At the Foot of the Mountain
Simeon Kirk first heard God's calling while on the threshold of adolescence. The only son of a well-to-do Boston textile merchant, Simeon was well-educated, having received his theological training at Harvard University. After being ordained, the young man was presented with his pick of the most affluent New England congregations. Simeon, however, had other ambitions.
"The Boston area has more than enough men of the cloth," the passionate, idealistic young clergyman told his mother and father. "I believe God wants me to go to a more remote location where ministers are not readily available."
"And just what place might that be?" asked his father, who was disappointed that his son had not chosen to follow in his footsteps and take over the family business.
"The White Mountains."
Mr. Kirk nearly had an attack of apoplexy at his son's reply.
"The White Mountains?" he cried with disbelief. "That's in the middle of nowhere! Why, that's ... that's ...."
"God's country," Simeon concluded with a beatific smile on his face. "And I am a man of God. As such, I intend to do his work where I'm most needed, and that's not in Boston."
The elder Mr. Kirk tried his hardest to dissuade his offspring from adopting what he considered to be an extremely foolish and possibly dangerous course of action, but his arguments fell on deaf ears. Young Simeon was resolute.
* * *
During the first several months he spent in New Hampshire, Father Simeon Kirk wandered through the woodlands, communing with God and nature, meeting the mountain people and tending to their spiritual needs. Although there were few members in his flock, those he had were in great need of him. There were men and women as old as forty and fifty who had never been baptized, never had their marriages sanctified by the church or never had their children welcomed into God's family.
It was a rewarding life that filled Simeon with purpose, but it was also a lonely existence since he often went for days without speaking to another human being. There were many times he longed to see his family and friends back in Boston. Had his faith not been as strong as it was, he might have reconsidered his plans for the future, returned to eastern Massachusetts and accepted a position as pastor at a church in Salem, New Bedford, Gloucester or even Boston itself.
Then one day, he stopped at a small trading post owned by Cyrus Pinchot, a former fur trapper who had left Canada and had settled in the White Mountains several years earlier. Pinchot befriended the young minister, who frequently held his religious services in the back of the trading post.
Although a dedicated man of God, Simeon was not immune to the considerable charms of Cyrus Pinchot's oldest daughter. She, in turn, was attracted to the handsome young cleric. Thankfully, a Protestant minister, unlike a Catholic priest, was allowed to marry and raise a family. Seven months after meeting her, Simeon asked Hester Pinchot to be his wife. She readily accepted, and before the end of the year, the two were married.
At first, the newlywed couple lived with Hester's family in their rooms above the trading post. Before their second anniversary, however, Simeon received another message from God.
"As much as Hester and I will miss you both, I have to go to Jefferson Notch. It is God's will," he explained to his in-laws.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but you're a city boy. You ever live on the side of a mountain before?" Cyrus asked.
"No, and I don't intend to do so now," Simeon replied. "I'm going to build a home at the base of the mountain."
Pinchot looked at his daughter and son-in-law with trepidation.
"A gorge is not the safest place to build a house," he warned. "There are all kinds of dangers you will need to face. In the dry season, for instance, you have to worry about fires; in the rainy season, a gorge is threatened with flashfloods and landslides; and in the winter, there are frequently heavy snowdrifts and avalanches."
"You mustn't worry so. Hester and I will be just fine," Simeon assured the worried father. "If one has faith in the Lord, he can face any danger."
Pinchot didn't agree. He had seen far too many God-fearing men and women lose their lives in this untamed country. No matter how devout those people were, their faith had not saved them. However, just as Simeon's own father had discovered, the young minister was not to be deterred from doing what the Lord commanded of him.
In the spring of 1825, Simeon Kirk and his wife Hester, who was expecting the couple's first child, were at last able to move their belongings into their new home. A modest, two-room log cabin built with the assistance of nearby farmers and lumbermen, it was more precious to the Reverend Kirk than his father's fine house on Boston's prestigious Beacon Hill had been.
