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
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