Saturday, August 8, 2020

The summit of Monadnock

Monadnock pencil drawings


August 8.

Wednesday. 8.30 A. M.

Walk round the west side of the summit.

Bathe in the rocky pool there, collect mountain cranberries on the northwest side, return over the summit, and take the bearings of the different spurs, etc.

Return to camp at noon. 

Toward night, walk to east edge of the plateau.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1860


Walk round the west side of the summit.Bathe in the rocky pool there. See ,June 3, 1858,("A shallow rain-water pool, or rock cistern, about three rods long by one or one and a half wide, several hundred feet below the summit, on the west side, but still on the bare rocky top and on the steepest side of the summit, . . .The rocks and valleys and bogs and rain-pools of the mountain are so wild and unfamiliar still that you do not recognize the one you left fifteen minutes before. This rocky region, forming what you may call the top of the mountain, must be more than two miles long by one wide in the middle, and you would need to ramble about it many times before it would be gin to be familiar.")

Collect mountain cranberries on the northwest side. See June 2, 1858 ("For the last fifteen or twenty rods the ground between the rocks is pretty thickly clothed or carpeted with mountain cranberry and Potentilla tridentata, only the former as yet slightly budded, but much lower than this the mountain cranberry is not common. The former grows also in mere seams on the nearly upright sides of rocks, and occasionally I found some of last year's cranberries on the latter, which were an agreeable acid. These were the prevailing plants of a high order on the very summit")

Take the bearings of the different spurs. See  September 7, 1852 ("Descending toward Troy, we see that the mountain had spurs or buttresses on every side, by whose ridge you might ascend. It is an interesting feature in a mountain. I have noticed that they will send out these buttresses every way from their centre"); June 4, 1858 ("The mountain has several spurs or ridges,bare and rocky, running from it, with a considerable depression between the central peak and them; i.e., they attain their greatest height half a mile or more from the central apex. . . . indeed, there is a bewildering variety of ridge and valley and peak, but when you have with drawn a few miles, you are surprised at the more or less pyramidal outline of the mountain and that the lower spurs and peaks are all subordinated to the central and principal one.")

Walk to east edge of the plateau. See June 3, 1858 ("There is a broad almost plateau on the southeast and east, not much beneath the summit, with a precipitous termination on the east")

August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8

 

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

Thoreau visited Monadnock on four occasions: a solo overnight on the summit in 1844, a quick day-hike in September 1852, and more extended stays in 1858 and 1860: June 2, 1858, June 3, 1858, and June 4, 1858; and August 4 1860, August 5, 1860. August 6, 1860, August 7, 1860, August 8, 1860, and August 9, 1860/ Also  Monadnock pencil drawings (1860)

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