HANOVER'S MOUNTAINS
Are there any Hanover mountains ? The writer, returning via Wells River from six weeks in the (Canadian Rockies, found, to his amusement, that, if there were any, they had been squashed in his absence. Or had his head got set at a new angle? For a brief space, as the train skirted the Haverhill meadows, he was almost perturbed about it. But soon the green hills across the river began to swell and mount, until by Orford and Lyme the landscape had taken its well-remembered proportions. And the restful charm of it was a delight.
There are Hanover mountains, though only one, and that the lowest, is in Hanover. There are six, all but one visible from some point on the Hanover plain, all frequently climbed therefrom. Others might be included, perhaps, but they are too far, or too rarely climbed by us—they are not our mountains. Killmgton, for instance; we hardly think of it as ours. Croydon—but it has a wire fence around it. We can climb Washington and get back in a long summer day, if we motor, but that is "stretching things. Ascutney, Cardigan, Moose, Smart s, Cube, Moosilauke,' these are ours. They rise, rather apart, along fifty miles of the Connecticut, with Hanover near the middle of the line. The Outing Club trail skirts Moose, Smart's, and Cube, with branches to their tops, and goes over Moosilauke. The base of any may be readily reached, in summer, by car or rail, or both. Moose, Smart's and Cube lie rather back from main routes, and to climb them in winter it is well to spend a night at the nearest Outing Club cabin. By reason of its distance from Hanover, Moosilauke is in the same category. But we are not attempting a guide to these mountains. For that one should consult the Appalachian Mountain Club Guide to the White Mountains, or the new Outing Club Handbook.
Each of these mountains has a character of its own. Their differences are perhaps not of the most violent. Possibly it is required! to be something of a dilettante in hills to savor them—to be a mountain fan. There are not a few such about Hanover. And it appears that there are many elsewhere. For these we attempt this appreciation of our hills.
Ascutney lifts a beautiful cone some twenty miles to the south, Windsor way. Wherever about Hanover there is a clear view southward, Ascutney dominates it, a fine figure of a mountain. It rises alone, and abruptly from the river. A picture-book mountain. Yet we climb it least. It is rather far, and our trail runs north. Also it lies in Vermontacross our frontier, in a foreign land. Who climbs it must climb, for all that it is not so high as it looks. The trail is relentlessly steep. Also it has been much travelled, and worn down to loose rocks, and gullied. The forest has been much, and recently, knocked about by loggers. At the top there is a shelter or two, erratically maintained. Tin cajis and lunch papers are not unknown. In other words, it is much climbed locally. The summit also proves not to be as pointed as it seems from the north. One gets the view in sections from outlooks. But it is a view of singular charm, an airplane glimpse of the typical New England countryside. North and south the river winds, east and west are outspread the hill farms of the Cornish and
Woodstock country. White farms and villages, fields of many colors, dotted pasture slopes, wood lots and tree-lined fences, vanishing roads; the familiar pattern is flung across the hills beneath the eye. Westward the hills rise and the wood lots mass into forests under the long sky line of the Green Mountains. East and north the New Hampshire hills grow higher until the peaks merge into the dim mass of the Mount Washington range. But to the foreground the eye returns, to the sweep of open hill country, cut across by the gleaming river with its narrow meadows—to fields and roads and houses, seen from just the right distance to stir the imagination by half-seen details, and to make a charming scheme of color under drifting cloud shadows. It is a view of the pattern of the life of man among the hills. In this it is alone among our mountains.
Cardigan, eastward beyond Canaan nearly as far from us as Ascutney, invisible from the plain, nevertheless seems more our own. It is huge in mass, if not in height, spreading its long ridges into six towns, Dorchester and Groton, Orange and Alexandria, Grafton and Danbury. Near the center it throws up a dome of bare rock, a real summit, the sort a mountain should always have. A large area including the top forms a state forest reservation, and the new fire lookout tower is no addition to the scene. From Canaan the trail is a delight, a country road to yond Orange—which one often passes through without knowing it—a bit of abandoned hill road to the site of the old "Half Way House," a gentle climb in fine hardwood to the spring, a sharp scramble up the ledges. Then a view full-circle. Saving Moosilauke, it is the best of our mountains for a winter climb. To the ledges it is not too steep sor, who should have outgrown such I have even seen a gray haired professor, who should have outgrowin such things, clatter and sprawl his ski over the ledges and crust patches to the top, just to say he had done it. It is a wilder view than Ascutney's—ruggeder hills, more forest, nearer mountains. On a clear day the White Mountains loom imposing, sort themselves into recognizable peaks. But below, eastward, is the jewel in Cardigan's view, the long gleam of Newfound Lake. One inevitably descends to a certain sheltered eastern armchair ledge for lunch; and below the wind-flaws drift across one of New England's loveliest lakes, and beyond the ranges melt from blue to blue.
Moose, our real Hanover mountain, is less a mountain than a state of mind. There must be a mountain in our town —so this is it. The long, featureless ridge runs .all down our eastern edge and flicks a casual tail into the very streets of Enfield. It cuts off a corner of Hanover so completely that the inhabitants thereof start two days early to get to town meeting. Governor Wentworth, laying out his road to Hanover in 1772, never noticed it—at any rate the road ran straight over a small sag in the ridge. Near the north end are three partial outlooks, reached by trails from Moose Cabin. The northernmost of these, a grassy clearing looking west, with spiry evergreens and a spring, is a charming spot for a summer noon. Moose Cabin, week-end haunt of students, lies under the highest summit, some seven miles from the campus. In winter one may snowshoe many happy miles on the long ridge, and find great variety of forest and old pasture, climbs and outlooks, rabbits and partridges, and return to build a roaring fire in the great fireplace. Verily Moose is greatly better than no mountain at all.
