My World In Pictures: Old Man on the Mountain

My World in Pictures: Old Man on the Mountain

    The Old Man of the Mountain is the symbol that is etched into the nickel of every New Hampshire state quarter, mainly because that is our only claim to fame. That, and a town called Weare, spelled W-E-A-R-E, a joke that the natives never seem to grow tired of. “Where ya from?” “Weare.” “Where?” “Exactly.” And, save these two landmarks, we have a thriving industry of summer homes and tourism, the roots of which are planted in Bike Week and Shark Week, seven days of Hell for all the evangelicals and everyone else who hates unnecessary piercings, tattoos, and man-eaters. And I’ll let you in on a little known secret: the man-eaters aren’t the sharks or the bikers.

Believe it or not, the Old Man of the Mountain has always been a popular tourist spot for motorcyclists, exasperated mothers, and around 70,000 Toyota Priuses with Vermont license plates and coexist bumper stickers for about as long as anyone can remember. I couldn’t tell you what it is about him, but there is something about a rock formation that just gets people going.

The Old Man now looks like a Hollywood failure in desperate need of Botox. After an astoundingly depressing rock slide, his nose and features came tumbling down, leaving the slight indentation of a personified life in its place. Those in New Hampshire were crushed, naturally. The death of symbolism is always crushing. What do we have to worship if not for our idols? How many times had the average resident seen the wise silhouette of the old man in the mountain, the prominent curvature of his forehead domineering over an endless expanse of pine trees, the words “Live Free or Die” in a sweeping banner below him? Too many. Too many indeed.

I remember that my grandmother cried when the Old Man fell. So did all of our grandmothers. Live Free or Die did not have the same ring to it if it could not echo from the Old Man’s face, etched into the granite. The Old Man, a symbol of our rather angry sounding motto, had died. Maybe, he did not live free.

Some were surprised. Did we not attain the freedom we had so often toted with us as our life slogan? Were we, too, doomed to die without liberty?

“Ma, you know it’s just a rock, right?” Mom told my grandmother over the phone. We weren’t natives, she said, we would never understand what he meant.

And we didn’t. It was the only hint of fame anyone in New Hampshire had ever had, unless they have known Seth Meyers or Adam Sandler. It may be an inherent desire to be known, to be understood, and without the Old Man looking over his kingdom, the reality of the situation was that his lost people had to cling to their forests to be understood by the outside world. He was gone, and with his crumbling nose and forehead fell the liberty of understanding that the elders clung so heartily to. The Old Man proves it: the death of symbolism is what we grieve.

Word Count: 515, because every picture is worth 1,000 words, but the Old Man is only half a picture.