in the swamp or meadow this side of Pedrick's, where I ran a pole down nine feet. It is quite distinct from the evergreen one and is without prickles. Fruit red, middle-sized, with a few, perhaps ten or twelve, large globules.

May be the Rubus triflorus, but not growing on hills.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 1, 1853


One of those great pea-green emperor moths. See June 27, 1858 (“See an Attacus luna in the shady path”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

May be the Rubus triflorus. See June 30, 1854 ("Rubus triflorus berries, some time, — the earliest fruit of a rubus. The berries are very scarce, light red, semitransparent, showing the seed . . ."); July 2, 1851("Some of the raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of fruits")