Foul Weather or Natural Causes

In New Hampshire the Old Man of the Mountain is emperor. Its image is on everything from license plates to road signs, and even supplied the title of a Nathaniel Hawthorne story. The Old Man was made of five slabs of Conway granite balanced atop one another high on a cliff on Cannon Mountain in the Franconia Notch. It took no imagination to see that Old Man when viewed from the north; he was real. Last May 2003, he came tumbling down. My daughter and I viewed the scene of the crime for the first time this weekend.

The autopsy reported that there “was a cavern, about four feet wide, behind the Old Man's chin that ran almost the entire width of the Old Man's face. About 80 percent of the chin block hung out over the cliff… Thus, just about two feet of the chin was anchored to the cliff, held there only by the weight of the four slabs above it. Amazingly, the other four slabs were positioned just so, so that the center of gravity of the chin block was within that two-foot span, allowing the entire Old Man to balance on its chin for centuries.”

Supposedly the death was caused by “the physical and chemical damage to the Old Man's granite through the years, especially in the cavern, eventually [wearing] away enough rock just behind the chin that the center of gravity of that block moved slightly forward, past the cliff face. When that happened… the chin tumbled down the cliff, and the rest of the Old man quickly followed.”

Oh sure. The fact that an interstate rolls through the Notch now had nothing to do with it. Acid rain through the years was not a contributing factor. And the fact that it all happened during the spring Iraq War was just coincidence.

Marge Bruchac, a Missisquoi Abenaki, wrote:

When you inhabit a place for thousands of years, you learn that change, even in great earth formations, is inevitable. Some traditions call it a good sign when certain of the old rock people decide to move around. Many of my kin believe that the spirit of the old chief embodied in the rock face has been freed from his modern imprisonment, and is walking the land again. On Sunday, May 4, an Abenaki drum group, including members of the New Hampshire Intertribal Council, gathered by the lake, at the foot of the mountain, to sing honoring songs. Some of us wrote poems for the Old Man.

Nanibosad, the night walker, whispered to him that night
when the caretakers were looking away,
the turnbuckles and chains and braces broke
the Old Man yawned, and smiled, and dove, headfirst, into the lake
ah, kadosmida,
he is saying,
wligonebi, the water feels good
the people need me

Enjoy your swim Old Man.