Tuesday. This morning it rained, keeping us in camp till near noon, for we did not wish to lose the view of the mountains as we rode along.
We dined at Wood’s tavern in Randolph, just over Randolph Hill, and here had a pretty good view of Madison and Jefferson, which rose from just south the stream there, but a cloud rested on the summits most of the time.
As we rode along in the afternoon, I noticed that when finally it began to rain hard, the clouds settling down, we had our first distinct view of the mountain outline for a short time.
Wood said they had no spruce but white spruce there, though I called it black, and that they had no white pine nor oak.
It rained steadily and soakingly the rest of the afternoon, as we kept on through Randolph and Kilkenny and Jefferson Hill, so that we had no clear view of the mountains. We put up at a store just opposite the town hall on Jefferson Hill.
It here cleared up at sunset, after two days’ rain, and we had a fine view of the mountains, repaying us for our journey and wetting, Mt. Washington being some thirteen miles distant southeasterly.
South westward we looked down over a very extensive, uninterrupted, and level-looking forest, which our host said was very valuable on account of its white pine, their most valuable land, indeed.
Over this the fog clouds were rolling beneath us, and a splendid but cloudy sunset was preparing for us in the west.
By going still higher up the hill, in the wet grass north of the town house, we could see the whole White Mountain range from Madison to Lafayette.
The alpine, or rocky, portion of Mt. Washington and its neighbors was a dark chocolate-brown, the extreme summits being dark topped or edged, — almost invariably this dark saddle on the top, — and, as the sun got lower, a very distinct brilliant and beautiful green, as of a thick mantle, was reflected from the vegetation in the ravines, as from the fold of a mantle, and on the lower parts of the mountains. They were chiefly Washington and the high northern peaks that we attended to.
The waifs of fog-like cloud skirting the sides of Cherry Mountain and Mt. Deception in the south had the appearance of rocks, and gave to the mountainsides a precipitous look. I saw a bright streak looking like snow, a narrow bright ribbon where the source of the Ammonoosuc, swollen by the rain, leaped down the side of Mt. Washington from the Lake of the Clouds.
The shadows on Lafayette betrayed ridges running toward us. That brilliant green on the northern mountains was reflected but a moment or two, for the atmosphere at once became too misty. It several times disappeared and was then brought out again with wonderful brilliancy, as it were an invisible writing, or a fluid which required to be held to the sun to be brought out.
After the sun set to us, the bare summits were of a delicate rosaceous color, passing through violet into the deep dark-blue or purple of the night which already invested their lower parts, for this night-shadow was wonderfully blue, reminding me of the blue shadows on snow. There was an afterglow in which these tints and variations were repeated. It was the grandest mountain view I ever got.
In the meanwhile, white clouds were gathering again about the summits, first about the highest, appearing to form there, but sometimes to send off an emissary to initiate a cloud upon a neighboring peak. You could tell little about the comparative distance of a cloud and a peak till you saw that the former actually impinged on the latter.
First Washington, then Adams, then Jefferson put on their caps, and you saw the latter, as it were, send off one small nucleus to gather round the head of Madison. This was the best point from which to observe these effects that we saw in our journey, but it appeared to me that from a hill a few miles further westward, perhaps in Whitefield, the view might be even finer.
I made two sketches of the mountain outline here, as far south only as what the landlord called Mt. Pleasant, the route from the Notch house being visible no further.
This was said to be a fine farming town. I heard the ring of toads and saw a remarkable abundance of buttercup (the tall) yellowing the fields in this town and the next, somewhat springlike.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 13, 1858
July 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 13.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021
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