The Heart of Monadnock/Chapter 7
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SCOTT A. SMITH TAKING A LONG LOOK FROM THOREAU'S SEAT
VII
It was Sunday. Perhaps The Mountain-Lover only fancied it but it seemed to him that everything on the mountain knew what day it was. Down in the world below Sunday might be a hurrying, bustling day, where one turned but from one set of activities to another, but up here in this remoteness he thought that all the flitting birds and chattering squirrels, the velvet blueberries and the scarlet cranberries, the cushiony moss and the rock-ferns and the ruby bunchberries making their violent carpet of flame and green, and every dancing leaf and every shiny needle and brown-scaled cone—all knew and shouted out the Day. A special day. A day of peace.
Today the Mountain-Lover betook himself early to the heights, for on Sundays the dwellers on the plains would seek the mountain in great numbers and he liked to be far away, and have it for his own day. He decided to spend the night also on the cliffs—as he frequently did—and with sandwiches and chocolate in his pocket and a blanket roll on his back he set forth gladly. A leisurely climb it would be, having the day—and the night—before him, and far out on the Dublin Ridge he meant to go. That was always the loneliest part of the mountain.
For three or four days he had been forced to be in New York on perplexing and intricate business and had come back late the evening before. His tired nerves still jangled with the clamor and rush and tumult and heat and drive of the restless, swarming hive. What delight to come back to his mountain again, and to pass thus high, high, up into the open, into an utterly silent world of sapphire and emerald and gold! Tranquil, far-spread silence!
He loitered over the Jaffrey Ridge trail with ever fresh delight; past the tawny, swampy, rock-girt meadow, with its fluffy white cottongrass swinging and swaying its snowy, tufted head with every flirting breeze; up broad ledge after broad ledge, with the east and west horizon line of the ridge slipping back as he approached it, until suddenly he topped it and stood upon its crest. Instantly the far northern view lay unrolled before him. Melting in billowing lines to the dim, hazy outline that was Mt. Washington, the mountains flowed silently away in soundless waves of azure and heliotrope till they broke against the sky. A long gaze here—like a deep draught of water to a parched throat—then the rambler went on down from the crest, to the north, where the slope sank abruptly. He stopped again, drinking in profound breaths of the crystal dustless air, that renewed him like wine. More and more deeply did he breathe it in, until every fibre of his body seemed newly alive and the crisp buoyancy of the atmosphere seemed to filter through every tissue. All fatigue of mind and body fell away like a cloak. He was a new man.
He came to the Sarcophagus, that mighty boulder perched so casually in its place that it is hard to understand—from the lay of the slopes—just how it could have been borne here; for though it lies in a long depression as far as the main sweep of the Dublin Ridge is concerned, at this particular point the ledges rise to it. What Titanic forces of ice and water in those dim, bygone ages of the Glacier days, had borne up hither this monster? The Mountain-Lover—who was no geologist—had mused often over the puzzle of it. On the floor of the deep little depression between this point and some cliffs to the west, in inextricable confusion, lay innumerable small rocks, sharp-edged as if quarried, but the only dynamite used had been the irresistible power of the frost, first cracking, then bursting asunder rock after rock, with clean-cut slashes.
The Mountain-Lover passed on his way up the next small peak and down again and up the next, disdaining today the cairns that silently suggested easier ways around. He wanted the roughness and the climbing and the highest points. Far up here the world once more seemed large enough to move in freely without irritating contact with other rasped souls.
He gained at last the topmost point in the long reach of the Dublin shoulder and sighing with satisfaction, he sank down on the clean bare ground against a rock to let his eyes feast their fill. He could see to all sides save to the southwest where rose the vast bulk of the mountain itself, shutting away that view. His eyes dwelt in profound content on point after point; far below the gay little lakes gleamed with their jewel points of light; white ribbons of roads wound their curving way about the hills, vanishing now and then in the woods; tiny villages sent up white spires and suggestions of roofs. The only moving things in sight were the two eagles, soaring high, but their flight, calm as the mountain itself, steady, swift, circling, mounting ever higher in great spirals, and as ever on motionless, widespread pinions, was even strangely restful with its suggestion of effortless, limitless power.
The atmosphere was translucently brilliant, as if poured out like molten gold. And the infinite quiet! The resting watcher seemed to bathe in it as in a waveless ocean of utter tranquillity. His soul rested against it. His mind drifted out on it. . . His eyes dwelt on the everlasting hills. In that sea of stillness his musings trailed away into vague thoughts that did not rise into words. So utterly, marvellously still! What was the quality that made the silence of mountains and of deserts so mysteriously different from other silences? He absently realized that even miles away from any great city, although to the outer ear there may be no noise of any kind—no noises caused by the needs of humanity—still one is not beyond the physical recognition of the ceaseless, impalpable vibrations that are the basis of sound. Though these may be too broad in wave or too few in number for the ear to receive their impact as sound, they still reach the nerves as sensation, though not consciously registered.
