Old Man No More: Last rites for a revered jumble of rocksBy Jane Holtz Kay The old man is no more. Or, perhaps, one should say the Old Man is "deceased," in homage to the noble figurehead that collapsed last spring. Torn asunder from the heights of New Hampshire's Franconia Notch, the Old Man of the Mountain-the Great Stone Face, the Profile, by other names-is rubble and debris at the foot of his once-lofty perch. A 1,200-foot tumble and that was it. A wicked storm the night before had followed a harsh winter. Hikers heard the avalanche. On the morning of May 3, the forty-eight-foot face was found by a state park crew: pulverized into a pile of rocks. A fall from grace, or so it must have seemed to those who thought "him" eternal. Mourning was in order.
The pining was still evident on my visit to the White Mountains three months later. Visitors and valley-dwellers alike, those who saw him etched against the sky atop the notch and those who climbed to his summit, were still grieving for what some called nature's most revered figure-the "departed," the more anthropomorphic put it. Even the Manchester Union Leader, a paper otherwise notorious for its reactionary, granite-hard stance, felt their pain, offering a flowery encomium over the "Old Man's demise," calling him "one of the most remarkable wonders of the mountain world." How, I wondered, does the twenty-first century deal with the memory and loss of something neither hard cold stone nor natural man, when we have yet to deal with human loss or the unrelenting damage to our Earth? There was "no better influence" than his "mortal sadness," some said. A godlike presence? An idol? Whatever it was, was gone, and prayers for the figurehead's reconstruction echoed. A governor's commission was set up, and inevitably, a website posted. Some wanted to recreate him in epoxy. Others imagined shooting a hologram of his "saintly" image into the evening sky. Such thoughts seemed lame, if not irreverent, to many mourners. "Shocking!" declared Jane Difley, president of the 102-year-old Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, which had been founded to protect the Old Man's wooded habitat. A more accurate obituary of the Old Man would have to note his origins, his remarkable history, his kin: that he was forged by geological shifts and emerged in the Granite State somewhere "between 10,000 and 25,000 years ago," as one environmental impact statement noted with something less than precision; that he graced the heights of New Hampshire's White Mountains, 3,200 feet above sea level, since the last glacier retreated; that no other cliffs in the nation bore a similar human likeness. Despite the fact that the stone giant was visible from only one side of the mountain, the icon could not fail to awe. His primal presence must have captivated the Native Americans who passed before him, but it was left to literate white men to record their wonder in words. In fact, and history, the Old Man seems to have been perceived as several quite specific old men. In 1805, the first recorded spectator, one Luke Brooks, called the profile "Jefferson" in honor of Thomas, then president, whom he was said to resemble. His first portrait is ascribed to Albert Bierstadt's 1860 photograph. "Every portion of the face is there upon the solid mountain steep," Samuel C. Eastman observed in The White Mountain Guidebook three years later. "There is the stern, projecting, massive brow, as though stamped with the thought and wisdom of centuries. The Sphinx of the Desert must acknowledge its inferiority to this marvelous face upon the mountain." Even early on, however, there were concerns about the fragility of his red granite. "Hasten to the spot," one geologist suggested. But not until 1936 did athletic admirers set out to perform "scenic surgery" and chain the crumbling profile. For years, the Nielsen family conducted this labor of love, attaching turnbuckles here and there. Their heroics became legendary. Frances Ann Johnson Hancock's Saving The Great Stone Face, published in 1984, described their daring (and, we now know, futile) work, struggling up the fearsome slopes, leaping across terrifying precipices, straining to repair and pin the always eroding presence in the mountains, and adding epoxy to fill the gaps as well. "A face-lift for the old man," quipped one postcard depicting their attempts to save the Great Stone Face. So deep was the respect for this accident of geology that the nomenclature of "The Profile" was affixed to nearby Profile Lake, and to Profile Lodge as well, which for a time accommodated top-hatted tourists who arrived by rail lines still visible today. The Old Man was also integrated in the nation's celebrations, from a replica at the 1876 centennial celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia to a visit from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who gave the celebratory address on the 150th anniversary of the Old Man's "discovery" by white men. "Only a few moments ago, I had the first opportunity of my life to look at the Old Man of the Mountains," the president began. "The natural question asked me was, 'what did you think of it, Mr. President?' I answered, as anyone would in polite conversation and said, 'Remarkable. Wonderful. Interesting.' The real thought that crossed my mind was: 'what does the Old Man of the Mountains think of us?'" he continued. "He has seen the great science, the speed, the electricity, but, I believe he thinks of something deeper than that," the war hero turned president turned interstate highway builder suggested. Not speed but "the greatest of all human documents," he declared, thereupon predictably reciting "When in the course of human events..." along with the rest of the Declaration of Independence. Over the years, other accolades came from the mountaineers, observers, and literary scribes who recorded the legends and lore assembled in John T.B. Mudge's The Old Man's Reader. Most poetically, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a myth based on the search for the true wise man who might resemble Franconia's "steward drawn by nature" and prove himself the town's hero. The Old Man himself became an early activist in Charles Chase's 1892 short story, wherein the icon of Franconia Notch dreamed about the sale of the forests for "paltry sums," along with their subsequent "cutting and devastation, raging fires, polluted streams and the death of wildlife." Written as the logging industry decimated the White Mountains, the tale predated the rescue mission of the Weeks Act, which created the White Mountain National Forest twenty-two years later. Last summer, the Boston Globe added to the lore, presenting twin photographs: to the left appeared the Old Man's austere silhouette; to the right, printed cheek-to-jutting chin, was Senator John Kerry's severe countenance. "Mountain Men," said the sardonic caption.
