Mt. Moosilauke (1950) - From Both Sides
Goose Lane, Swiftwater, New Hampshire
". . . I saw the Summit House burn. This actually happened many times during my youth, not just in 1942, as many think. It burned with all the incandescent fury of hot fusion reflected in silica. It burned in the summer. We incanted with regularity, 'Oh see, the Tiptop House is on fire,' and trooped out onto the porch to watch with wonder, just as today we scramble out to watch the full moon rise, not far from the summit over Mount Blue. It burned with the true fire ten miles plus 93 million miles away, when the sun and we were both low in the northwest. I can see it ablaze, flaming orange against the dark or azure eastern sky. I am sure the real fire would have been an anticlimax if we could have seen it.
I realize now that I could tell you on precisely what days we saw this reflected sunset from our Swiftwater farm, if I knew accurately the orientation of the Summit House. I could go up there today and measure the line of the foundation with a Brunton compass. Assuming the windows were parallel with the line of foundation stones, I could plot the line of windows on a map and draw a ray from it to our Farm. Knowing from Dick Stoiber's Optical Mineralogy that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence, I could draw the ray that came into the windows from the sun, and therefore could tell you where the sun is setting. From an ephemeris, I could then tell you the days when the Summit House burned at our Farm. I would not dream of doing these exercises, however, because in the real life of the mind, Moosilauke burned and burns at will. It burned for me when Will Brown was washing dishes, when Dave Heald was in the outhouse, when Dick Backus was outside scouting for new species. . .
. . . We have daughters who have been known to round up the troops for snowless or even frosty winter climbs at New Year's. At any time of year they rightly regard the sunset from the top of Moosilauke as the best to be had, and go there to see it and then come back in the dark to be at home. When there, they too burn with the fire of the Summit House. They mirror us through time just as we used to flash to my mother at noon from the summit, for her to flash back, out by the porch, wielding the bedroom mirror. We have Moosilauke from both sides, but also from both directions, coming and going, and nothing could be better. . . ."
From "Moosilauke From Both Sides" by Stearns A. Morse, 1990.