Smart's Mountain, massive and sombre, second in height of our six, upheaves its flattened dome from the forests between Lyme and Dorchester. It is our wildest mountain. No inhabited clearings spread up its flanks. The Outing Club trail, north bound from Moose and Holt's Ledge cabins to Cube and Moosilauke, runs for miles along. its lower slopes through forest country interrupted only by one or two all but obliterated clearings. Although loggers have slashed the sides, the flat top still retains much of its primeval forest. For a while the state occupied the mountain as a fire lookout station. The keeper's cabin is now leased by the Outing Club. The two wooden towers will soon become unsafe, and then the only view will be from the grassy clearing looking west. The trail, all but the last pitch, is a ski grade, and a couple of switch backs would fix the rest. It is a good winter mountain, high enough to get heavy snow and frost storms. I have never, even on the Presidential range, seen finer frost effects than on one March day on Smart's. But among our five lower mountains, Smart's is unique in bearing on its top that remnant of old high-level forest. Found in New Hampshire mostly at about 3500 feet, it is not unlike the lowland forests of the far north, similar conditions of cold, moisture, soil and wind, producing similar growth. The thick-trunked firs dwindle suddenly, and rarely reach over twenty feet in height. Beneath is a moist cushion of moss, with fern and the characteristic plants of mountain forest, wood sorrel, gold-thread, twin-flower. It is cool, still, remote. Under the low branches there are" glimpses into blue distance. The world is far away.
Cube, rising between Orford and Wentworth, presents for a top a rather flattish ridge, flecked with white ledges. Cube Cabin of the Outing Club lies in the upper pastures of its western slope. One climbs it thence, or by the old trail from the height of land on the OrfordWentworth road, or, one hears, by a trail from Lower Baker Pond used by the boy's camps. All are rather steep and short. Like Cardigan, the top was burned over years ago, but unlike Cardigan, the forest on Cube has come back so that the view is broken into outlooks. The White Mountains, much nearer now, draw the eye. Moosilauke rises impressively beyond that charming chain of ponds Tarleton, Armington, Upper and Lower Baker. Cube is worth the yet, after Ascutney, Cardigan, mart's, it seems to lack personality, or Class, or something; or was it too hot the last time I climbed it?
About Moosilauke, our farthest and Jghest, one could write a book. It is a fine old giant, high enough to be a real climb and to rise to timberline, big enough to enclose huge ravines between its bulky spurs and to carry three trails and the wreck of a carriage road upon its ridges. But it has a house on top. The house, once a hotel fed by the road from Warren, is now the property of the College, run in the summer by the Outing Club, for hikers. The road is kept just passable for a strong cart with a small load of supplies. The hikers come in, swarms, mainly from boys' and girls' camps. The project actually pays expenses and maintenance, and provides unusual summer work for several students. One trail starts from Great Bear Cabin at Glencliff, another from the Parker House in Benton, another from Lost River. All three make altitude with breathless enthusiasm—warm work in summer, snowshoe scrambles in winter. The carriage road is a gorgeous ski run, but unfortunately it is a weary pull from its base to the nearest station or lodging. Each route has its charm— the carriage road, the finest forest, the Benton trail, a narrow edge above a profound ravine, the Glenclifl many springs, the Lost River glimpses into Jobildunk Ravine and a hand-and-foot scramble beside the Beaver Meadow Falls.
But these bald details, they get one nowhere, except perhaps to the top, which, again, is a guide book job. Go to Great Bear Cabin in winter and study the great west slope, the ash and lavender of leafless hardwood capped by gleaming white, or, after a frost storm, two thousand feet of glory. Climb it, into the still austerity of the high snows. In summer, stay a night, a week, at the Summit Camp. Sunrise and sunset seen thence are not our lowland commonplaces— they are miracles. Mist and cloud pass in unimagined pageants. Color and shadow play on the marching ranges. White alpine flowers tuft the bare slopes above the tree line. Out of the low firs comes a song of elfin beauty, the haunting notes of a Bicknell thrush, rare dweller on the mountain tops. In the great stillness, out of the far shadowy depths of Jobildunk, faint, a little sad, lifts the slow fluting of a Peabody bird.
Such are the Hanover mountains, ours to climb occasionally, to look at every day. Ascutney across Memorial Field between framing southern hills, is a composition, a museum piece. But Moosilauke, dim in the blue of distance, looming far up river to the north, is our own. We own it, or all that matters—the top. In winter, white from base to peak, it towers like an Alpine giant, and wears the rose of after-glow. In early Fall the sharp peak gleams one day with the first frost, and we think of our coal bins; and far into the Spring the white cap holds, and our cars cling to the hard roads until it has gone. Wheelock chose not so ill his location for a college. True, he might have done better. Bretton Woods, now, there's a site for you. But perhaps it is too late to change. Perhaps we would not if we could. We are content with our mountains.
Ascutney from the West
Mount Cardigan
Moose Mountain from Canaan
Cube from the West
Librarian of the College
