Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/303

Rh take, the average distance would not be more than eight miles, and the extreme distance twenty. Follow some watercourse running easterly or westerly. If the weather were severe on the summit, so as to prevent searching for the summit houses or the path, I should at once take a westward course from the southern part of the range, and an eastward one from the northern part. To travel then with security, a person must know his bearings at every step, be it fair weather or foul. An ordinary rock in a fog, being in the apparent horizon, is exaggerated to perhaps ten times its size and distance. You will think you have gone further than you have, to get to it. Descending straight by compass through the cloud toward the head of Tuckerman's Ravine, we found it an easy descent over, for the most part, bare rocks, not very large, with at length moist, springy places, green with sedge, etc., between little sloping shelves of green meadow, where the hellebore grew within half a mile of the top, and the Oldenlandia cœrulea was abundantly out, very large and fresh, surpassing ours in the spring. We crossed a narrow portion of the snow, but found it unexpectedly hard and dangerous to traverse. I tore up my nails in efforts to save myself from sliding down its steep surface. The snow field now formed an irregular crescent on the steep