Читать книгу Tale of the Taconic Mountains - Mike M.D. Romeling - Страница 5

Modest in height, New England’s mountains are sometimes scoffed at by visitors from the west who may write them off as mere bumps or mole hills when compared to their own lofty Rocky Mountains or the Sierra Nevada range. New Englanders are famous for their reticence and may waste little time in fruitless argument. But had they a mind to, there are some things they could say on behalf of their fine mountains. They could point to Mount Washington in tiny New Hampshire where some of the worst weather in the world occurs. The highest wind gust ever recorded—over two hundred miles an hour—tore across the icy slopes of that mountain and savage winds and snows can strike with deadly ferocity any month of the year. A weather station clings to the summit like a beleaguered Antarctic encampment. More lives have been lost on Mount Washington—over one hundred and thirty thus far—than on any mountain in North America. Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the massive and frigid crown of the North American Continent, may some day take over that dubious distinction; hundreds of climbers clamor for permits to climb that dangerous mountain, sometimes with tragic results. The deaths on Mount Washington result primarily from two factors: underestimating the savage weather than can literally come out of nowhere even during the summer months, and avalanches. People unfamiliar with the White Mountains are often surprised to hear the word avalanche connected with eastern mountains and yet there are over one hundred each year in the Whites, many of them in the Tuckerman Ravine area so popular with skiers and rock climbers.

New Englanders might also mention Maine’s Mount Katahdin, the final destination for those brave souls who hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Thoreau was caught in such a violent thunderstorm on this mountain that he confessed to being ever after unable to view nature in the same benevolent way he was accustomed to in his many rambles around the gentle Concord countryside.

And they might mention the Adirondacks of New York State, perhaps falling prey to excessive tourism but still a magnificent wilderness that bred the world famous Adirondack guides who brought mountain and water craft to standards the world won’t see again.

Or they might speak of Mount Greylock in Massachusetts, whose silhouette was reportedly the inspiration for Melville’s great tale, Moby Dick. Thoreau climbed this fine mountain too, sleeping overnight on the summit and keeping warm by pulling some stray boards over himself. On the way up he reports encountering a comely woman brushing her hair and talking freely to him at the “last house.” He toyed with the idea of asking her if he could stay as a guest. This was an odd and rare piece of writing for Thoreau, showing such direct interest in the opposite sex. One can’t help wondering how this great writer’s solitary bachelor life might have changed had he followed through on his impulse. Greylock is the home of a once famous but now almost forgotten ski trail called The Thunderbolt. But it’s not quite forgotten by those hardy skiers who still seek out deep powder skiing in the back country; they know that when the snow lies deep, The Thunderbolt still offers a steep, thrilling, and challenging ride that convinces many to save the money they might have spent on a ticket to Colorado or Utah.

But perhaps most of all, the New Englander might tell of the deeply ingrained traditions, legends, and stories that weave through the New England mountains like a river with a thousand branches. Most are not well known to outsiders; you must dig for them among the old town libraries and hunt down the town historians along the back roads of mountain country. If you are lucky you might be given directions to some old homestead even further into the hills where an old man might receive you and look suspiciously at the tape recorder you’ve brought along. But if he decides he likes you and you’ve produced a bottle of blended whiskey to whet his whistle, you might be rewarded with a chair by a flickering fire. Far into the night you will hear the tales of odd occurrences: of spirits in the woods, of faithless loves, of magical revenge, of lost souls in deep caves and on high mountains. It is a rich tradition, coming down through the centuries from the first Europeans to voyage to the Americas. Yet it also goes back even further sometimes, mixed and imprinted with the far older legends and beliefs of the Native Americans, whose deep and mystical ties to the earth still provoke sad and wistful envy for those of us in our mechanized, polluted, stressed-out, and confused modern world.

You might even let your tape run out unnoticed because you seem lost in time as the stories unfold and the moon shines in through the windows and out across the very hills of which the old man speaks. He no longer even seems old to you because, like you, he too is lost in time.

“Is all that really true?” you might ask at some point, unable to resist even though not wanting to offend.

The old man would be all too aware of how many answers there are to that difficult question. And since none of them by themselves would be complete, he remains silent. Finally, as the first faint light of dawn peeked over the eastern flanks of the mountains, you would leave knowing that the night and the stories would remain with you always.

But these are just old stories, the skeptic inside you might scoff. Are they? Perhaps, and yet the fertile minds of Poe and Hawthorn, Bierce and Lovecraft, were stoked by the fires of New England lore. And they would tell you what the old man told you: that sometimes, deep in the heart of the New England mountains, something seems to be going on—something at once lighter than air and darker than starless night.