The Mountain-Lover closed his eyes for a moment and he visioned the atmosphere for many miles around a great city as an ocean of thick-crowding currents; currents of vibration not merely of words but of the myriad vibrations that accompany any motion whatever of animal or mechanical life; of every mode of locomotion; of every hammering beat of machinery; even of every footfall. He could see these currents surging to and fro, beating on every brick and stone and wooden thing, flung back by the force of their impact along with a thousand others that they themselves brought into being—crossing, fighting, conflicting, conquering and being conquered; rising into the speed necessary to smite the ear as sound or to hurt it with their piercing sharpness or their mad confusion; sinking again with distance out of the region of pure sound but still storming the body in every pulsating nerve. What wonder that we still feel the hubbub and the turmoil of these fighting currents! Only far, far away from all these, on mountains or prairie or desert do the quivering human nerves cease to feel and to respond to this tumult of vibration to which, though it is never lost, we are mercifully at last no longer attuned. Then come peace—and silence. With them, rest unto the soul.
Out on this sea of tranquillity the soul of the pondering man floated. The Spirit that brooded near seemed to smile upon him as if waiting for the conceptions it was breathing to his inner being to rise through his consciousness and clothe themselves with words.
"Joy it is, son that loves me, to come from the dust and restlessness of the lower world! There the unceasing business of daily concerns sets the dust of the highway of life awhirl and all this fills the lungs and blurs the vision. Ground out of the rasping contacts of life, how all the grit of idle words and pettinesses, the jealousies and bits of malice and cruel slander choke the heart! How the crash of competition deafens the ears! You human beings grow to take these for granted, hardly realizing that you are being slowly stifled with the gross air in which so much of life must be passed, and that you are hearing only the mad din of the commonplace. Scarcely do you even realize that anything has been amiss, until you find yourself away from it all, when something catches you up into the upper realms of the soul where you can see all things clearly and hear the harmonies of celestial chords.
"Just as your body needs the freshness and purity and freedom from material dust, even so your soul needs to mount to sunny heights far distant if it would live and breathe and live. . . You need these mountain-tops of your inner being. Here, undistracted, you may look deep into innermost recesses and here you may sort out your ambitions and your aims and your accomplishments, and see them in their true values, unblurred by the world's opinions. Know them as they are; some good, some bad. . . Hard it is for those who know not this Silence to be still enough to hear God speak."
The Mountain-Lover raised his eyes yearningly to the heights. Christ went into "high places" apart, to pray. He also needed this Silence.
Time passed. He did not note it. There came
"And the talking sun
"And the high blue afternoon."
Hours slipped by unheeded. Far below the level of awareness the Spirit of the Mountain was bringing to the pondering man untranslatable perceptions. Voiceless music rang to the depths of his soul.
Slowly, deeply as the miracle of sunset approached, there stole across his consciousness sensations thrilling him to the core. He began to feel deep within him the profound throb of the mountain-heart itself; its quiet, beating pulse. The far-rolling hills were undulating with its rhythm, and his own heart was pulsing in unison as if he himself were caught up to the Universal Soul. . . As he listened, awestruck, the throbbing beat gravely strengthened until it became like a mighty organ-note to which the flowing hills responded more and more clearly with their own distant chorus. Deeper and higher outspread the broad, majestic harmony until the whole universe seemed filled with music of wild, ineffable sweetness.
The man lifted his eyes again unto the heights which lay solitary in the sunset. There, to the vision of his soul, the cliffs gradually seemed alive in their solitude with radiant, shadowy forms ethereal in unspeakable beauty, swaying like thistle-down in the gold of the setting sun. An unearthly, pearly light seemed to gather around that joyous, floating throng, made visible from an unseen, enveloping world; a listening, surrounding universe of help and comfort and strength without limit. God.
And this white and shining throng were themselves swelling the song of the hidden world—a life-chorus that rolled and surged up to Heaven itself in mighty chords. Words seemed at last to shape themselves—the words of David, Mountain-Lover and God-Lover.
Thy God the God of Mercy yet shall prove.
Within His courts thy thanks shall yet be paid,
Unquestioned be His faithfulness and love."
The peace of God which passeth all understanding lay upon the mountain and upon the heart of the man.
The End.