State ponders future without ‘Old Man’
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -With the Old Man of the Mountain now just a pile of rubble, many in New Hampshire say that while the craggy rock formation should not be forgotten, it should not be raised from the dead.
“I’ve got nothing against a memorial of some kind,” said Donald Hall, a former New Hampshire poet laureate. “But I think the ruin of the forehead and the face is its own memorial.”
Over the years, nature had carved a 40-foot-tall granite outcropping resembling an old man’s face in profile, and it eventually became New Hampshire’s most recognizable symbol, depicted on the state’s quarter.
Last week, though, the 700-ton formation in Franconia Notch State Park broke loose from its 1,200-foot-high perch.
On Saturday, Republican Gov. Craig Benson called for restoring the profile on Cannon Mountain.
“We’ll build back a replica of something that represents the Old Man of the Mountain,” he said, but then quickly backed off the idea.
On Tuesday, Benson appointed a 12-member committee to seek public input on the monument. Committee members include David Nielsen, whose family has been taking care of the Old Man for decades.
Members say they are open to ideas ranging from rebuilding the monument out of rubber and plastic to creating a memorial but letting the cliff remain faceless.
Roy Allen, who was visiting the state park from Rochester, N.H., was in favor of rebuilding the Old Man. “We can put a man on the moon – seems maybe now we can put a type of a face up there,” he said.
But Brian Fowler, an engineering geologist who has studied the Old Man’s underpinnings since the mid-1970s, said it would be costly and dangerous to try to reconstruct something on what is left of the face. He said it would be difficult to get crews and equipment in to do the work.
Charlie Niebling, a senior director at the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, said his organization, which helped the government buy the land that included the Old Man in the 1920s, does not want to see the profile reconstructed.
“There was a natural course of events that took him away, and trying to rebuild it does not make a great deal of sense,” he said. “The Old Man is going to live on in the history of the state. If anything, its diminishment will strengthen the icon.”
He added: “It’s going to be a challenging undertaking to find the proper way to pay tribute, but we’ll find a way.”
Poet Maxine Kumin, also a former laureate, said it would be foolish to restore it.
“Nature gives and then nature takes,” said Kumin, who favors a plaque.
Fay Dwyer, who has managed a resort eight miles from the Old Man for 32 years, said she feels as if someone in the family has died and would like to see a memorial.
“Even if it was a garden with a plaque or something explaining his history in the area,” she said. “I think you’re going to be seeing a lot of people come up to the area just to see where he was. Nothing could ever take its place.”
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On the Net:
New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation: http://www.nhparks.state.nh.us/ParksPages/franconianotch/oldman.html
AP-ES-05-06-03 1841EDT
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