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I don't know the first time I saw him. What feels like hundreds of visits was probably, in reality, maybe ten. Childhood memory-recall can exaggerate that way. But trips to New England always spelled magic for me: my grandmother's Crazy Cake, sledding in White's Park, exploring my grandparent's attic, and a day trip to the White Mountains to see the Old Man.
My sharpest memory comes from when I was ten or eleven. Driving around the base of Mount Cannon, I pressed my face to the back window, looking up to the high cliff, anxious and excited as it slowly turned and the face majestically revealed itself. Dad parked and I shot out of the car, running to the Profile Lake to see him again. It wasn't that I wanted to be first; it wasn't a contest at all. I just wanted to see him by myself. I'd seen the other attractions, walking hand-in-hand with my family. We had walked through the Flume, ridden the Tram and enjoyed the bears at the Trading Post, but this was time just for me and him...a moment or two alone, just to take him in...just to say hello.
His face was stern, but not harsh. He always appeared just about to speak, or better, as if his weathered granite mouth was gently open in song...a low, comforting note, a warming sound whispered to the neighboring mountains and the admiring visitors below. More like a drawing he seemed to me than a formation of rock, even when I looked at him up close with binoculars. The gray and pink granite, set against the blue sky, the lights and shadows of the passing sun...all conspired to animate his noble countenance.
I remember wishing I knew how to meditate, but that might mean closing my eyes to him, which was dumb.
I remember stirring the tiny rocks in the cold shoreline water of the lake with my bare feet, and just watching him, and the serenity of the mountains around him.
I remember realizing that now I knew where my favorite place on Earth was.
My last trip was two summers ago, during a twenty-year-overdue reunion with my New England family. Little had changed in 20 years. The natural shoreline of the lake was gone, replaced now with a terraced granite tile walkway. It looked nice, though I prefer the natural shore. The walkway was dotted every 15 feet with those big brass-colored viewfinders to see him up close, if you had 75 cents. The gift shop had expanded, like they do, and the highway sounded a bit busier. But as I reached the edge of the lake and looked up, there he sat, my old friend, singing his unending song. I quietly voiced my hello, and my regret for the long time between visits. And then, as always, I sat and just watched him. No time had passed at all.
But last week he fell. I can't fathom it. A long battle with Nature had ended, but with Nature as the cruel victor. He was there long before we were, and was supposed to outlast us all. Pictures taken recently are gruesome to me. Like a grieving widow forced to identify the remains of her husband killed in battle, I winced when I first saw images of the remaining jagged outcropping of rock. The warped and twisted iron turnbuckles splayed out in the empty air, jagged spidery fingers desperately groping for the delicate formation they'd been installed to protect decades before, which was now a pile of indistinguishable rubble, crumbled below them.
New Hampshire mourns the loss of its greatest symbol. The White Mountain Tourism Association contemplates life after the collapse of its number one attraction. Proposed plans for everything from a site memorial to a fiberglass reconstruction have begun to pop up, and no doubt the debate will rage long into the coming months. Some have even said that the collapse is a symbol of God's displeasure with the current Face of Mankind. But I can't listen to politicians and idiots now. Right now, I've lost a constant, a family member...a friend.
When my father passed away, I was thankful for the relationship that he and I shared, and grateful that he had visited me shortly before he died. So it is with the Old Man. Did I cry for a pile of granite rubble at the base of a small mountainside in northern New Hampshire? Yes. And I get wistful now each time I look at the many images I have of him. But as I stare at them now, much in the same way I've stared at him so many times from the shore of that beautiful peaceful lake, he's still singing, still a picture of strength and serenity. And as with the passing of any family member, my grief will fade, and my memory will keep him singing forever.
JJ Jackman
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When my father -in law passed away, we climbed to the top of the Old Man & spread his ashes there. That is what he wanted.I think this was back in 1989. My daughter, now 18, was only 4 years old and we took turns carrying her up with us. She does not remember but I will never forget.
Shari
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