August 22nd. [1838]
I walked out into what is called the Notch this forenoon, between Saddle Mountain and another. There are good farms in this Notch, although the ground is considerably elevated, this morning, indeed, above the clouds; for I penetrated through one in reaching the higher region, although I found sunshine there. Graylock was hidden in clouds, and the rest of Saddle Mountain had one partially wreathed about it; but it was withdrawn before long. It was very beautiful cloud- scenery. The clouds lay on the breast of the mountain, dense, white, well defined, and some of them were in such close vicinity that it seemed as if I could infold myself in them; while others, belonging to the same fleet, were floating through the blue sky above. I had a view of Williamstown at the distance of a few miles, two or three, perhaps, a white village and steeple in a gradual hollow, with high mountainous swells heaving themselves up, like immense subsiding waves, far and wide around it. On these high mountain waves rested the white summer clouds, or they rested as still in the air above; and they were formed into such fantastic shapes that they gave the strongest possible impression of being confounded or intermixed with the sky. It was like a clay-dream to look at it; and the students ought to be day-dreamers, all of them, when cloud-land is one and the same thing with the substantial earth. By degrees all these clouds flitted away, and the sultry summer sun burned on hill and valley. As I was walking home, an old man came down the mountain-path behind me in a waggon, and gave me a drive to the village. Visitors being few in the Notch, the women and girls looked from the windows after me: the men nodded and greeted me with a look of curiosity; and two little girls whom I met, bearing tin pails, whispered one another and smiled.
I walked out into what is called the Notch this forenoon, between Saddle Mountain and another. There are good farms in this Notch, although the ground is considerably elevated, this morning, indeed, above the clouds; for I penetrated through one in reaching the higher region, although I found sunshine there. Graylock was hidden in clouds, and the rest of Saddle Mountain had one partially wreathed about it; but it was withdrawn before long. It was very beautiful cloud- scenery. The clouds lay on the breast of the mountain, dense, white, well defined, and some of them were in such close vicinity that it seemed as if I could infold myself in them; while others, belonging to the same fleet, were floating through the blue sky above. I had a view of Williamstown at the distance of a few miles, two or three, perhaps, a white village and steeple in a gradual hollow, with high mountainous swells heaving themselves up, like immense subsiding waves, far and wide around it. On these high mountain waves rested the white summer clouds, or they rested as still in the air above; and they were formed into such fantastic shapes that they gave the strongest possible impression of being confounded or intermixed with the sky. It was like a clay-dream to look at it; and the students ought to be day-dreamers, all of them, when cloud-land is one and the same thing with the substantial earth. By degrees all these clouds flitted away, and the sultry summer sun burned on hill and valley. As I was walking home, an old man came down the mountain-path behind me in a waggon, and gave me a drive to the village. Visitors being few in the Notch, the women and girls looked from the windows after me: the men nodded and greeted me with a look of curiosity; and two little girls whom I met, bearing tin pails, whispered one another and smiled.
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