Mt. Moosilauke (1899) - Jobildunk Ravine
". . . It is a steep descent to Jobildunk's ravine where the wildness of the scene brings out all your superstitious qualities and you feel with the southern guide, "It would be mighty skeery to be found on the mountings when the ha'nts come outen their caves," yet the solitude and isolation create as powerful sensations as even ghosts could.
I was left at the head of this ravine alone, one day, while my companion went prospecting down the steep sides. I shuddered to look down the sheer precipice for "four hundred feet" with nothing else to be seen but sky, rocks, and trees, unless perchance, a bird or a wild animal crossed the path. Not a glimpse of a house or the smoke from any dwelling; in fact, not a trace of anything in creation made by the hand of man. Stillness and solitude were there, hill and ravine, sky and valley, everywhere magnificent, the outline everywhere bold, grand, and sublime, but it was all Divine handiwork.
The stillness was something to be felt. Absolutely, there was not a sound to be heard from the animate world while I waited, not even a car whistle to reverberate among the hills; nothing to be heard but the laughing brook at my feet as it leaped forward, sometimes above and sometimes under ground, to plunge at last over the precipice and join its waters with other rivulets to make what is now called Baker's river, but in Indian times was named "Asquamchumauke," "mountain-water-place." Its music was like voices of merry children at play, their feet dallying over the pebbles, their fingers fondling the most beautiful specimens along the stony way, while in childish trebles they shouted with glee and pleaded for a longer holiday, at which the deep underground current remonstrated in rumbling tones, urging them on "to work; to work."
Many of the trees on the wooded hills were so old their branches were bleached almost white and streaked the hillside with silver like the gray hairs of a hoary head. Someone speaks of them as "standing like skeletons down on the shoulders of the mountain, just as though a great graveyard had been shaken open by an earthquake. . ."
The trees on either hand have weathered the storms of centuries, and how one longs to hear their history! To be sure, they have written some things in characters which we can interpret, but we long for ears that may hear the story of their victories over rain famines in summer and the Arctic Ice King's blasts in winter. How many times have these mighty trees of the forest been forced to join hands and, sometimes, even lock arms with one another for mutual support until some tempest has spent its force!"
From "A Tip-Top Experience on Moosilauke" by Ellen E. Webster, pp. 174-189, The Moosilaukee Reader (Vol.1). ©1999.