In the aftermath of the Old Man's fall, the profit-makers were busy mitigating grief with greed. No Old Man, of course, but many new Old Men were proliferating, post-mortem, on every rack and store and park ground. The vanquished hero's silhouette was up for sale, promiscuously slapped on postcards, stationery, plates, sugar bowls, and milk bottles, not to mention an "I MISS MY OLD MAN" t-shirt. Below the swell of the aged mountain chain in late summer, you could buy endless trinkets and Old Man artifacts. Mementoes bearing the words "Gone, but not forgotten. As long as people live in these hills, we will always remember the presence of the Great Stone Face" neighbored the spicy nachos and corn chips at the Franconia Village Store, hard by the flags and "JESUS DIED FOR YOU" signs. The Old Man's visage also graced such less-than-honorable articles as highway tokens, the state's "Live Free or Die" license plates, and the newly-minted New Hampshire quarter. The attraction turned the sacred into the profane or, at any rate, the profitable. As the hallowed visage drew tourists of all kinds, the urge for commodification seemed to compete with the very icon that people came to worship. "Nature's most revered figure" adorned Old Man coasters, Old Man maple syrup, Old Man playing cards, placemats, and stamps-even an Old Man "bug bar," which was tucked in among the confections. The items multiplied in an unholy trinity of Worship, Sacrilege, and Commerce, culminating in Daniel Webster's machoesque, mid-nineteenth-century speech stitched in needlepoint on a pillow, by (one assumes) some devoted female hand: Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades: shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch; and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men. This souvenir mania spawned thievery as well. Not long after the rock slide, a sign directing visitors to the former Old Man was stolen. A Keystone Kops mentality seemed to pervade the robust officers of the law who spent the following days flipping through eBay, hoping against hope, it seems, that the giant hand-carved sign (estimated value: $3,500) would reappear. No luck. No identifiable rocks made their way onto the internet auction site - no pieces of the metal turnbuckles purported to have kept the Old Man intact. Not to say that internet shoppers couldn't purchase more tender treasures in cyberspace: among them, a locket with a twenty-year-old picture of the Old Man, beckoning buyers to "own a piece of history and bid on this beautiful, soon to become an heirloom piece of jewelry"; a vintage Old Man of the Mountain ashtray; a pewter thimble carved with a craggy image that would have given blisters to any seamstress. And my personal favorite, a fuzzy teddy bear: THIS IS THE NH STATE QUARTER BEAR, HE IS A GRANITE COLOR. ON THE BACK IS THE STATE SEAL OF NH, THE HANG TAG HAS THE HISTORY OF THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN & IS PROTECTED BY A TAG PROTECTOR, IT MEASURES 9" A LITTLE BIGGER THAN A BEANIE BABY. THIS WILL BE A VERY SPECIAL BEAR BECAUSE AS YOU KNOW THE OLD MAN NO LONGER EXSISTS [SIC] Was it memorializing or merchandizing? The two have become inseparable in this day and age where Princess Diana images continue to flood the postcard racks in London and Cheers sells memorabilia long after reruns have run out. One couldn't help but wonder: What next? There seemed no lapse of opportunities to exploit nature's bygone gift for the "half-million visitors who pass through Franconia Notch State Park each summer," as estimated by tourist department press releases. On the eve of my departure, questions still reverberate: Just how did the Old Man die, anyhow? And how shall we commemorate him? And still one more question: Couldn't this dam-building, continent-crossing nation have tried harder to save the deity of Franconia Notch, the object of desire and inspiration? Storms had always pummeled the notch's sheer cliffs with squalls and shudders, wind and water. Officials recorded a minor landslide in 1979 and, as time went by, thought was given to more nips and tucks. But not recently. And when the stone face came tumbling down with the turnbuckles that had, supposedly, propped him, one of the Nielsens was there to attest to "how fragile the whole thing really was." "We knew it was fragile but we pretended it was permanent," says the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests' Difley. Change is the only constant in geology, as in life. The state's Moses-cum-Charlton Heston on the hill, for all its pious anthropomorphism, was as transient and endangered as the lands we inhabit. "It seems an act of almost pure hubris to assert that some landmark of our world is fixed," suggests John McPhee, rightly enough it seems to me. "It's just a natural process," says Barrett Rock, a professor at the University of New Hampshire and a member of the university's Complex Systems Research Center. Spalling is the word. "All spalling means is that the granite surface cracks with the freezing and heating." So if you're situated in New England's if-you-don't-like-it-wait-a-minute weather, you don't need to be an Eagle Scout to see that the granite god didn't have a chance. Add clambering mountain climbers, would-be rock docs, and that intermittent epoxy-not to mention constant cars and trucks on the highway beneath him-and it was only a matter of time.
