The Old Man of the Mountain has died

[ambitious_wench]

The following article can be found here: http://reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2678297

New Hampshire's 'Old Man of the Mountain' Collapses
Sat May 03, 2003 05:42 PM ET

FRANCONIA, N.H. (Reuters) - "The Old Man of the Mountain," a stern and soaring stone face that was New Hampshire's most recognizable symbol, has collapsed into a massive pile of rubble.
"The renowned Old Man of the Mountain fell off the mountain," Richard Henson, a dispatcher at the Grafton County Sheriff's Department, said on Saturday.

The 40-foot-high profile, formed of five granite ledges in New Hampshire's White Mountains in a process that started some 200 million years ago, was reported missing by a trail crew working near the town of Franconia on Saturday morning.

Amy Cyrs was a member of the crew. She said she had been working on the trail and looked up, and stopped in her tracks when she saw the face had vanished.

"It's a strange and unreal feeling that something that has been there all your life is gone," she said.

Police had not determined a cause, but said natural forces most likely pulled the face down. They did not know exactly when it had fallen from its mountainside perch 1,200 feet up on Cannon Mountain.

The "Old Man" adorns the New Hampshire emblem, its quarter coin and countless signs, souvenirs and visitor brochures, helping attract millions of people per year to an area popular with hikers and skiers.

New Hampshire is known as "The Granite State" and many residents of the northern state felt that the face embodied its motto: "Live Free or Die."

The early 19th-century statesman Daniel Webster once wrote of the giant stone profile: "...in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."

Nathaniel Hawthorne immortalized it in a story, "The Great Stone Face," read by generations of U.S. schoolchildren.

Workers had labored for decades to protect the face from harsh New England winter freezes and thaws.

On Saturday, all that was left on the mountainside were cables that had been used to shore it up. Observers said it looked as though the ledges that made up the image had just broken away, leaving a giant mountainside scar.

New Hampshire mourned the natural monument.

"This is a symbol of our state. It's a sad feeling of emptiness," said Richard McLeod, director of state parks.

New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson toured the scene and said he wanted to recreate the image. "I am immediately forming a task force to examine the possibility of resurrecting our state symbol."



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Comments

[texas-tiger.livejournal.com]

Oh no.....

RIP

Blowin' in the Wind

[harliquinn.livejournal.com]

When I first heard the story on National Public Radio, I kept anticipating that they'd blame the loss of the Mountain Face on acid rain or other environmental pollutants that tend to bombard New Hampshire from the Midwestern states. Because it was probably due, in large part, to the natural forces of water, wind, and temperature that have been moving and eroding rock for centuries, I wonder now how 'good' an idea it is to rebuild the Old Man in the Mountain as they are suggesting. Granted, it had been chosen years ago as a symbol of the state.

Is it our human egocentricity that is causing us to want to immortalize something that was never meant to be everlasting? Nature does not hold forever (especially with humans constantly battling against it with environmental pollution and general ecological destruction). Even under the most perfect, Biosphere-like conditions things die, rocks erode, shorelines change, deltas expand with flooding; all put in place by forces largely unknown to us in order to keep the Earth in a fragile balance of the ecosystem.

So if the rock formation that we decided looked like a human face (more egotism?) has fallen who are we to say that we should 'put it back'? It was bound to happen. As sad as it is to loose something that people had 'bonded' with in a very Thoreau-ian way, I see no environmental sense in putting it back.

So weep for a structure the New Englanders adored loved. And know that Nature (also) moves in mysterious ways.

[remus-shepherd.livejournal.com]

From what I understand, this thing has been held together with chains and plaster for decades. It's no big deal that it's fallen apart -- they'll just rebuild it. It may have been a natural phenomenon once, but it ceased to be natural half a century ago.