"Here is where we will do the Lord's work," the minister said, his face glowing with pride and religious fervor.
Hester, however, put her hands protectively on her stomach and prayed that her father's foreboding wouldn't prove true.
* * *
For the next six years, the minister and his growing family lived in their cabin in Jefferson Notch without incident. There were no fires or avalanches, and the snowdrifts had been manageable. Whenever the rains came, the Kirks experienced some minor flooding and an occasional mudslide, but it was nothing on the scale of what was to occur during the spring of 1831.
On the morning of April tenth, the sun shone brightly and warmed the interior of the house at the foot of the mountain. Simeon decided to take advantage of the mild weather and visit an ailing farmer who lived within an hour's walk of the minister's home.
Father Kirk had just finished eating lunch and was about to set out on his journey when the dark clouds moved in quickly, without warning. One moment the sun was shining brightly and the next an untimely darkness challenged its supremacy. The clouds prevailed, casting an eerie twilight on the early afternoon.
The minister's oldest boy stopped his chores, thinking nighttime was near. He went into the house, took his seat at the kitchen table and waited for his father to read from the Bible, as was the reverend's custom before dinner every evening.
"What are you doing inside the house? Don't you have work to do?" his mother asked.
"Not now. It's nighttime," the six-year-old innocently replied.
"Is the lamp in the window yet?" she asked with a smile.
"No," the boy said and shook his head solemnly.
"Then it's not time to come in."
Every evening since the Kirk family first moved into the house at Jefferson Notch, Simeon had lit a lantern and placed it on the window sill. His son had once asked him why he didn't put the lantern on the table where the family would benefit most from its light.
"It's not for us that I light it," the minister explained patiently. "It is for the occasional traveler who grows weary or gets lost on the mountain trails. This light is a sign to him that he is welcome here, that he can find peace and safety within these walls. More importantly, it is a sign that God dwells in this house and that he will protect all of us if we keep our faith in him."
The rain didn't fall, despite the threatening skies. The storm clouds soon blew over and daylight returned.
"You go back outside now and finish your chores," the mother told her son.
A few moments later, the minister's wife heard an ominous rumble. She went to the window and looked up at the top of the mountain. Horrified, she heard a sharp crack and saw a large chunk of mountain ledge break off and fall. Soon huge fragments of rock slid down the mountain, uprooting trees and gouging large crevices in the earth.
Simeon ran into the house, bringing his son with him.
"It's a landslide, isn't it?" Hester cried.
"Yes. We will be safe, though," her husband assured her. "God will protect us."
The sound of the destruction around them was deafening. Hester held her frightened children in her arms as rocks buffeted the house and battered the roof above them.
Simeon led his terrified family to the kitchen table, and once they were all seated, he opened the family Bible and began to read.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ...."
Suddenly, a large rock shattered the kitchen window. Hester screamed, certain they would all be killed. Simeon, bolstered by his unwavering faith, continued to read.
"I will fear no evil, for thou art with me."
* * *
Once the worst of the landslide was past, Simeon and Hester ventured outside their front door and surveyed the damage to their property. The small house was surrounded by uprooted trees, boulders and mounds of earth. The house itself, however, sustained only superficial damage and remained structurally sound.
"I told you God would protect us," the minister declared joyfully. "All we had to do was maintain our faith in him."
During the following weeks, the neighboring farmers and loggers helped the minister's family restore their home. The uprooted trees that littered their property were chopped into firewood, but there was nothing that could be done with the large boulders except to leave them where the landslide had deposited them.
"You were lucky this time, Father," his nearest neighbor told Simeon. "If I were you, I'd take it as a warning sign and move away from the base of this mountain."
The minister smiled benevolently.
"There's no need for us to move. God is watching over us, and he will continue to protect us if we remain steadfast in our faith."
The neighbor shook his head at Simeon's stubbornness and walked away without saying anything more.
The months passed, and the minister's family went about their normal routine, yet Hester never slept soundly again. She remained constantly alert to every sound outside her house, always fearful of another landslide.