Culpable or not, all we can do now is mourn and go on. Mourning is, after all, a Puritan New Englander's prerogative, a "pleasure," one might say. Grievers have created the notion of an ideal past since the New Land was founded. From early settlers to Thoreau to academic ecologists, Americans have mourned the loss of Eden. While giving special primacy to this generation's wastrel way of settling, we recognize that change is endemic. Forget the condolence cards. Move on like the tough image of the mountain itself, say New Hampshire's bereaved. In mid-August, the number of cars at the base of the trail to the Old Man has dwindled to a dozen. The walk to the Old Man's viewing post is largely a solitary one, tenanted by only a few curious families. Some young towheads peer up to the Old Man's perch, seeing the expected - nothing. The shiny steel army of telescopes that once gazed meaningfully upward are blank-eyed as they point to the faceless site. Yet, the sentiment lives on. "It's still there and it's still very much in people's mind," says the saleswoman at the souvenir store. The paths winding to the base of the Old Man open out into wider asphalt plazas where rough stone memorials now bear small gifts and posted tributes. By the dried carnations, a fading sign reads "we will miss you." A note from a couple who had stood within eye-shot of the Old Man to say their wedding vows asks for an "exact replica of you put there - to find that sense of awe." "There it is," a man in a red shirt tells his two sons who seem unmoved as they play among the rocks of Profile Lake. The well-groomed lake is still stocked, and signs caution anglers to keep their catch down to the carefully prescribed number of fish. The mix of the tidy and the natural, the stewarded and the artificial, seems at once symbolic and instructive. Absent its old hotel and profile, Profile Lake endures, as does the notch itself. As for the much-talked-about memorial, the governor's commission charged with commemorating the "state symbol whose profile graced the side of our White Mountains" seems to be moving at a-wellllll-glacial pace. The most creative or inoffensive idea-a fixed set of binoculars with the outline of the Old Man etched into the glass and visible against the rocks and skyline-is still floating, barely. The loonier notions have passed; it seems clear that there will be no New Old Man. And the Schindlers from Long Island are not sad as they add their thoughts to an ongoing dialogue in cyberspace. "Part of the wonder of 'natural wonders' is that they are transitory," they say. Some things are too cherished to replicate. "You're not going to get the same reverence with something made in Hong Kong," says the clerk manning the Gale River Motel. "It was natural and shouldn't be replaced by a fake," insists Florence Rosenberg, an aide in the library, as if an epoxy Old Man would be as out of line as botox. "It had unique geology, but it was just a pile of rocks," she adds, smothering sadness with her cynicism. What, then, is the proper obituary? Perhaps the Old Man in death, as in life, could become a symbol of the intertwining of nature and human nature-the inspiration for a new and broader sense of stewardship. Surely, an obituary of this "steward drawn by nature" could and should inspire more solace, more impulse to honor the ever-mystical elements of nature that stir us. Yes, he is gone, lingering as a fading myth and memory, to be seen on the face of a random twenty-five-cent piece and remembered in timeworn photographs. But surely, a people with the curiosity to seek out and worship the geological and spiritual meaning of life on Earth can try to turn a cosmic coincidence into an enduring commitment to the landscape as a whole. We owe him, ourselves, and our world that much. This essay appeared in the January/February 2004 issue of Orion and won a notable essay citation in the Best American Essays of 2005.
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