* * *
The following winter was a mild one in New Hampshire. There were less than a dozen snowfalls the entire season, nearly all of which had only a few inches of accumulation, and the Kirks were thankful that they did not have to worry about their cabin being buried under snowdrifts. Dry conditions continued throughout the spring and long into the summer months. The weather was so arid, in fact, that the people living in the mountain region feared a drought, and farmers worried about their crops.
Finally, one hot day, late in the month of August, an invading army of dark clouds again assailed the mountain pass. This time, however, they did not blow over. Lightning split the darkness of the sky, and the sound of thunder reverberated in the notch. Strong winds blew, bending and often breaking tree limbs. Then the heavens seemed to part, and torrential rains battered the dry, hard-packed ground. Torrents of water raced down the steep slope of the mountainside toward the small house at the base, carrying with them any rocks and trees that were in their path of destruction.
Inside the small house at the foot of the mountain, Hester heard the menacing rumble. Although they had been spared in the past, this time, she feared, God might not protect them.
It proved to be one of the worst storms the White Mountains had ever known. Crops were decimated, livestock destroyed, buildings demolished and people killed and injured.
When the storm finally let up, the owners of the farms nearest the minister's house were worried about the young cleric and his family. Several men formed a rescue party, and those brave souls forded the raging mountain stream and slowly made their way into Jefferson Notch.
"Look up ahead," one of the men cried out as they neared the Kirks' property.
At the base of the mountain where the tiny house stood were piles of debris as high as thirty feet in some places. It took the rescuers a full day to climb over the rubble. When they eventually reached the house, the men stared in awe at the sight of the small log cabin, still standing in one piece, unharmed by the storm.
"Thank God! The minister and his family are safe," a logger exclaimed when he saw a lantern burning brightly in the window.
The members of the search party were amazed to discover that the huge boulders deposited on the minister's property the previous spring deflected the wall of debris that had been heading directly toward the defenseless house.
"Well, I'll be damned," one of the farmers cried. "These here rocks caused the landslide to divide in two. If they hadn't been here, the house would have been buried for sure."
"If that ain't enough to restore a man's faith in the Lord, I don't know what is," one of his companions declared with a laugh of relief.
The other men silently concurred.
When the rescuers knocked on the minister's door, there was no response, so they went inside.
"We've got great timing," one of the lumbermen laughed. "Looks like Mrs. Kirk is getting ready to make supper. All that climbing gave me a powerful hunger."
Simeon's nearest neighbor picked up a dinner plate from the kitchen table and blew a thin coating of dust off it.
"These dishes," he observed, "were here during the landslide."
"But that was three days ago," another man commented ominously.
The men searched the house, but the Kirk family was not there.
It was several months before the bodies of Hester Kirk and the three children were discovered beneath a large tree trunk more than a mile from their home. It was generally believed that the unfortunate woman, who did not share her husband's unquestioning faith in God, had taken her young ones and tried to escape from the path of the storm.
As for the minister himself, he was never seen again. It is entirely possible that he, too, had fled from the house with his family and that his body was carried off by the rushing water of the flooded stream, or perhaps it had been buried under a large boulder. Most people, however, believe he survived the catastrophe at Jefferson Notch and that, upon the death of his wife and children, he journeyed farther into the wilderness where he continued to do the Lord's work.
* * *
To this day, the little two-room log cabin—nearly two hundred years old now—still stands at the foot of the mountain. From time to time, a hunter or hiker gets lost in Jefferson Notch and finds safety for the night in the Old Kirk House. These wanderers all claim to have been drawn to the house by a light burning in the window, only to discover later that no oil lamp or electric light could be found inside. Perhaps they saw only the reflection of the setting sun shining on the window pane, or maybe it was Simeon Kirk's undying faith that lit the way to safety.
This story was inspired by the Willey House, located in the Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The picture in the upper left corner is taken from a print entitled "The Willey House" by W.H. Bartlett.
Salem doesn't like mountains. It takes far too much effort to climb up them.
